questions flashed into Darby's mind, but he did not
find the answer until years later, when he told me the story.
Strangely, the story of this unusual experience was told to the
author in the old mill, on the very spot where the uncle took his
whipping. Strangely, too, I had devoted nearly a quarter of a century
to the study of the power which enabled an ignorant, illiterate
colored child to conquer an intelligent man.
As we stood there in that musty old mill, Mr. Darby repeated the
story of the unusual conquest, and finished by asking, "What
can you make of it? What strange power did that child use, that
so completely whipped my uncle?"
The answer to his question will be found in the principles described
in this book. The answer is full and complete. It contains details
and instructions sufficient to enable anyone to understand, and
apply the same force which the little child accidentally stumbled
upon.
Keep your mind alert, and you will observe exactly what strange
power came to the rescue of the child, you will catch a glimpse
of this power in the next chapter. Somewhere in the book you will
find an idea that will quicken your receptive powers, and place
at your command, for your own benefit, this same irresistible power.
The awareness of this power may come to you in the first chapter,
or it may flash into your mind in some subsequent chapter. It may
come in the form of a single idea. Or, it may come in the nature
of a plan, or a purpose. Again, it may cause you to go back into
your past experiences of failure or defeat, and bring to the surface
some lesson by which you can regain all that you lost through defeat.
After I had described to Mr. Darby the power unwittingly used by
the little colored child, he quickly retraced his thirty years of
experience as a life insurance salesman, and frankly acknowledged
that his success in that field was due, in no small degree, to the
lesson he had learned from the child.
Mr. Darby pointed out: "every time a prospect tried to bow
me out, without buying, I saw that child standing there in the old
mill, her big eyes glaring in defiance, and I said to myself, 'I've
gotta make this sale. ' The better portion of all sales I have made,
were made after people had said 'NO'."
He recalled, too, his mistake in having stopped only three feet
from gold, "but," he said, "that experience was a
blessing in disguise. It taught me to keep on keeping on, no matter
how hard the going may be, a lesson I needed to learn before I could
succeed in anything."
This story of Mr. Darby and his uncle, the colored child and the
gold mine, doubtless will be read by hundreds of men who make their
living by selling life insurance, and to all of these, the author
wishes to offer the suggestion that Darby owes to these two experiences
his ability to sell more than a million dollars of life insurance
every year.
Life is strange, and often imponderable! Both the successes and
the failures