vented. She afterward invented several other buttons, and then invested in more, and finally was taken into partnership with great factories. Now that woman goes over the sea every summer in her private steamship yes, and takes her husband with her! If her husband were to die, she would have money enough left now to buy a foreign duke or count or some such title as that at the latest quotations.

Now what is my lesson in all these incidents? It is this: I told that woman then, though I did not know her, what I now say to you, "Your wealth is too near to you. You are looking right over it."

CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. Make a large target on the blackboard. Write in the names of Conwell's examples in the order of their increasing importance.

2. Read the paragraph which contains the best statement of the idea to put in the bull's-eye. Find sentences in each of the other parts which repeat the central idea.

3. Read the foreword in "Enjoyment," Book One, p. 240. Does "Acres of Diamonds" support the thought there expressed? Find two passages on pp. 605 and 606 that define riches and poverty.

4. Name industries of your community which have grown from small beginnings to their present size. Mention causes for this growth. What new industries are starting?

5. How may the central thought of "Acres of Diamonds" apply to your school life?

6. Topics for discussion from "Acres of Diamonds":

a. "He profits most who serves best."

b. 'First know the demand."

c. "Invest yourself where you are most needed.”

d. "I understand the oil business."

e. "Judge the human heart by oneself."

f. "What is the use of trying that?"

7. Volunteer work:

a. Find out more about Jacob Riis; discovery of gold in California; John Jacob Astor; toy makers of Massachusetts; diamond mining in Africa.

b. Make a plan for a floor talk on "Why it pays to prepare my lessons thoroughly." Draw a large target, and think of four examples from your school experience; arrange them in the order of their importance, putting the most important nearest the bull's-eye.

CLASS-LIBRARY READINGS

FINDING ONE'S WORK

I. "Vocations," K. L. Butterfield, in Opportunities of To-day, 11–20. 2. "Where Boys Learn to Earn a Living," K. Woods, ibid., 40-45. 3. "Preparing the Boy for Industry," L. L. Park, ibid., 46—54. 4. "Farm Management," W. J. Quick, ibid., 85-91.

5. "Journalism," H. L. Smith, ibid., 92-101.

6. "The Practice of Medicine," H. L. Smith, ibid., 103-109.

7. "The Girl of To-morrow," B. R. Andrews, ibid., 174-184.

8. "Wage-Earning Occupations for Women," M. S. Wool: nan, ibid., 196–203.

9. "Interior Decorating as Work for Women," M. Robinson, ibid., 273

274.

10. “You and Your Boss," G. H. Lorimer, in Stories of the Day's Work, 61-68.

II. "When a Feller is Out of a Job," S. W. Foss, in A Vocational Reader,

87-89.

12. "Benjamin Franklin, Printer," P. Pressey, ibid., 127–138.

13. "The Return of Rhoda," S. Glaspell, ibid., 201–210.

14.

"How I Became a District Nurse," L. Dodge, ibid., 222–228.

15. "Where Mark Twain Got His Stories," E. T. Brewster, ibid., 228236.

16. "The Aerial Acrobat," in Careers of Danger and Daring, 255-292. 17. "Pictorial Story of the Fishing Industry," Wonder Book of Knowledge,

325-330.

18. "Up the Coolly," H. Garland, in The Promise of Country Life, 142– 188.

19. "What Shall I Do for a Living?" Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, 9:3653-3657.

Jacob Riis, a penniless immigrant from Denmark, came to America in 1870. After seven years of hardships, he finally attained a high position as a journalist and author. His services to the poor of the city of New York led Theodore Roosevelt to call him "the ideal American citizen." This selection tells of some of his early struggles.

If this story were put in a motion picture, at what points would the audience laugh most heartily? At which would they cry? What action would you have in the play at these places?

Somewhat suddenly and quite unexpectedly, a business career opened for me that winter. I had observed that, for the want of window reflectors, American ladies were at a disadvantage in their homes in not being able to discover undesirable company at a distance, themselves unseen, and conveniently forgetting that they were "in." This civilizing agency I set about supplying forthwith.

