Acres of Diamonds
By Russell H. Conwell
Introduction and review by Eldon Taylor, Ph.D.
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Acres of Diamonds
by Russell H. Conwell
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ACRES OF DIAMONDS
BY RUSSELL H. CONWELL
FOUNDER OF TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PHILADELPHIA
_HIS LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS BY ROBERT SHACKLETON_
With an Autobiographical Note
ACRES OF DIAMONDS
CONTENTS
ACRES OF DIAMONDS
HIS LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS
I. THE STORY OF THE SWORD
II. THE BEGINNING AT OLD LEXINGTON
III. STORY OF THE FIFTY-SEVEN CENTS
IV. HIS POWER AS ORATOR AND PREACHER
V. GIFT FOR INSPIRING OTHERS
VI. MILLIONS OF HEARERS
VII. HOW A UNIVERSITY WAS FOUNDED
VIII. HIS SPLENDID EFFICIENCY
IX. THE STORY OF ``ACRES OF DIAMONDS''
FIFTY YEARS ON THE LECTURE PLATFORM
AN APPRECIATION
THOUGH Russell H. Conwell's Acres of Diamonds have been spread all over the
United States, time and care have made them more valuable, and now that they
have been reset in black and white by their discoverer, they are to be laid
in the hands of a multitude for their enrichment.
In the same case with these gems there is a fascinating story of the Master
Jeweler's life-work which splendidly illustrates the ultimate unit of power
by showing what one man can do in one day and what one life is worth to the
world.
As his neighbor and intimate friend in Philadelphia for thirty years, I am free
to say that Russell H. Conwell's tall, manly figure stands out in the state
of Pennsylvania as its first citizen and ``The Big Brother'' of its seven millions
of people.
From the beginning of his career he has been a credible witness in the Court
of Public Works to the truth of the strong language of the New Testament Parable
where it says, ``If ye have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto
this mountain, `Remove hence to yonder place,' AND IT SHALL REMOVE AND NOTHING
SHALL BE IMPOSSIBLE UNTO YOU.
As a student, schoolmaster, lawyer, preacher, organizer, thinker and writer,
lecturer, educator, diplomat, and leader of men, he has made his mark on his
city and state and the times in which he has lived. A man dies, but his good
work lives.
His ideas, ideals, and enthusiasms have inspired tens of thousands of lives.
A book full of the energetics of a master workman is just what every young man
cares for.
1915. {signature}
ACRES OF DIAMONDS
_Friends_.--This lecture has been delivered under these circumstances: I visit
a town or city, and try to arrive there early enough to see the postmaster,
the barber, the keeper of the hotel, the principal of the schools, and the ministers
of some of the churches, and then go into some of the factories and stores,
and talk with the people, and get into sympathy with the local conditions of
that town or city and see what has been their history, what opportunities they
had, and what they had failed to do-- and every town fails to do something--and
then go to the lecture and talk to those people about the subjects which applied
to their locality. ``Acres of Diamonds''--the idea--has continuously been precisely
the same. The idea is that in this country of ours every man has the opportunity
to make more of himself than he does in his own environment, with his own skill,
with his own energy, and with his own friends. RUSSELL H. CONWELL.
ACRES OF DIAMONDS
[1]
This is the most recent and complete form of the lecture. It happened to be
delivered in Philadelphia, Dr. Conwell's home city. When he says ``right here
in Philadelphia,'' he means the home city, town, or village of every reader
of this book, just as he would use the name of it if delivering the lecture
there, instead of doing it through the pages which follow.
WHEN going down the Tigris and Euphrates rivers many years ago with a party
of English travelers I found myself under the direction of an old Arab guide
whom we hired up at Bagdad, and I have often thought how that guide resembled
our barbers in certain mental characteristics. He thought that it was not only
his duty to guide us down those rivers, and do what he was paid for doing, but
also to entertain us with stories curious and weird, ancient and modern, strange
and familiar. Many of them I have forgotten, and I am glad I have, but there
is one I shall never forget.
The old guide was leading my camel by its halter along the banks of those ancient
rivers, and he told me story after story until I grew weary of his story-telling
and ceased to listen. I have never been irritated with that guide when he lost
his temper as I ceased listening. But I remember that he took off his Turkish
cap and swung it in a circle to get my attention. I could see it through the
corner of my eye, but I determined not to look straight at him for fear he would
tell another story. But although I am not a woman, I did finally look, and as
soon as I did he went right into another story.
Said he, ``I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular friends.''
When he emphasized the words ``particular friends,'' I listened, and I have
ever been glad I did. I really feel devoutly thankful, that there are 1,674
young men who have been carried through college by this lecture who are also
glad that I did listen. The old guide told me that there once lived not far
from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Ali Hafed. He said that
Ali Hafed owned a very large farm, that he had orchards, grain-fields, and gardens;
that he had money at interest, and was a wealthy and contented man. He was contented
because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented. One day there
visited that old Persian farmer one of these ancient Buddhist priests, one of
the wise men of the East. He sat down by the fire and told the old farmer how
this world of ours was made. He said that this world was once a mere bank of
fog, and that the Almighty thrust His finger into this bank of fog, and began
slowly to move His finger around, increasing the speed until at last He whirled
this bank of fog into a solid ball of fire. Then it went rolling through the
universe, burning its way through other banks of fog, and condensed the moisture
without, until it fell in floods of rain upon its hot surface, and cooled the
outward crust. Then the internal fires bursting outward through the crust threw
up the mountains and hills, the valleys, the plains and prairies of this wonderful
world of ours. If this internal molten mass came bursting out and cooled very
quickly it became granite; less quickly copper, less quickly silver, less quickly
gold, and, after gold, diamonds were made.
Said the old priest, ``A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight.'' Now that
is literally scientifically true, that a diamond is an actual deposit of carbon
from the sun. The old priest told Ali Hafed that if he had one diamond the size
of his thumb he could purchase the county, and if he had a mine of diamonds
he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of their great
wealth.
Ali Hafed heard all about diamonds, how much they were worth, and went to his
bed that night a poor man. He had not lost anything, but he was poor because
he was discontented, and discontented because he feared he was poor. He said,
``I want a mine of diamonds,'' and he lay awake all night.
Early in the morning he sought out the priest. I know by experience that a priest
is very cross when awakened early in the morning, and when he shook that old
priest out of his dreams, Ali Hafed said to him:
``Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?''
``Diamonds! What do you want with diamonds?'' ``Why, I wish to be immensely
rich.'' ``Well, then, go along and find them. That is all you have to do; go
and find them, and then you have them.'' ``But I don't know where to go.'' ``Well,
if you will find a river that runs through white sands, between high mountains,
in those white sands you will always find diamonds.'' ``I don't believe there
is any such river.'' ``Oh yes, there are plenty of them. All you have to do
is to go and find them, and then you have them.'' Said Ali Hafed, ``I will go.''
So he sold his farm, collected his money, left his family in charge of a neighbor,
and away he went in search of diamonds. He began his search, very properly to
my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterward he came around into Palestine,
then wandered on into Europe, and at last when his money was all spent and he
was in rags, wretchedness, and poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay at
Barcelona, in Spain, when a great tidal wave came rolling in between the pillars
of Hercules, and the poor, afflicted, suffering, dying man could not resist
the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath
its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.
When that old guide had told me that awfully sad story he stopped the camel
I was riding on and went back to fix the baggage that was coming off another
camel, and I had an opportunity to muse over his story while he was gone. I
remember saying to myself, ``Why did he reserve that story for his `particular
friends'?'' There seemed to be no beginning, no middle, no end, nothing to it.
That was the first story I had ever heard told in my life, and would be the
first one I ever read, in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. I
had but one chapter of that story, and the hero was dead.
When the guide came back and took up the halter of my camel, he went right ahead
with the story, into the second chapter, just as though there had been no break.
