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3. Find evidence on p. 428 that good listeners add something to what they hear. Explain how this is true of readers, using an example.

4. The characteristics of a good short story:

a. It must answer the question who: it has characters.

b. It must answer the question what: it narrates events or actions, omitting all useless details.

c. It must answer the question where: it locates the events or scenes. d. It must answer the question why: it contains a purpose for the

events.

The value of all stories may be estimated by these four tests. Some stories contain all of them; others, while paying attention to all four, lay special stress upon one, or perhaps two of the features named. Is "Katherine" a character story, an events story, a scene story, or a moral story? Is the interest chiefly in plot, in character, in setting, in mood, in theme? Explain.

4. ACRES OF DIAMONDS

RUSSELL H. CONWELL

This famous address has been delivered thousands of times in various parts of the world. It has brought Mr. Conwell more than a million dollars, every cent of which he has given to help young men secure an education.

The address is built on what we may call "the target plan," and may be represented in this way. The bull's-eye in the centre of the target may represent Mr. Conwell's central idea. The address itself is made

Your best opportunities
may be right at home

up of five parts, all of which develop or support the central idea in exactly the same way; each in a sense draws a circle around the bull'seye.

A target is used by archers, who stand at a distance and try to shoot their arrows into the target, endeavoring, of course, to hit the bull'seye. Each arrow lodging in the bull's-eye counts 20, each in the innermost circle counts 15, and so on, the scores lessening in value as the arrows lodge toward the outer edge of the target.

As you read the selection, determine whether the examples used by Mr. Conwell are arranged in the order of decreasing value in supporting his central idea.

When going down the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers many years ago I found myself under the direction of an old Arab guide whom we hired up at Bagdad. He thought that it was not only his duty to guide us down those rivers but also to entertain us with stories curious and weird, ancient and modern, strange and familiar. Many of them I have forgotten, and I am glad I have, but there is one I shall never forget.

Said he, "I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular friends." When he emphasized the words "particular friends," I listened, and I have ever been glad I did. I really feel devoutly thankful that there are 1,674 young men who have been carried through college by this lecture who are also glad that I did listen.

The old guide told me that there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Ali Hafed. He said that Ali Hafed owned a very large farm; that he had orchards, grain fields, and gardens; that he had money at interest and was a wealthy and contented man. He was contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented. One day there visited that old Persian farmer one of those ancient Buddhist priests, one of the wise men of the East. He sat down by the fire and told the old farmer how this world of ours was made. He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog, and that the Almighty thrust his finger into this bank of fog and began slowly to move his finger around, increasing the speed, until at last he whirled

this bank of fog into a solid ball of fire. Then it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through other banks of fog, and condensed the moisture without until it fell in floods. of rain upon its hot surface and cooled the outward crust. Then the internal fires bursting outward through the crust threw up the mountains and hills, the valleys, the plains and prairies, of this wonderful world of ours. If this internal molten mass came bursting out and cooled very quickly it became granite; less quickly, gold; and, after gold, diamonds were made.

Said the old priest, "A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight." Now that is literally scientifically true that a diamond is an actual deposit of carbon from the sun. The old priest told Ali Hafed that if he had one diamond the size of his thumb he could purchase the county, and if he had a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of their great wealth.

Ali Hafed heard all about diamonds, how much they were worth, and went to his bed that night a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he was poor because he was discontented, and discontented because he feared he was poor. said, "I want a mine of diamonds," and he lay awake all night.

He

Early in the morning he sought out the priest. "Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?"

"Diamonds! What do you want with diamonds?" "Why, I wish to be immensely rich.”

“Well, then, go along and find them. That is all you have to do; go and find them, and then you have them."

"But I don't know where to go.'

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"Well, if you will find a river that runs through white sands, between high mountains, in those white sands you will always find diamonds."

"I don't believe there is any such river."

"Oh, yes, there are plenty of them. All you have to do is to go and find them, and then you have them."

Said Ali Hafed, "I will go."

So he sold his farm, collected his money, left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds. He began his search, very properly to my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterward he came around into Palestine; then wandered on into Europe; and at last, when his money was all spent and he was in rags, wretchedness, and poverty, he stood on the shore of the bay at Barcelona, in Spain, when a great tidal wave came rolling in between the pillars of Hercules, and the poor, afflicted, suffering, dying man could not resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

The man who purchased Ali Hafed's farm, one day led his camel into the garden to drink, and as the camel put its nose into the shallow water of that garden brook, Ali Hafed's successor noticed a curious flash of light from the white sands of the stream. He pulled out a black stone having an eye of light reflecting all the hues of the rainbow. He took the pebble into the house and put it on the mantel which covers the central fires, and forgot all about it.

A few days later this same old priest came in to visit Ali Hafed's successor. The moment he opened the drawing-room door he saw the flash of light on the mantel; he rushed up to it and shouted: "Here is a diamond! Has Ali Hafed returned?"

"Oh, no, Ali Hafed has not returned, and that is not a diamond. That is nothing but a stone we found right out here in our own garden."

"But," said the priest, "I tell you I know a diamond when I see it. I know positively that is à diamond."

Then together they rushed out into the old garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers, and lo! there came up other more beautiful and valuable gems than the first. "Thus," said the guide to me and, friends, it is historically true "was discovered the diamond mine of Gol

conda, the most magnificent diamond mine in all the history of mankind, excelling the Kimberley itself. The Kohinoor and the Orloff, of the crown jewels of England and Russia, the largest on earth, came from that mine."

When that old Arab guide told me the second chapter of his story, he then took off his Turkish cap and swung it around in the air again to get my attention to the moral. As he swung his hat he said to me: "Had Ali Hafed remained at home and dug in his own garden, instead of wretchedness, starvation, and death by suicide in a strange land he would have had 'acres of diamonds.' For every acre of that old farm, yes, every shovelful, afterward revealed gems which since have decorated the crowns of monarchs."

When he had added the moral to his story I saw why he reserved it for his "particular friends." But I did not tell him I could see it. It was that mean old Arab's way of going around a thing like a lawyer, to say indirectly what he did not dare say directly, that "in his private opinion there was a certain young man then traveling down the Tigris River who might better be at home in America." I did not tell him I could see that, but I told him his story reminded me of one, and I think I will tell it to you.

I told him of a man out in California in 1847 who owned a ranch. He heard they had discovered gold in southern California, and so with a passion for gold he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter, and away he went, never to come back. Colonel Sutter put a mill upon a stream that ran through that ranch, and one day his little girl brought some wet sand from the raceway into their home and sifted it through her fingers before the fire, and in that falling sand a visitor saw the first shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered in California. The man who had owned that ranch wanted gold, and he could have secured it for the mere taking. Indeed, thirty-eight millions of dollars have been taken out of a very few acres since then. About eight years ago I delivered this lecture in a city that stands on that farm, and they

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