I made a model and took it to a Yankee business man, to whom I explained its use. He listened attentively, took the model, and said he had a good mind to have me locked up for infringing the patent laws of other lands; but because I had sinned from ignorance he would refrain. His manner was so impressive that he really made me uneasy lest I had broken some kind of law I knew not of. From the fact that not long after window reflectors began to make their appearance in Buffalo, I infer that, whatever the

law, it did not apply to natives, or else that he was a very fearless man, willing to take the risk from which he would save me a sort of commercial philanthropist. However, by that time I had other things to think of; I was a drummer and a very energetic one.

My employment came about in this way: some countrymen of mine had started a co-operative furniture-factory in Jamestown, where there were water-power and cheap lumber. They had no capital, but just below was the oil country, where everybody had money, slathers of it. New wells gushed every day, and boom towns were springing up all along the Alleghany Val- . ley. Men were streaming into the region from everywhere, and needed furniture. If once they got the grip on that country, reasoned the furniture-makers, they would get rich quickly with the rest. The problem was to get the grip. To do that they needed a man who could talk. At all events, they asked me if I would try.

I started for Jamestown on the next train. Twenty-four hours later saw me headed for the oil country, equipped with a mighty album and a price-list. The album contained pictures of the furniture I had for sale. All the way down I studied the price-list, and when I reached Titusville I knew to a cent what it cost my employers per foot to make ash extension tables. I only wish they had known half as well.

My first customer was a grumpy old shopkeeper who said that he needed neither tables nor bedsteads. But I had thought it all over and made up my mind that the first blow was half the battle. Therefore I knew better. I pushed my album under his nose, and it fell open at the extension tables. Cheap, I said, and rattled off the price. I saw him prick up his ears, but he only growled that probably they were no good.

What! my extension tables no good? I dared him to try them, and he gave me an order for a dozen, but made me sign an agreement that they were to be in every way as represented. I would have backed my tables with an order for the whole shop, so sure was I that they could not be beaten. The idea! With the fit of righteous indignation upon me, I went out and sold every other furniture-dealer in Titusville a bill of tables; not

one of them escaped. At night, when I had sent the order home, I set out for Oil City, so as to lose no valuable time.

My experience was just the same there. For some reason they were suspicious of the extension tables, yet they wanted nothing else. I had to give iron-clad guarantees that they were as represented, which I did impatiently enough. There was a thunderstorm raging at the time. The lightning had struck a tank, and the burning oil ran down a hill and set the town on fire. One end of it was burning while I was canvassing the other, mentally calculating how many extension tables would be needed to replace those that were lost.

People in that country did not seem to have heard of any other kind of furniture. Walnut bedsteads, marble-top bureaus, turned washstands they passed them all by to fall upon the tables with shrill demand. I made out their case to suit the facts, as I swept down through that region, scattering extension tables right and left. It was the excitement, I reasoned, the inrush of population from everywhere; probably everybody kept boarders, more every day; they had to extend their tables to seat them. I saw a great opportunity and resolutely grasped it. If they wanted tables, tables they should have. I let all the rest of the stock go and threw myself on the tables exclusively. Town after town I filled with them. Night after night the mails groaned under the heavy orders for extension tables I sent north. From Allegheny City alone an order of a thousand dollars' worth from a single reputable dealer went home, and I figured in my notebook that night a commission of fifty dollars for myself plus my salary.

I could know nothing of the despatches that had been hot on my trail ever since my first order came from Titusville, telling me to stop, let up on the tables, come home, saying there was a mistake in the price. The messages never overtook me. My pace was too hot for that. Anyhow, I doubt if I should have paid any attention to them. I had my instructions and was selling according to orders. Business was good, getting better every day. The firm wrote to my customers, but they merely sent back copies of the iron-clad contract. They had seen my instructions, and they knew it was all right. Not until I brought up,