The man who purchased Ali Hafed's farm one day led his camel into the garden
to drink, and as that camel put its nose into the shallow water of that garden
brook, Ali Hafed's successor noticed a curious flash of light from the white
sands of the stream. He pulled out a black stone having an eye of light reflecting
all the hues of the rainbow. He took the pebble into the house and put it on
the mantel which covers the central fires, and forgot all about it.
A few days later this same old priest came in to visit Ali Hafed's successor,
and the moment he opened that drawing-room door he saw that flash of light on
the mantel, and he rushed up to it, and shouted: ``Here is a diamond! Has Ali
Hafed returned?'' ``Oh no, Ali Hafed has not returned, and that is not a diamond.
That is nothing but a stone we found right out here in our own garden.'' ``But,''
said the priest, ``I tell you I know a diamond when I see it. I know positively
that is a diamond.''
Then together they rushed out into that old garden and stirred up the white
sands with their fingers, and lo! there came up other more beautiful and valuable
gems than the first. ``Thus,'' said the guide to me, and, friends, it is historically
true, ``was discovered the diamond-mine of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond-mine
in all the history of mankind, excelling the Kimberly itself. The Kohinoor,
and the Orloff of the crown jewels of England and Russia, the largest on earth,
came from that mine.''
When that old Arab guide told me the second chapter of his story, he then took
off his Turkish cap and swung it around in the air again to get my attention
to the moral. Those Arab guides have morals to their stories, although they
are not always moral. As he swung his hat, he said to me, ``Had Ali Hafed remained
at home and dug in his own cellar, or underneath his own wheat- fields, or in
his own garden, instead of wretchedness, starvation, and death by suicide in
a strange land, he would have had `acres of diamonds.' For every acre of that
old farm, yes, every shovelful, afterward revealed gems which since have decorated
the crowns of monarchs.''
When he had added the moral to his story I saw why he reserved it for ``his
particular friends.'' But I did not tell him I could see it. It was that mean
old Arab's way of going around a thing like a lawyer, to say indirectly what
he did not dare say directly, that ``in his private opinion there was a certain
young man then traveling down the Tigris River that might better be at home
in America.'' I did not tell him I could see that, but I told him his story
reminded me of one, and I told it to him quick, and I think I will tell it to
you.
I told him of a man out in California in 1847 who owned a ranch. He heard they
had discovered gold in southern California, and so with a passion for gold he
sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter, and away he went, never to come back. Colonel
Sutter put a mill upon a stream that ran through that ranch, and one day his
little girl brought some wet sand from the raceway into their home and sifted
it through her fingers before the fire, and in that falling sand a visitor saw
the first shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered in California.
The man who had owned that ranch wanted gold, and he could have secured it for
the mere taking. Indeed, thirty-eight millions of dollars has been taken out
of a very few acres since then. About eight years ago I delivered this lecture
in a city that stands on that farm, and they told me that a one-third owner
for years and years had been getting one hundred and twenty dollars in gold
every fifteen minutes, sleeping or waking, without taxation. You and I would
enjoy an income like that--if we didn't have to pay an income tax.
But a better illustration really than that occurred here in our own Pennsylvania.
If there is anything I enjoy above another on the platform, it is to get one
of these German audiences in Pennsylvania before me, and fire that at them,
and I enjoy it to-night. There was a man living in Pennsylvania, not unlike
some Pennsylvanians you have seen, who owned a farm, and he did with that farm
just what I should do with a farm if I owned one in Pennsylvania--he sold it.
But before he sold it he decided to secure employment collecting coal-oil for
his cousin, who was in the business in Canada, where they first discovered oil
on this continent. They dipped it from the running streams at that early time.
So this Pennsylvania farmer wrote to his cousin asking for employment. You see,
friends, this farmer was not altogether a foolish man. No, he was not. He did
not leave his farm until he had something else to do. _*Of all the simpletons
the stars shine on I don't know of a worse one than the man who leaves one job
before he has gotten another_. That has especial reference to my profession,
and has no reference whatever to a man seeking a divorce. When he wrote to his
cousin for employment, his cousin replied, ``I cannot engage you because you
know nothing about the oil business.''
Well, then the old farmer said, ``I will know,'' and with most commendable zeal
(characteristic of the students of Temple University) he set himself at the
study of the whole subject. He began away back at the second day of God's creation
when this world was covered thick and deep with that rich vegetation which since
has turned to the primitive beds of coal. He studied the subject until he found
that the drainings really of those rich beds of coal furnished the coal-oil
that was worth pumping, and then he found how it came up with the living springs.
He studied until he knew what it looked like, smelled like, tasted like, and
how to refine it. Now said he in his letter to his cousin, ``I understand the
oil business.'' His cousin answered, ``All right, come on.''
So he sold his farm, according to the county record, for $833 (even money, ``no
cents''). He had scarcely gone from that place before the man who purchased
the spot went out to arrange for the watering of the cattle. He found the previous
owner had gone out years before and put a plank across the brook back of the
barn, edgewise into the surface of the water just a few inches. The purpose
of that plank at that sharp angle across the brook was to throw over to the
other bank a dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle would not put their
noses. But with that plank there to throw it all over to one side, the cattle
would drink below, and thus that man who had gone to Canada had been himself
damming back for twenty-three years a flood of coal-oil which the state geologists
of Pennsylvania declared to us ten years later was even then worth a hundred
millions of dollars to our state, and four years ago our geologist declared
the discovery to be worth to our state a thousand millions of dollars. The man
who owned that territory on which the city of Titusville now stands, and those
Pleasantville valleys, had studied the subject from the second day of God's
creation clear down to the present time. He studied it until he knew all about
it, and yet he is said to have sold the whole of it for $833, and again I say,
``no sense.''
But I need another illustration. I found it in Massachusetts, and I am sorry
I did because that is the state I came from. This young man in Massachusetts
furnishes just another phase of my thought. He went to Yale College and studied
mines and mining, and became such an adept as a mining engineer that he was
employed by the authorities of the university to train students who were behind
their classes. During his senior year he earned $15 a week for doing that work.
When he graduated they raised his pay from $15 to $45 a week, and offered him
a professorship, and as soon as they did he went right home to his mother.
_*If they had raised that boy's pay from $15 to $15.60 he would have stayed
and been proud of the place, but when they put it up to $45 at one leap, he
said, ``Mother, I won't work for $45 a week. The idea of a man with a brain
like mine working for $45 a week!_ Let's go out in California and stake out
gold-mines and silver-mines, and be immensely rich.''
Said his mother, ``Now, Charlie, it is just as well to be happy as it is to
be rich.''
``Yes,'' said Charlie, ``but it is just as well to be rich and happy, too.''
And they were both right about it. As he was an only son and she a widow, of
course he had his way. They always do.
They sold out in Massachusetts, and instead of going to California they went
to Wisconsin, where he went into the employ of the Superior Copper Mining Company
at $15 a week again, but with the proviso in his contract that he should have
an interest in any mines he should discover for the company. I don't believe
he ever discovered a mine, and if I am looking in the face of any stockholder
of that copper company you wish he had discovered something or other. I have
friends who are not here because they could not afford a ticket, who did have
stock in that company at the time this young man was employed there. This young
man went out there, and I have not heard a word from him. I don't know what
became of him, and I don't know whether he found any mines or not, but I don't
believe he ever did.
But I do know the other end of the line. He had scarcely gotten out of the old
homestead before the succeeding owner went out to dig potatoes. The potatoes
were already growing in the ground when he bought the farm, and as the old farmer
was bringing in a basket of potatoes it hugged very tight between the ends of
the stone fence. You know in Massachusetts our farms are nearly all stone wall.
There you are obliged to be very economical of front gateways in order to have
some place to put the stone. When that basket hugged so tight he set it down
on the ground, and then dragged on one side, and pulled on the other side, and
as he was dragging that basket through this farmer noticed in the upper and
outer corner of that stone wall, right next the gate, a block of native silver
eight inches square. That professor of mines, mining, and mineralogy who knew
so much about the subject that he would not work for $45 a week, when he sold
that homestead in Massachusetts sat right on that silver to make the bargain.
