know that he had paid for that.

I spoke thus to an audience in New Britain, Connecticut, and a lady
four seats back went home and tried to take off her collar, and the
collar-button stuck in the buttonhole. She threw it out and said, "I
am going to get up something better than that to put on collars." Her
husband said: "After what Conwell said to-night, you see there is a
need of an improved collar-fastener that is easier to handle. There is a
human need; there is a great fortune. Now, then, get up a collar-button
and get rich." He made fun of her, and consequently made fun of me, and
that is one of the saddest things which comes over me like a deep cloud
of midnight sometimes--although I have worked so hard for more than half
a century, yet how little I have ever really done. Notwithstanding the
greatness and the handsomeness of your compliment to-night, I do not
believe there is one in ten of you that is going to make a million of
dollars because you are here to-night; but it is not my fault, it is
yours. I say that sincerely. What is the use of my talking if people
never do what I advise them to do? When her husband ridiculed her, she
made up her mind she would make a better collar-button, and when a woman
makes up her mind "she will," and does not say anything about it, she
does it. It was that New England woman who invented the snap button
which you can find anywhere now. It was first a collar-button with
a spring cap attached to the outer side. Any of you who wear modern
waterproofs know the button that simply pushes together, and when you
unbutton it you simply pull it apart. That is the button to which I
refer, and which she invented. She afterward invented several other
buttons, and then invested in more, and then was taken into partnership
with great factories. Now that woman goes over the sea every summer
in her private steamship--yes, and takes her husband with her! If her
husband were to die, she would have money enough left now to buy
a foreign duke or count or some such title as that at the latest
quotations.

Now what is my lesson in that incident? It is this: I told her then,
though I did not know her, what I now say to you, "Your wealth is too
near to you. You are looking right over it"; and she had to look over it
because it was right under her chin.

I have read in the newspaper that a woman never invented anything.
Well, that newspaper ought to begin again. Of course, I do not refer
to gossip--I