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In 1862, during the second year of the Civil War, Russell H. Conwell, a student in his first weeks at Yale College, enlisted in "Lincoln's Army." Not yet 20, he was commissioned a captain, serving until 1864. He studied law in the office of his former colonel, then earned his degree at Albany Law School and became a lawyer.

But Conwell was also a writer. In 1869 he revisited the Civil War battlefields and burial grounds, sending graphic reports of the horrors of the War in the South to New England newspapers. This work earned him a position on the staff of the Boston Evening Traveler and ultimately a round-the-world journey as correspondent for the American Traveler, a weekly journal published in Boston.

As Conwell told it, he was riding in 1870 in a camel caravan along the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia when he heard a guide weave tales to entertain his American tourists.

Conwell, then only 27, was deeply impressed by a legend about a prosperous Persian farmer, Ali Hafed. Lured by the stories of a Buddhist priest, Ali deserted his fruitful lands to search for immense wealth in mythical diamond fields.

Far and wide Ali Hafed roamed, footsore and weary. Youth and wealth disappeared, and he died far from home, an old and disillusioned pauper. Not long afterward, the guide related, acres of fabulous diamonds were found on Ali Hafed's own land.

To the other tourists, this was just another alluring story, but in Conwell's mind a great truth had been sown. To him it said: "Your diamonds are not in far-away mountains or in distant seas; they are in your own back yard if you will but dig for them."

During the ensuing years Conwell sowed the seeds of service which produced for him his harvest of opportunities.

His famous lecture, "Acres of Diamonds," soon made him America's foremost platform orator. By the end of his life, in 1925, he had delivered the lecture more than 6,000 times in town after town throughout this vast land. It was heard by millions from pulpits and public platforms, and by radio, and today others are still reading his practical, optimistic essay and hearing it on cassettes.