He was born on that homestead, was brought up there, and had gone back and forth
rubbing the stone with his sleeve until it reflected his countenance, and seemed
to say, ``Here is a hundred thousand dollars right down here just for the taking.''
But he would not take it. It was in a home in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and
there was no silver there, all away off--well, I don't know where, and he did
not, but somewhere else, and he was a professor of mineralogy.
My friends, that mistake is very universally made, and why should we even smile
at him. I often wonder what has become of him. I do not know at all, but I will
tell you what I ``guess'' as a Yankee. I guess that he sits out there by his
fireside to-night with his friends gathered around him, and he is saying to
them something like this: ``Do you know that man Conwell who lives in Philadelphia?''
``Oh yes, I have heard of him.'' ``Do you know that man Jones that lives in
Philadelphia?'' ``Yes, I have heard of him, too.''
Then he begins to laugh, and shakes his sides and says to his friends, ``Well,
they have done just the same thing I did, precisely''--and that spoils the whole
joke, for you and I have done the same thing he did, and while we sit here and
laugh at him he has a better right to sit out there and laugh at us. I know
I have made the same mistakes, but, of course, that does not make any difference,
because we don't expect the same man to preach and practise, too.
As I come here to-night and look around this audience I am seeing again what
through these fifty years I have continually seen-men that are making precisely
that same mistake. I often wish I could see the younger people, and would that
the Academy had been filled to-night with our high- school scholars and our
grammar-school scholars, that I could have them to talk to. While I would have
preferred such an audience as that, because they are most susceptible, as they
have not grown up into their prejudices as we have, they have not gotten into
any custom that they cannot break, they have not met with any failures as we
have; and while I could perhaps do such an audience as that more good than I
can do grown- up people, yet I will do the best I can with the material I have.
I say to you that you have ``acres of diamonds'' in Philadelphia right where
you now live. ``Oh,'' but you will say, ``you cannot know much about your city
if you think there are any `acres of diamonds' here.''
I was greatly interested in that account in the newspaper of the young man who
found that diamond in North Carolina. It was one of the purest diamonds that
has ever been discovered, and it has several predecessors near the same locality.
I went to a distinguished professor in mineralogy and asked him where he thought
those diamonds came from. The professor secured the map of the geologic formations
of our continent, and traced it. He said it went either through the underlying
carboniferous strata adapted for such production, westward through Ohio and
the Mississippi, or in more probability came eastward through Virginia and up
the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. It is a fact that the diamonds were there,
for they have been discovered and sold; and that they were carried down there
during the drift period, from some northern locality. Now who can say but some
person going down with his drill in Philadelphia will find some trace of a diamond-mine
yet down here? Oh, friends! you cannot say that you are not over one of the
greatest diamond-mines in the world, for such a diamond as that only comes from
the most profitable mines that are found on earth.
But it serves simply to illustrate my thought, which I emphasize by saying if
you do not have the actual diamond-mines literally you have all that they would
be good for to you. Because now that the Queen of England has given the greatest
compliment ever conferred upon American woman for her attire because she did
not appear with any jewels at all at the late reception in England, it has almost
done away with the use of diamonds anyhow. All you would care for would be the
few you would wear if you wish to be modest, and the rest you would sell for
money.
Now then, I say again that the opportunity to get rich, to attain unto great
wealth, is here in Philadelphia now, within the reach of almost every man and
woman who hears me speak to- night, and I mean just what I say. I have not come
to this platform even under these circumstances to recite something to you.
I have come to tell you what in God's sight I believe to be the truth, and if
the years of life have been of any value to me in the attainment of common sense,
I know I am right; that the men and women sitting here, who found it difficult
perhaps to buy a ticket to this lecture or gathering to-night, have within their
reach ``acres of diamonds,'' opportunities to get largely wealthy. There never
was a place on earth more adapted than the city of Philadelphia to-day, and
never in the history of the world did a poor man without capital have such an
opportunity to get rich quickly and honestly as he has now in our city. I say
it is the truth, and I want you to accept it as such; for if you think I have
come to simply recite something, then I would better not be here. I have no
time to waste in any such talk, but to say the things I believe, and unless
some of you get richer for what I am saying to-night my time is wasted.
I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich. How many
of my pious brethren say to me, ``Do you, a Christian minister, spend your time
going up and down the country advising young people to get rich, to get money?''
``Yes, of course I do.'' They say, ``Isn't that awful! Why don't you preach
the gospel instead of preaching about man's making money?'' ``Because to make
money honestly is to preach the gospel.'' That is the reason. The men who get
rich may be the most honest men you find in the community.
``Oh,'' but says some young man here to-night, ``I have been told all my life
that if a person has money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and mean and
contemptible. ``My friend, that is the reason why you have none, because you
have that idea of people. The foundation of your faith is altogether false.
Let me say here clearly, and say it briefly, though subject to discussion which
I have not time for here, ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of
America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted
with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people
to work with them. It is because they are honest men.
Says another young man, ``I hear sometimes of men that get millions of dollars
dishonestly.'' Yes, of course you do, and so do I. But they are so rare a thing
in fact that the newspapers talk about them all the time as a matter of news
until you get the idea that all the other rich men got rich dishonestly.
My friend, you take and drive me--if you furnish the auto--out into the suburbs
of Philadelphia, and introduce me to the people who own their homes around this
great city, those beautiful homes with gardens and flowers, those magnificent
homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce you to the very best people
in character as well as in enterprise in our city, and you know I will. A man
is not really a true man until he owns his own home, and they that own their
homes are made more honorable and honest and pure, and true and economical and
careful, by owning the home.
For a man to have money, even in large sums, is not an inconsistent thing. We
preach against covetousness, and you know we do, in the pulpit, and oftentimes
preach against it so long and use the terms about ``filthy lucre'' so extremely
that Christians get the idea that when we stand in the pulpit we believe it
is wicked for any man to have money--until the collection-basket goes around,
and then we almost swear at the people because they don't give more money. Oh,
the inconsistency of such doctrines as that!
Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought
because you can do more good with it than you could without it. Money printed
your Bible, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money
pays your preachers, and you would not have many of them, either, if you did
not pay them. I am always willing that my church should raise my salary, because
the church that pays the largest salary always raises it the easiest. You never
knew an exception to it in your life. The man who gets the largest salary can
do the most good with the power that is furnished to him. Of course he can if
his spirit be right to use it for what it is given to him.
I say, then, you ought to have money. If you can honestly attain unto riches
in Philadelphia, it is your Christian and godly duty to do so. It is an awful
mistake of these pious people to think you must be awfully poor in order to
be pious.
Some men say, ``Don't you sympathize with the poor people?'' Of course I do,
or else I would not have been lecturing these years. I won't give in but what
I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized
with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins,
thus to help him when God would still continue a just punishment, is to do wrong,
no doubt about it, and we do that more than we help those who are deserving.
While we should sympathize with God's poor--that is, those who cannot help themselves--
let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not
made poor by his own shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of some one else.
It is all wrong to be poor, anyhow. Let us give in to that argument and pass
that to one side.
A gentleman gets up back there, and says, ``Don't you think there are some things
in this world that are better than money?'' Of course I do, but I am talking
about money now. Of course there are some things higher than money. Oh yes,
I know by the grave that has left me standing alone that there are some things
in this world that are higher and sweeter and purer than money. Well do I know
there are some things higher and grander than gold. Love is the grandest thing
on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power,
money is force, money will do good as well as harm. In the hands of good men
and women it could accomplish, and it has accomplished, good.
I hate to leave that behind me. I heard a man get up in a prayer-meeting in
our city and thank the Lord he was ``one of God's poor.'' Well, I wonder what
his wife thinks about that? She earns all the money that comes into that house,
and he smokes a part of that on the veranda. I don't want to see any more of
the Lord's poor of that kind, and I don't believe the Lord does. And yet there
are some people who think in order to be pious you must be awfully poor and
awfully dirty. That does not follow at all. While we sympathize with the poor,
let us not teach a doctrine like that.
