Sean Rasmussen

We’ll pick up the story of Darby’s Uncle and the young tenant-farmer’s girl where we left off…

“Darby held his breath. He was certain he was about to witness a murder. He knew his uncle had a fierce temper. He knew that colored children were not supposed to defy white people in that part of the country.

When the uncle reached the spot where the child was standing, she quickly stepped forward one step, looked up into his eyes, and screamed at the top of her lungs, “my Mammy’s gotta have that fifty cents!”

The uncle stopped, looked at her for a minute, then slowly laid the wood on the floor. He put his hand in his pocket, took out half a dollar, and gave it to her.

The child took the money and slowly backed toward the door, never taking her eyes off the man whom she had just conquered. After she had gone, the uncle sat down on a box and stared out the window into space for more than ten minutes. He was contemplating, with awe, the whipping he had just taken.

Mr. Darby, too, was doing some thinking. That was the first time in his life he had seen a colored child deliberately master an adult white person. How did she do it? What happened to his uncle that caused him to lose his fierceness and become as docile as a lamb? What strange power did this child use that made her master over her superior? These and other similar questions flashed through Darby’s mind; but he did not find the answer until years later, when he told me the story.”

No doesn’t always mean no

You might be finding it difficult, just as Darby did, to put a name to the power Napoleon Hill refers to here. Regardless, at least take away this fact that Hill is working hard to bring to light—that ‘No’ doesn’t always mean ‘No’ if you have the courage and persistence to see a thing through, and refuse to be bullied by powers who seem bigger than you. Add this to your list of small lessons that will complete the whole of the Secret.

I will see you back here Monday and Thursday every week for the continuation of the Mindset Mastery series.

Sean Rasmussen
Success Communicator
SeanRasmussen.com © 2004 - 2008

Persistence is one way to describe that staying power that wealthy, successful men and women have, that power that takes them that critical step past temporary defeat. To illustrate the power of persistence, Napoleon Hill tells us this story of one brave and persistent little girl.

[Note: As you read, keep in mind that this incident took place in the early 1900's before the Civil Rights Movement in the United States; all things, at that time, were certainly not equal.]

“Shortly after R.U. Darby earned his degree from the “University of Hard Knocks,” and had determined to profit from his experience in the gold mining business, he was fortunate enough to be present to witness an incident that proved to him that “No” does not necessarily mean no.

One afternoon Darby was helping his uncle grind wheat in an old fashioned mill. The uncle operated a large farm where a number of colored sharecrop farmers lived. Quietly, the door was opened, and a small colored child, the daughter of a tenant, walked in and took her place near the door.

The uncle looked up, saw the child, and barked at her roughly, “what do you want?”

Meekly, the child replied, “My mammy say send her fifty cents.”

“I’ll not do it,” the uncle retorted, “Now you run on home.”

“Yas sah,” the child replied. But she did not move.

The uncle went on working, too busy to notice that the child did not leave. When he looked up and saw her still standing there, he yelled at her, “I told you to go on home! Now go, or I’ll take a switch to you.”

The little girl said “yas sah,” but she did not budge an inch.

The uncle dropped a sack of grain he was about to pour into the mill hopper, picked up a band of wood, and started toward the child with an expression meant to drive fear into her.”

Being Persistent

This is the point where most of us would relent and let the old Uncle keep the fifty cents. Be sure to join us in our next post to find out how this little girl with persistence and a simple word triumphed over “the Man”.

I will see you back here Monday and Thursday every week for the continuation of the Mindset Mastery series.

Sean Rasmussen
Success Communicator
SeanRasmussen.com © 2004 - 2008

Napoleon Hill doesn’t tell us much about the fate of the Uncle, but he does continue the story of R.U. Darby and his ultimate success. How did this failure turn his life around and build wealth? By learning from his mistake, and learning the principles of the secret.

“Long afterward, Mr. Darby recouped his loss many times over, when he made the discovery that desire can be transmuted into gold. That discovery came after he went into the business of selling life insurance.

