He sold his farm for two hundred dollars and went into the oil business two hundred miles away.

Only a short time afterward the man who bought the farm discovered a great flood of coal oil, which the farmer had ignorantly tried to drain off.
A man was once sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Boston talking with a friend as to what he could do to help mankind.

"I should think it would be a good thing," said the friend, "to begin by getting up an easier and cheaper chair." "I will do it," he exclaimed, leaping up and examining the chair.

He found a great deal of rattan thrown away by the East India merchant ships, whose cargoes were wrapped in it.

He began the manufacture of rattan chairs and other furniture, and has astonished the world by what he has done with what was before thrown away.