Yet the age is prejudiced against advising a Christian man (or, as a Jew would
say, a godly man) from attaining unto wealth. The prejudice is so universal
and the years are far enough back, I think, for me to safely mention that years
ago up at Temple University there was a young man in our theological school
who thought he was the only pious student in that department. He came into my
office one evening and sat down by my desk, and said to me: ``Mr. President,
I think it is my duty sir, to come in and labor with you.'' ``What has happened
now?'' Said he, ``I heard you say at the Academy, at the Peirce School commencement,
that you thought it was an honorable ambition for a young man to desire to have
wealth, and that you thought it made him temperate, made him anxious to have
a good name, and made him industrious. You spoke about man's ambition to have
money helping to make him a good man. Sir, I have come to tell you the Holy
Bible says that `money is the root of all evil.' ''
I told him I had never seen it in the Bible, and advised him to go out into
the chapel and get the Bible, and show me the place. So out he went for the
Bible, and soon he stalked into my office with the Bible open, with all the
bigoted pride of the narrow sectarian, or of one who founds his Christianity
on some misinterpretation of Scripture. He flung the Bible down on my desk,
and fairly squealed into my ear: ``There it is, Mr. President; you can read
it for yourself.'' I said to him: ``Well, young man, you will learn when you
get a little older that you cannot trust another denomination to read the Bible
for you. You belong to another denomination. You are taught in the theological
school, however, that emphasis is exegesis. Now, will you take that Bible and
read it yourself, and give the proper emphasis to it?''
He took the Bible, and proudly read, `` `The love of money is the root of all
evil.' ''
Then he had it right, and when one does quote aright from that same old Book
he quotes the absolute truth. I have lived through fifty years of the mightiest
battle that old Book has ever fought, and I have lived to see its banners flying
free; for never in the history of this world did the great minds of earth so
universally agree that the Bible is true--all true--as they do at this very
hour.
So I say that when he quoted right, of course he quoted the absolute truth.
``The love of money is the root of all evil.'' He who tries to attain unto it
too quickly, or dishonestly, will fall into many snares, no doubt about that.
The love of money. What is that? It is making an idol of money, and idolatry
pure and simple everywhere is condemned by the Holy Scriptures and by man's
common sense. The man that worships the dollar instead of thinking of the purposes
for which it ought to be used, the man who idolizes simply money, the miser
that hordes his money in the cellar, or hides it in his stocking, or refuses
to invest it where it will do the world good, that man who hugs the dollar until
the eagle squeals has in him the root of all evil.
I think I will leave that behind me now and answer the question of nearly all
of you who are asking, ``Is there opportunity to get rich in Philadelphia?''
Well, now, how simple a thing it is to see where it is, and the instant you
see where it is it is yours. Some old gentleman gets up back there and says,
``Mr. Conwell, have you lived in Philadelphia for thirty-one years and don't
know that the time has gone by when you can make anything in this city?'' ``No,
I don't think it is.'' ``Yes, it is; I have tried it.'' ``What business are
you in?'' ``I kept a store here for twenty years, and never made over a thousand
dollars in the whole twenty years.''
``Well, then, you can measure the good you have been to this city by what this
city has paid you, because a man can judge very well what he is worth by what
he receives; that is, in what he is to the world at this time. If you have not
made over a thousand dollars in twenty years in Philadelphia, it would have
been better for Philadelphia if they had kicked you out of the city nineteen
years and nine months ago. A man has no right to keep a store in Philadelphia
twenty years and not make at least five hundred thousand dollars even though
it be a corner grocery up-town.' You say, ``You cannot make five thousand dollars
in a store now.'' Oh, my friends, if you will just take only four blocks around
you, and find out what the people want and what you ought to supply and set
them down with your pencil and figure up the profits you would make if you did
supply them, you would very soon see it. There is wealth right within the sound
of your voice.
Some one says: ``You don't know anything about business. A preacher never knows
a thing about business.'' Well, then, I will have to prove that I am an expert.
I don't like to do this, but I have to do it because my testimony will not be
taken if I am not an expert. My father kept a country store, and if there is
any place under the stars where a man gets all sorts of experience in every
kind of mercantile transactions, it is in the country store. I am not proud
of my experience, but sometimes when my father was away he would leave me in
charge of the store, though fortunately for him that was not very often. But
this did occur many times, friends: A man would come in the store, and say to
me, ``Do you keep jack knives?'' ``No, we don't keep jack-knives,'' and I went
off whistling a tune. What did I care about that man, anyhow? Then another farmer
would come in and say, ``Do you keep jack knives?'' ``No, we don't keep jack-knives.''
Then I went away and whistled another tune. Then a third man came right in the
same door and said, ``Do you keep jack-knives?'' ``No. Why is every one around
here asking for jack-knives? Do you suppose we are keeping this store to supply
the whole neighborhood with jack-knives?'' Do you carry on your store like that
in Philadelphia? The difficulty was I had not then learned that the foundation
of godliness and the foundation principle of success in business are both the
same precisely. The man who says, ``I cannot carry my religion into business''
advertises himself either as being an imbecile in business, or on the road to
bankruptcy, or a thief, one of the three, sure. He will fail within a very few
years. He certainly will if he doesn't carry his religion into business. If
I had been carrying on my father's store on a Christian plan, godly plan, I
would have had a jack-knife for the third man when he called for it. Then I
would have actually done him a kindness, and I would have received a reward
myself, which it would have been my duty to take.
There are some over-pious Christian people who think if you take any profit
on anything you sell that you are an unrighteous man. On the contrary, you would
be a criminal to sell goods for less than they cost. You have no right to do
that. You cannot trust a man with your money who cannot take care of his own.
You cannot trust a man in your family that is not true to his own wife. You
cannot trust a man in the world that does not begin with his own heart, his
own character, and his own life. It would have been my duty to have furnished
a jack-knife to the third man, or the second, and to have sold it to him and
actually profited myself. I have no more right to sell goods without making
a profit on them than I have to overcharge him dishonestly beyond what they
are worth. But I should so sell each bill of goods that the person to whom I
sell shall make as much as I make.
To live and let live is the principle of the gospel, and the principle of every-day
common sense. Oh, young man, hear me; live as you go along. Do not wait until
you have reached my years before you begin to enjoy anything of this life. If
I had the millions back, or fifty cents of it, which I have tried to earn in
these years, it would not do me anything like the good that it does me now in
this almost sacred presence to- night. Oh, yes, I am paid over and over a hundredfold
to-night for dividing as I have tried to do in some measure as I went along
through the years. I ought not speak that way, it sounds egotistic, but I am
old enough now to be excused for that. I should have helped my fellow-men, which
I have tried to do, and every one should try to do, and get the happiness of
it. The man who goes home with the sense that he has stolen a dollar that day,
that he has robbed a man of what was his honest due, is not going to sweet rest.
He arises tired in the morning, and goes with an unclean conscience to his work
the next day. He is not a successful man at all, although he may have laid up
millions. But the man who has gone through life dividing always with his fellow-men,
making and demanding his own rights and his own profits, and giving to every
other man his rights and profits, lives every day, and not only that, but it
is the royal road to great wealth. The history of the thousands of millionaires
shows that to be the case.
The man over there who said he could not make anything in a store in Philadelphia
has been carrying on his store on the wrong principle. Suppose I go into your
store to-morrow morning and ask, ``Do you know neighbor A, who lives one square
away, at house No. 1240?'' ``Oh yes, I have met him. He deals here at the corner
store.'' ``Where did he come from?'' ``I don't know.'' ``How many does he have
in his family?'' ``I don't know.'' ``What ticket does he vote?'' ``I don't know.''
``What church does he go to?'' ``I don't know, and don't care. What are you
asking all these questions for?''
