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One of the common causes of failure is the habbit of quiting 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 gold rush days, and went west to dig and grow rich. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with pick and showel.
After weeks of labor, he was rewarded by the discovery of the shining ore. He needed Machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly , he covered up the mine, retraced his footsteps to his home in Williamsburd, Maryland, told his relatives and a few nieghborsof the "strike." They got together money for the needed machinery, and had it shipped. the uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.
The first car of the ore was mined and shipped to a smelter. The returns proved they had one of the richest mine of the Colorado. A few more cars of that ore would clear the debts. Then would come the big killings in profit.
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 for a few hundred dollars, took the train back home. The junk man called in a mining engineer to look at the mine and do a little calculating. The engineer advised that the project has failed because the owners were not familiar with the "fault lines." His calculations showed that the vein would be just three feet from 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 cousel before giving up.