“Remembering that he lost a huge fortune all because he stopped three feet from gold, Darby turned that experience to his advantage in his newly chosen profession; his method was simple—Darby repeatedly told himself, “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because men say ‘no’ when I ask them to buy insurance.”

“Darby was one of a small group in the first part of the 1900’s, a group of less than fifty men, to sell more than a million dollars in life insurance annually. He owed his determination and success to the lesson he learned from his hastiness to quit in the gold mining business.”

Definite Thought

Finally, Darby learned the power of definite thought—the same power Edwin C Barnes knew and used to build his future, and his fortune, with Thomas Edison. Had Darby known that power of definite thought and definite purpose when he went mining, his wealth may have come years sooner. You have at least this elemental knowledge now and that small bit of information is power; power that you, too, can solidify and translate into tangible wealth.

I will see you back here Monday and Thursday every week for the continuation of the Mindset Mastery series.

Sean Rasmussen
Success Communicator
SeanRasmussen.com © 2004 - 2008

The Darby’s had reached it—the turning point in their financial success. Do you think they made the right decision? We know that if they followed the secret to wealth creation, had a definite purpose based in definite thought, they did. Alas…

“Finally, they decided to quit.

“They sold the machinery to a junk man for a few hundred dollars and took a train back home. Now, some “junk” men are ignorant, 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! And that is exactly where it was found!

“The “Junk” man took millions of dollars in ore from the mine, all because he knew enough to seek expert advice before giving up.

“Most of the money used to buy the machinery was raised through the efforts of R.U. Darby, who was then a very young man. The money came from his relatives and neighbors, because they had faith in him. He paid back every dollar of it, even though it took him years to do so.”

Admirable of Mr. Darby to do so, but what would have been more admirable would have been not throwing up his hands in the face of temporary defeat. If he had followed the principles outlined by Napoleon Hill and in this book, he wouldn’t have. If he’d known the secret to wealth creation, he wouldn’t have.

What About You?

Does any part of this story mirror any cross-roads in your own life? I hope for your sake it does not, but odds are that it does; it seems all of us have been ‘there’ at one point or another. But don’t despair; past failure does not predetermine future failure. You have the opportunity to learn from your mistakes and take your new found knowledge from this book, and turn your poorly decided past into great future success and wealth, just as Mr. Darby did.

I will see you back here Monday and Thursday every week for the continuation of the Mindset Mastery series.

Sean Rasmussen
Success Communicator
SeanRasmussen.com © 2004 - 2008

The next of Napoleon Hill’s anecdotes is presented as a direct contrast to the definite thought, purpose, and determination of Edwin C Barnes. He calls this story “Three Feet From Gold”; most of us can see quite a lot of our past limited successes within the telling of this story.

“One of the most common reasons people fail is that they quit when faced with temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another. What follows is a case in point.

“An uncle of R.U. Darby was caught by the “gold fever” in the days of the great gold-rush, and went west to dig and grow rich. He had never heard that more gold has been mined from the brains of men than has ever been taken from the earth. He staked a claim and went to work with a pick and a shovel. The going was hard, but his lust for gold was definite.

“After weeks of labor, he was rewarded with the discovery of the elusive shining ore. He needed machinery to bring the ore to the surface. Quietly, he covered up the mine, went back to his home in Williamsburg, Maryland, and told his relatives and a few neighbors about the “strike.” Together, they raised the money for the needed machinery and had it shipped. The uncle and Darby went back to work the mine.”

So far in this tale we’ve seen that Darby and Uncle had the foresight to place themselves in a presumably profitable spot, but Napoleon Hill indicates that the uncle lacked a definite thought; he has thus far failed to put the required definite thinking into the project. Will the men be able to succeed without having taken this essential first step? We’ll see if he is able to pull himself out of it.

I will see you back here Monday and Thursday every week for the continuation of the Mindset Mastery series.

Sean Rasmussen
Success Communicator
SeanRasmussen.com © 2004 - 2008