One of the most common cause of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat . Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another.
An uncle of R . U. Darby was caught by the "gold fever" in the gold-rush days , and went west to DIG AND GROW RICH.He stacked a claim and went to work with pick & shovel. The going was hard , but his lust for gold was definite.
After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by discovery of shinning ore . He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface .Quietly he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home Williams burg, Maryland, told his relatives & a few neighbors of the "strike". They got together money for for the needed machinery, had it shipped. The uncle & 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 cars 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 Uncle ! Then something happened! The vein of gold ore disappeared! They had come to the end of the rainbow , and the pot of gold was no longer there! They drilled on, desperately trying to pick up the vein again ------ all to no avail.
Finally, they decided to QUIT.
They sold the machinery to a junk man to a few hundred dollars, and took the train back home. Some "junk" men are dumb,but not this one ! he called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project had failed, because the owners were not familiar with "fault lines". His calculations showed that the vein would be found JUST THREE FEET FROM WHERE THE DARBYS 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 counsel before giving up.
(FROM THE BOOK "THINK AND GROW RICH"
.........................BY NEPOLIAL HILL)