If you had a store in Philadelphia would you answer me like that? If so, then
you are conducting your business just as I carried on my father's business in
Worthington, Massachusetts. You don't know where your neighbor came from when
he moved to Philadelphia, and you don't care. If you had cared you would be
a rich man now. If you had cared enough about him to take an interest in his
affairs, to find out what he needed, you would have been rich. But you go through
the world saying, ``No opportunity to get rich,'' and there is the fault right
at your own door.
But another young man gets up over there and says, ``I cannot take up the mercantile
business.'' (While I am talking of trade it applies to every occupation.) ``Why
can't you go into the mercantile business?'' ``Because I haven't any capital.''
Oh, the weak and dudish creature that can't see over its collar! It makes a
person weak to see these little dudes standing around the corners and saying,
``Oh, if I had plenty of capital, how rich I would get.'' ``Young man, do you
think you are going to get rich on capital?'' ``Certainly.'' Well, I say, ``Certainly
not.'' If your mother has plenty of money, and she will set you up in business,
you will ``set her up in business,'' supplying you with capital.
The moment a young man or woman gets more money than he or she has grown to
by practical experience, that moment he has gotten a curse. It is no help to
a young man or woman to inherit money. It is no help to your children to leave
them money, but if you leave them education, if you leave them Christian and
noble character, if you leave them a wide circle of friends, if you leave them
an honorable name, it is far better than that they should have money. It would
be worse for them, worse for the nation, that they should have any money at
all. Oh, young man, if you have inherited money, don't regard it as a help.
It will curse you through your years, and deprive you of the very best things
of human life. There is no class of people to be pitied so much as the inexperienced
sons and daughters of the rich of our generation. I pity the rich man's son.
He can never know the best things in life.
One of the best things in our life is when a young man has earned his own living,
and when he becomes engaged to some lovely young woman, and makes up his mind
to have a home of his own. Then with that same love comes also that divine inspiration
toward better things, and he begins to save his money. He begins to leave off
his bad habits and put money in the bank. When he has a few hundred dollars
he goes out in the suburbs to look for a home. He goes to the savings-bank,
perhaps, for half of the value, and then goes for his wife, and when he takes
his bride over the threshold of that door for the first time he says in words
of eloquence my voice can never touch: ``I have earned this home myself. It
is all mine, and I divide with thee.'' That is the grandest moment a human heart
may ever know.
But a rich man's son can never know that. He takes his bride into a finer mansion,
it may be, but he is obliged to go all the way through it and say to his wife,
``My mother gave me that, my mother gave me that, and my mother gave me this,''
until his wife wishes she had married his mother. I pity the rich man's son.
The statistics of Massachusetts showed that not one rich man's son out of seventeen
ever dies rich. I pity the rich man's sons unless they have the good sense of
the elder Vanderbilt, which sometimes happens. He went to his father and said,
``Did you earn all your money?'' ``I did, my son. I began to work on a ferry-boat
for twenty-five cents a day.'' ``Then,'' said his son, ``I will have none of
your money,'' and he, too, tried to get employment on a ferry-boat that Saturday
night. He could not get one there, but he did get a place for three dollars
a week. Of course, if a rich man's son will do that, he will get the discipline
of a poor boy that is worth more than a university education to any man. He
would then be able to take care of the millions of his father. But as a rule
the rich men will not let their sons do the very thing that made them great.
As a rule, the rich man will not allow his son to work--and his mother! Why,
she would think it was a social disgrace if her poor, weak, little lily-fingered,
sissy sort of a boy had to earn his living with honest toil. I have no pity
for such rich men's sons.
I remember one at Niagara Falls. I think I remember one a great deal nearer.
I think there are gentlemen present who were at a great banquet, and I beg pardon
of his friends. At a banquet here in Philadelphia there sat beside me a kind-hearted
young man, and he said, ``Mr. Conwell, you have been sick for two or three years.
When you go out, take my limousine, and it will take you up to your house on
Broad Street.'' I thanked him very much, and perhaps I ought not to mention
the incident in this way, but I follow the facts. I got on to the seat with
the driver of that limousine, outside, and when we were going up I asked the
driver, ``How much did this limousine cost?'' ``Six thousand eight hundred,
and he had to pay the duty on it.'' ``Well,'' I said, ``does the owner of this
machine ever drive it himself?'' At that the chauffeur laughed so heartily that
he lost control of his machine. He was so surprised at the question that he
ran up on the sidewalk, and around a corner lamp-post out into the street again.
And when he got out into the street he laughed till the whole machine trembled.
He said: ``He drive this machine! Oh, he would be lucky if he knew enough to
get out when we get there.''
I must tell you about a rich man's son at Niagara Falls. I came in from the
lecture to the hotel, and as I approached the desk of the clerk there stood
a millionaire's son from New York. He was an indescribable specimen of anthropologic
potency. He had a skull-cap on one side of his head, with a gold tassel in the
top of it, and a gold-headed cane under his arm with more in it than in his
head. It is a very difficult thing to describe that young man. He wore an eye-
glass that he could not see through, patent- leather boots that he could not
walk in, and pants that he could not sit down in--dressed like a grasshopper.
This human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I entered, adjusted his
unseeing eye-glass, and spake in this wise to the clerk. You see, he thought
it was ``Hinglish, you know,'' to lisp. ``Thir, will you have the kindness to
supply me with thome papah and enwelophs!'' The hotel clerk measured that man
quick, and he pulled the envelopes and paper out of a drawer, threw them across
the counter toward the young man, and then turned away to his books. You should
have seen that young man when those envelopes came across that counter. He swelled
up like a gobbler turkey, adjusted his unseeing eye- glass, and yelled: ``Come
right back here. Now thir, will you order a thervant to take that papah and
enwelophs to yondah dethk.'' Oh, the poor, miserable, contemptible American
monkey! He could not carry paper and envelopes twenty feet. I suppose he could
not get his arms down to do it. I have no pity for such travesties upon human
nature. If you have not capital, young man, I am glad of it. What you need is
common sense, not copper cents.
The best thing I can do is to illustrate by actual facts well-known to you all.
A. T. Stewart, a poor boy in New York, had $1.50 to begin life on. He lost 87
<1/2> cents of that on the very first venture. How fortunate that young man
who loses the first time he gambles. That boy said, ``I will never gamble again
in business,'' and he never did. How came he to lose 87 <1/2> cents? You probably
all know the story how he lost it--because he bought some needles, threads,
and buttons to sell which people did not want, and had them left on his hands,
a dead loss. Said the boy, ``I will not lose any more money in that way.'' Then
he went around first to the doors and asked the people what they did want. Then
when he had found out what they wanted he invested his 62 <1/2> cents to supply
a known demand. Study it wherever you choose--in business, in your profession,
in your housekeeping, whatever your life, that one thing is the secret of success.
You must first know the demand. You must first know what people need, and then
invest yourself where you are most needed. A. T. Stewart went on that principle
until he was worth what amounted afterward to forty millions of dollars, owning
the very store in which Mr. Wanamaker carries on his great work in New York.
His fortune was made by his losing something, which taught him the great lesson
that he must only invest himself or his money in something that people need.
When will you salesmen learn it? When will you manufacturers learn that you
must know the changing needs of humanity if you would succeed in life? Apply
yourselves, all you Christian people, as manufacturers or merchants or workmen
to supply that human need. It is a great principle as broad as humanity and
as deep as the Scripture itself.
The best illustration I ever heard was of John Jacob Astor. You know that he
made the money of the Astor family when he lived in New York. He came across
the sea in debt for his fare. But that poor boy with nothing in his pocket made
the fortune of the Astor family on one principle. Some young man here to-night
will say, ``Well they could make those fortunes over in New York but they could
not do it in Philadelphia!'' My friends, did you ever read that wonderful book
of Riis (his memory is sweet to us because of his recent death), wherein is
given his statistical account of the records taken in 1889 of 107 millionaires
of New York. If you read the account you will see that out of the 107 millionaires
only seven made their money in New York. Out of the 107 millionaires worth ten
million dollars in real estate then, 67 of them made their money in towns of
less than 3,500 inhabitants. The richest man in this country to-day, if you
read the real-estate values, has never moved away from a town of 3,500 inhabitants.
