How Close Is Your Fortune?
A farmer in Pennsylvania decided to sell his farm, but before he
sold it, he wrote to his cousin in Canada, who collected coal,
and asked for a job. In those days, coal oil, which dipped from
running Canadian streams, where it was first discovered, was
lucrative business.
The farmer, a sensible man, did not want to leave his farm
without securing his livelihood so he wanted to make sure his
cousin would hire him before he left. His cousin, however, was
not enthusiastic about the proposal and wrote back to discourage
the farmer, arguing that the farmer did not know anything about
the coal oil business.
This blatant rejection did not discourage the farmer. He simply
sat down and studied all about coal oil, studying it from the
second day of creation. He read about how the world had once
been covered with rich vegetation which eventually turned to
coal beds, and when those rich coal beds were drained, they
furnished coal oil. The coal oil worth pumping came up from
living springs.
The farmer studied coal oil until he could almost see it and
smell it.
When he believed he knew how to refine it, he wrote back to his
cousin asking for a job again. He spelled out how he had
painfully studied every aspect of the business. Reluctantly, his
cousin invited him over.
The farm was sold well below market value as the farmer was
eager to make his way to Canada to begin a new life of industry
and prosperity.
The new owner decided that the first thing he needed to do was
to see if the cattle had enough water. At the brook, behind the
dilapidated barn, he found a black-stained plank that appeared
to have been placed years ago to throw dark scum onto the bank.
The plank separated off the clean, drinkable water from the
scum-laden water.
He called in a geologist, who, after careful tests, declared
that the scum was coal oil, worth an estimated hundred million
dollars. The geologist estimated that the coal-oil that stained
the plank was about twenty-three years old. The new owner
laughed at the irony of the whole situation: although the old
farmer had studied coal oil from the second day of creation, he
had sold his own vast reservoir for a mere $833.
"If only the old farmer had the wisdom to notice the fortune in
his own backyard," said the new owner to the geologist.