Near Cripple Creek, Colorado, gold and tellurium occur mixed as tellurite ore. The refining
methods of the early mining camps could not separate the two elements, so the ore was thrown
into a scrap heap.
One day a miner mistook a lump of ore for coal and tossed it into his stove. Later, while
removing ashes from the stove, he found the bottom littered with beads of pure gold. The heat
had burned away the tellurium, leaving the gold in a purified state. The discarded ore was
reworked and yielded a fortune.
People are like tellurite ore. We have gold inside us, but it often takes some trial in the
fiery furnace of life to transform us.