It makes not so much difference where you are as who you are. But if you cannot
get rich in Philadelphia you certainly cannot do it in New York.
Now John Jacob Astor illustrated what can be done anywhere. He had a mortgage
once on a millinery-store, and they could not sell bonnets enough to pay the
interest on his money. So he foreclosed that mortgage, took possession of the
store, and went into partnership with the very same people, in the same store,
with the same capital. He did not give them a dollar of capital. They had to
sell goods to get any money. Then he left them alone in the store just as they
had been before, and he went out and sat down on a bench in the park in the
shade. What was John Jacob Astor doing out there, and in partnership with people
who had failed on his own hands? He had the most important and, to my mind,
the most pleasant part of that partnership on his hands. For as John Jacob Astor
sat on that bench he was watching the ladies as they went by; and where is the
man who would not get rich at that business? As he sat on the bench if a lady
passed him with her shoulders back and head up, and looked straight to the front,
as if she did not care if all the world did gaze on her, then he studied her
bonnet, and by the time it was out of sight he knew the shape of the frame,
the color of the trimmings, and the crinklings in the feather. I sometimes try
to describe a bonnet, but not always. I would not try to describe a modern bonnet.
Where is the man that could describe one? This aggregation of all sorts of driftwood
stuck on the back of the head, or the side of the neck, like a rooster with
only one tail feather left. But in John Jacob Astor's day there was some art
about the millinery business, and he went to the millinery-store and said to
them: ``Now put into the show-window just such a bonnet as I describe to you,
because I have already seen a lady who likes such a bonnet. Don't make up any
more until I come back.'' Then he went out and sat down again, and another lady
passed him of a different form, of different complexion, with a different shape
and color of bonnet. ``Now,'' said he, ``put such a bonnet as that in the show
window.'' He did not fill his show-window up town with a lot of hats and bonnets
to drive people away, and then sit on the back stairs and bawl because people
went to Wanamaker's to trade. He did not have a hat or a bonnet in that show-window
but what some lady liked before it was made up. The tide of custom began immediately
to turn in, and that has been the foundation of the greatest store in New York
in that line, and still exists as one of three stores. Its fortune was made
by John Jacob Astor after they had failed in business, not by giving them any
more money, but by finding out what the ladies liked for bonnets before they
wasted any material in making them up. I tell you if a man could foresee the
millinery business he could foresee anything under heaven!
Suppose I were to go through this audience to-night and ask you in this great
manufacturing city if there are not opportunities to get rich in manufacturing.
``Oh yes,'' some young man says, ``there are opportunities here still if you
build with some trust and if you have two or three millions of dollars to begin
with as capital.'' Young man, the history of the breaking up of the trusts by
that attack upon ``big business'' is only illustrating what is now the opportunity
of the smaller man. The time never came in the history of the world when you
could get rich so quickly manufacturing without capital as you can now.
But you will say, ``You cannot do anything of the kind. You cannot start without
capital.'' Young man, let me illustrate for a moment. I must do it. It is my
duty to every young man and woman, because we are all going into business very
soon on the same plan. Young man, remember if you know what people need you
have gotten more knowledge of a fortune than any amount of capital can give
you.
There was a poor man out of work living in Hingham, Massachusetts. He lounged
around the house until one day his wife told him to get out and work, and, as
he lived in Massachusetts, he obeyed his wife. He went out and sat down on the
shore of the bay, and whittled a soaked shingle into a wooden chain. His children
that evening quarreled over it, and he whittled a second one to keep peace.
While he was whittling the second one a neighbor came in and said: ``Why don't
you whittle toys and sell them? You could make money at that.'' ``Oh,'' he said,
``I would not know what to make.'' ``Why don't you ask your own children right
here in your own house what to make?'' ``What is the use of trying that?'' said
the carpenter. ``My children are different from other people's children.'' (I
used to see people like that when I taught school.) But he acted upon the hint,
and the next morning when Mary came down the stairway, he asked, ``What do you
want for a toy?'' She began to tell him she would like a doll's bed, a doll's
washstand, a doll's carriage, a little doll's umbrella, and went on with a list
of things that would take him a lifetime to supply. So, consulting his own children,
in his own house, he took the firewood, for he had no money to buy lumber, and
whittled those strong, unpainted Hingham toys that were for so many years known
all over the world. That man began to make those toys for his own children,
and then made copies and sold them through the boot-and-shoe store next door.
He began to make a little money, and then a little more, and Mr. Lawson, in
his _Frenzied Finance_ says that man is the richest man in old Massachusetts,
and I think it is the truth. And that man is worth a hundred millions of dollars
to-day, and has been only thirty-four years making it on that one principle--that
one must judge that what his own children like at home other people's children
would like in their homes, too; to judge the human heart by oneself, by one's
wife or by one's children. It is the royal road to success in manufacturing.
``Oh,'' but you say, ``didn't he have any capital?'' Yes, a penknife, but I
don't 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 refer
to machines--and if I did I might better include the men. That newspaper could
never appear if women had not invented something. Friends, think. Ye women,
think! You say you cannot make a fortune because you are in some laundry, or
running a sewing-machine, it may be, or walking before some loom, and yet you
can be a millionaire if you will but follow this almost infallible direction.
When you say a woman doesn't invent anything, I ask, Who invented the Jacquard
loom that wove every stitch you wear? Mrs. Jacquard. The printer's roller, the
printing-press, were invented by farmers' wives. Who invented the cotton-gin
of the South that enriched our country so amazingly? Mrs. General Greene invented
the cotton- gin and showed the idea to Mr. Whitney, and he, like a man, seized
it. Who was it that invented the sewing-machine? If I would go to school to-
morrow and ask your children they would say, ``Elias Howe.''
He was in the Civil War with me, and often in my tent, and I often heard him
say that he worked fourteen years to get up that sewing-machine. But his wife
made up her mind one day that they would starve to death if there wasn't something
or other invented pretty soon, and so in two hours she invented the sewing-machine.
Of course he took out the patent in his name. Men always do that. Who was it
that invented the mower and the reaper? According to Mr. McCormick's confidential
communication, so recently published, it was a West Virginia woman, who, after
his father and he had failed altogether in making a reaper and gave it up, took
a lot of shears and nailed them together on the edge of a board, with one shaft
of each pair loose, and then wired them so that when she pulled the wire one
way it closed them, and when she pulled the wire the other way it opened them,
and there she had the principle of the mowing-machine. If you look at a mowing-machine,
you will see it is nothing but a lot of shears. If a woman can invent a mowing-
machine, if a woman can invent a Jacquard loom, if a woman can invent a cotton-gin,
if a woman can invent a trolley switch--as she did and made the trolleys possible;
if a woman can invent, as Mr. Carnegie said, the great iron squeezers that laid
the foundation of all the steel millions of the United States, ``we men'' can
invent anything under the stars! I say that for the encouragement of the men.
Who are the great inventors of the world? Again this lesson comes before us.
The great inventor sits next to you, or you are the person yourself. ``Oh,''
but you will say, ``I have never invented anything in my life.'' Neither did
the great inventors until they discovered one great secret. Do you think it
is a man with a head like a bushel measure or a man like a stroke of lightning?
It is neither. The really great man is a plain, straightforward, every-day,
common-sense man. You would not dream that he was a great inventor if you did
not see something he had actually done. His neighbors do not regard him so great.
You never see anything great over your back fence. You say there is no greatness
among your neighbors. It is all away off somewhere else. Their greatness is
ever so simple, so plain, so earnest, so practical, that the neighbors and friends
never recognize it.
