Three Feet From Gold (a story of a salesman)

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Today's morning I found a story of a salesman in the book I'm reading, and i thought i would share it with you..

One of the most common cause of failure is the habit of of quitting when one is overtaken by a temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another

R. U. Darby who later became one of the most successful insurance salesman in the country,tells the story of his Uncle who was caught by the Gold fever' in the gold-rush days and went west to dig and grow rich . He had never heard the saying that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went with pick and shovel. The going was hard but his lust for gold was definite.

After 3 weeks of labour ,he was rewarded by the discovery of the shinning ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in williamsburg and told his relatives and a few neighbors of the strike'. They got money of the for the need ed machinery and had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.

The first car of ore was mined and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mines in Colorado! A few more of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killing in profits.

Down went the drills! Up went the hopes of Darby and his Uncle! Then something happened ------the vein of gold ore disappeared. They had come to the end of rainbow and the pot of gold was no-longer there. They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again, all to no vain.

Finally, they decided to quit. They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars,and took the train back
home. Some junk-men are dumb but not this one ! He called a mining Engineer to look at the mine and a little calculating. The Engineer advised that *The project had failed because the owners were not familiar with 'fault lines' His calculation showed that the vein would be found found just Three feet from when the Darby's had stopped drilling! That is exactly where it was found.

The Junk-man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine because he knew enough to seek expert councils before giving up. Most of the money which went into the machinery was procured through through the efforts of R U Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from relatives and neighbors, because his faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, although he was young in doing so.

Long afterwards , Mr Darby recouped his loss many times over when he made the discovery that desire can be transmuted into gold. The discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance.
Remembering that he lost a huge fortune because he stopped three feet from gold ,Darby profited by his experience in his chosen work. His simple method was to say to himself, I stopped three feet from gold but i will never stop because men say no when i ask them to buy insurance' He owes his 'stickability to the lesson he learned from 'quitability' in the gold mining business.

Failure is the trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning, it takes a great delight in tripping one up when success is almost within reach

From the book ''Think and grow rich By Napoleon Hill''

Thank you for reading

@jordanlove