True greatness is often unrecognized. That is sure. You do not know anything
about the greatest men and women. I went out to write the life of General Garfield,
and a neighbor, knowing I was in a hurry, and as there was a great crowd around
the front door, took me around to General Garfield's back door and shouted,
``Jim! Jim!'' And very soon ``Jim'' came to the door and let me in, and I wrote
the biography of one of the grandest men of the nation, and yet he was just
the same old ``Jim'' to his neighbor. If you know a great man in Philadelphia
and you should meet him to-morrow, you would say, ``How are you, Sam?'' or ``Good
morning, Jim.'' Of course you would. That is just what you would do.
One of my soldiers in the Civil War had been sentenced to death, and I went
up to the White House in Washington--sent there for the first time in my life
to see the President. I went into the waiting-room and sat down with a lot of
others on the benches, and the secretary asked one after another to tell him
what they wanted. After the secretary had been through the line, he went in,
and then came back to the door and motioned for me. I went up to that anteroom,
and the secretary said: ``That is the President's door right over there. Just
rap on it and go right in.'' I never was so taken aback, friends, in all my
life, never. The secretary himself made it worse for me, because he had told
me how to go in and then went out another door to the left and shut that. There
I was, in the hallway by myself before the President of the United States of
America's door. I had been on fields of battle, where the shells did sometimes
shriek and the bullets did sometimes hit me, but I always wanted to run. I have
no sympathy with the old man who says, ``I would just as soon march up to the
cannon's mouth as eat my dinner.'' I have no faith in a man who doesn't know
enough to be afraid when he is being shot at. I never was so afraid when the
shells came around us at Antietam as I was when I went into that room that day;
but I finally mustered the courage-- I don't know how I ever did--and at arm's-
length tapped on the door. The man inside did not help me at all, but yelled
out, ``Come in and sit down!''
Well, I went in and sat down on the edge of a chair, and wished I were in Europe,
and the man at the table did not look up. He was one of the world's greatest
men, and was made great by one single rule. Oh, that all the young people of
Philadelphia were before me now and I could say just this one thing, and that
they would remember it. I would give a lifetime for the effect it would have
on our city and on civilization. Abraham Lincoln's principle for greatness can
be adopted by nearly all. This was his rule: Whatsoever he had to do at all,
he put his whole mind into it and held it all there until that was all done.
That makes men great almost anywhere. He stuck to those papers at that table
and did not look up at me, and I sat there trembling. Finally, when he had put
the string around his papers, he pushed them over to one side and looked over
to me, and a smile came over his worn face. He said: ``I am a very busy man
and have only a few minutes to spare. Now tell me in the fewest words what it
is you want.'' I began to tell him, and mentioned the case, and he said: ``I
have heard all about it and you do not need to say any more. Mr. Stanton was
talking to me only a few days ago about that. You can go to the hotel and rest
assured that the President never did sign an order to shoot a boy under twenty
years of age, and never will. You can say that to his mother anyhow.''
Then he said to me, ``How is it going in the field?'' I said, ``We sometimes
get discouraged.'' And he said: ``It is all right. We are going to win out now.
We are getting very near the light. No man ought to wish to be President of
the United States, and I will be glad when I get through; then Tad and I are
going out to Springfield, Illinois. I have bought a farm out there and I don't
care if I again earn only twenty-five cents a day. Tad has a mule team, and
we are going to plant onions.''
Then he asked me, ``Were you brought up on a farm?'' I said, ``Yes; in the Berkshire
Hills of Massachusetts.'' He then threw his leg over the corner of the big chair
and said, ``I have heard many a time, ever since I was young, that up there
in those hills you have to sharpen the noses of the sheep in order to get down
to the grass between the rocks.'' He was so familiar, so everyday, so farmer-like,
that I felt right at home with him at once.
He then took hold of another roll of paper, and looked up at me and said, ``Good
morning.'' I took the hint then and got up and went out. After I had gotten
out I could not realize I had seen the President of the United States at all.
But a few days later, when still in the city, I saw the crowd pass through the
East Room by the coffin of Abraham Lincoln, and when I looked at the upturned
face of the murdered President I felt then that the man I had seen such a short
time before, who, so simple a man, so plain a man, was one of the greatest men
that God ever raised up to lead a nation on to ultimate liberty. Yet he was
only ``Old Abe'' to his neighbors. When they had the second funeral, I was invited
among others, and went out to see that same coffin put back in the tomb at Springfield.
Around the tomb stood Lincoln's old neighbors, to whom he was just ``Old Abe.''
Of course that is all they would say.
Did you ever see a man who struts around altogether too large to notice an ordinary
working mechanic? Do you think he is great? He is nothing but a puffed-up balloon,
held down by his big feet. There is no greatness there.
Who are the great men and women? My attention was called the other day to the
history of a very little thing that made the fortune of a very poor man. It
was an awful thing, and yet because of that experience he--not a great inventor
or genius--invented the pin that now is called the safety-pin, and out of that
safety-pin made the fortune of one of the great aristocratic families of this
nation.
A poor man in Massachusetts who had worked in the nail-works was injured at
thirty-eight, and he could earn but little money. He was employed in the office
to rub out the marks on the bills made by pencil memorandums, and he used a
rubber until his hand grew tired. He then tied a piece of rubber on the end
of a stick and worked it like a plane. His little girl came and said, ``Why,
you have a patent, haven't you?'' The father said afterward, ``My daughter told
me when I took that stick and put the rubber on the end that there was a patent,
and that was the first thought of that.'' He went to Boston and applied for
his patent, and every one of you that has a rubber-tipped pencil in your pocket
is now paying tribute to the millionaire. No capital, not a penny did he invest
in it. All was income, all the way up into the millions.
But let me hasten to one other greater thought. ``Show me the great men and
women who live in Philadelphia.'' A gentleman over there will get up and say:
``We don't have any great men in Philadelphia. They don't live here. They live
away off in Rome or St. Petersburg or London or Manayunk, or anywhere else but
here in our town.'' I have come now to the apex of my thought. I have come now
to the heart of the whole matter and to the center of my struggle: Why isn't
Philadelphia a greater city in its greater wealth? Why does New York excel Philadelphia?
People say, ``Because of her harbor.'' Why do many other cities of the United
States get ahead of Philadelphia now? There is only one answer, and that is
because our own people talk down their own city. If there ever was a community
on earth that has to be forced ahead, it is the city of Philadelphia. If we
are to have a boulevard, talk it down; if we are going to have better schools,
talk them down; if you wish to have wise legislation, talk it down; talk all
the proposed improvements down. That is the only great wrong that I can lay
at the feet of the magnificent Philadelphia that has been so universally kind
to me. I say it is time we turn around in our city and begin to talk up the
things that are in our city, and begin to set them before the world as the people
of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, and San Francisco do. Oh, if we only could
get that spirit out among our people, that we can do things in Philadelphia
and do them well!
Arise, ye millions of Philadelphians, trust in God and man, and believe in the
great opportunities that are right here not over in New York or Boston, but
here--for business, for everything that is worth living for on earth. There
was never an opportunity greater. Let us talk up our own city.
But there are two other young men here to- night, and that is all I will venture
to say, because it is too late. One over there gets up and says, ``There is
going to be a great man in Philadelphia, but never was one.'' ``Oh, is that
so? When are you going to be great?'' ``When I am elected to some political
office.'' Young man, won't you learn a lesson in the primer of politics that
it is a _prima facie_ evidence of littleness to hold office under our form of
government? Great men get into office sometimes, but what this country needs
is men that will do what we tell them to do. This nation--where the people rule--is
governed by the people, for the people, and so long as it is, then the office-holder
is but the servant of the people, and the Bible says the servant cannot be greater
than the master. The Bible says, ``He that is sent cannot be greater than Him
who sent Him.'' The people rule, or should rule, and if they do, we do not need
the greater men in office. If the great men in America took our offices, we
would change to an empire in the next ten years.
I know of a great many young women, now that woman's suffrage is coming, who
say, ``I am going to be President of the United States some day.'' I believe
in woman's suffrage, and there is no doubt but what it is coming, and I am getting
out of the way, anyhow. I may want an office by and by myself; but if the ambition
for an office influences the women in their desire to vote, I want to say right
here what I say to the young men, that if you only get the privilege of casting
one vote, you don't get anything that is worth while. Unless you can control
more than one vote, you will be unknown, and your influence so dissipated as
practically not to be felt. This country is not run by votes. Do you think it
is? It is governed by influence. It is governed by the ambitions and the enterprises
which control votes. The young woman that thinks she is going to vote for the
sake of holding an office is making an awful blunder.
That other young man gets up and says, ``There are going to be great men in
this country and in Philadelphia.'' ``Is that so? When?'' ``When there comes
a great war, when we get into difficulty through watchful waiting in Mexico;
when we get into war with England over some frivolous deed, or with Japan or
China or New Jersey or some distant country. Then I will march up to the cannon's
mouth; I will sweep up among the glistening bayonets; I will leap into the arena
and tear down the flag and bear it away in triumph. I will come home with stars
on my shoulder, and hold every office in the gift of the nation, and I will
be great.'' No, you won't. You think you are going to be made great by an office,
but remember that if you are not great before you get the office, you won't
be great when you secure it. It will only be a burlesque in that shape.
We had a Peace Jubilee here after the Spanish War. Out West they don't believe
this, because they said, ``Philadelphia would not have heard of any Spanish
War until fifty years hence.'' Some of you saw the procession go up Broad Street.
I was away, but the family wrote to me that the tally-ho coach with Lieutenant
Hobson upon it stopped right at the front door and the people shouted, ``Hurrah
for Hobson!'' and if I had been there I would have yelled too, because he deserves
much more of his country than he has ever received. But suppose I go into school
and say, ``Who sunk the _Merrimac_ at Santiago?'' and if the boys answer me,
``Hobson,'' they will tell me seven-eighths of a lie. There were seven other
heroes on that steamer, and they, by virtue of their position, were continually
exposed to the Spanish fire, while Hobson, as an officer, might reasonably be
behind the smoke-stack. You have gathered in this house your most intelligent
people, and yet, perhaps, not one here can name the other seven men.
We ought not to so teach history. We ought to teach that, however humble a man's
station may be, if he does his full duty in that place he is just as much entitled
to the American people's honor as is the king upon his throne. But we do not
so teach. We are now teaching everywhere that the generals do all the fighting.
I remember that, after the war, I went down to see General Robert E. Lee, that
magnificent Christian gentleman of whom both North and South are now proud as
one of our great Americans. The general told me about his servant, ``Rastus,''
who was an enlisted colored soldier. He called him in one day to make fun of
him, and said, ``Rastus, I hear that all the rest of your company are killed,
and why are you not killed?'' Rastus winked at him and said, `` 'Cause when
there is any fightin' goin' on I stay back with the generals.''
I remember another illustration. I would leave it out but for the fact that
when you go to the library to read this lecture, you will find this has been
printed in it for twenty-five years. I shut my eyes--shut them close--and lo!
I see the faces of my youth. Yes, they sometimes say to me, ``Your hair is not
white; you are working night and day without seeming ever to stop; you can't
be old.'' But when I shut my eyes, like any other man of my years, oh, then
come trooping back the faces of the loved and lost of long ago, and I know,
whatever men may say, it is evening-time.
I shut my eyes now and look back to my native town in Massachusetts, and I see
the cattle-show ground on the mountain-top; I can see the horse- sheds there.
I can see the Congregational church; see the town hall and mountaineers' cottages;
see a great assembly of people turning out, dressed resplendently, and I can
see flags flying and handkerchiefs waving and hear bands playing. I can see
that company of soldiers that had re-enlisted marching up on that cattle-show
ground. I was but a boy, but I was captain of that company and puffed out with
pride. A cambric needle would have burst me all to pieces. Then I thought it
was the greatest event that ever came to man on earth. If you have ever thought
you would like to be a king or queen, you go and be received by the mayor.
The bands played, and all the people turned out to receive us. I marched up
that Common so proud at the head of my troops, and we turned down into the town
hall. Then they seated my soldiers down the center aisle and I sat down on the
front seat. A great assembly of people a hundred or two--came in to fill the
town hall, so that they stood up all around. Then the town officers came in
and formed a half-circle. The mayor of the town sat in the middle of the platform.
He was a man who had never held office before; but he was a good man, and his
friends have told me that I might use this without giving them offense. He was
a good man, but he thought an office made a man great. He came up and took his
seat, adjusted his powerful spectacles, and looked around, when he suddenly
spied me sitting there on the front seat. He came right forward on the platform
and invited me up to sit with the town officers. No town officer ever took any
notice of me before I went to war, except to advise the teacher to thrash me,
and now I was invited up on the stand with the town officers. Oh my! the town
mayor was then the emperor, the king of our day and our time. As I came up on
the platform they gave me a chair about this far, I would say, from the front.
When I had got seated, the chairman of the Selectmen arose and came forward
to the table, and we all supposed he would introduce the Congregational minister,
who was the only orator in town, and that he would give the oration to the returning
soldiers. But, friends, you should have seen the surprise which ran over the
audience when they discovered that the old fellow was going to deliver that
speech himself. He had never made a speech in his life, but he fell into the
same error that hundreds of other men have fallen into. It seems so strange
that a man won't learn he must speak his piece as a boy if he in- tends to be
an orator when he is grown, but he seems to think all he has to do is to hold
an office to be a great orator.
So he came up to the front, and brought with him a speech which he had learned
by heart walking up and down the pasture, where he had frightened the cattle.
He brought the manuscript with him and spread it out on the table so as to be
sure he might see it. He adjusted his spectacles and leaned over it for a moment
and marched back on that platform, and then came forward like this--tramp, tramp,
tramp. He must have studied the subject a great deal, when you come to think
of it, because he assumed an ``elocutionary'' attitude. He rested heavily upon
his left heel, threw back his shoulders, slightly advanced the right foot, opened
the organs of speech, and advanced his right foot at an angle of forty- five.
As he stood in that elocutionary attitude, friends, this is just the way that
speech went. Some people say to me, ``Don't you exaggerate?'' That would be
impossible. But I am here for the lesson and not for the story, and this is
the way it went:
``Fellow-citizens--'' As soon as he heard his voice his fingers began to go
like that, his knees began to shake, and then he trembled all over. He choked
and swallowed and came around to the table to look at the manuscript. Then he
gathered himself up with clenched fists and came back: ``Fellow-citizens, we
are Fellow-citizens, we are--we are--we are--we are--we are--we are very happy--we
are very happy--we are very happy. We are very happy to welcome back to their
native town these soldiers who have fought and bled--and come back again to
their native town. We are especially--we are especially--we are especially.
We are especially pleased to see with us to-day this young hero'' (that meant
me)--``this young hero who in imagination'' (friends, remember he said that;
if he had not said ``in imagination'' I would not be egotistic enough to refer
to it at all)--``this young hero who in imagination we have seen leading--we
have seen leading--leading. We have seen leading his troops on to the deadly
breach. We have seen his shining--we have seen his shining--his shining--his
shining sword--flashing. Flashing in the sunlight, as he shouted to his troops,
`Come on'!''
Oh dear, dear, dear! how little that good man knew about war. If he had known
anything about war at all he ought to have known what any of my G. A. R. comrades
here to-night will tell you is true, that it is next to a crime for an officer
of infantry ever in time of danger to go ahead of his men. ``I, with my shining
sword flashing in the sunlight, shouting to my troops, `Come on'!'' I never
did it. Do you suppose I would get in front of my men to be shot in front by
the enemy and in the back by my own men? That is no place for an officer. The
place for the officer in actual battle is behind the line. How often, as a staff
officer, I rode down the line, when our men were suddenly called to the line
of battle, and the Rebel yells were coming out of the woods, and shouted: ``Officers
to the rear! Officers to the rear!'' Then every officer gets behind the line
of private soldiers, and the higher the officer's rank the farther behind he
goes. Not because he is any the less brave, but because the laws of war require
that. And yet he shouted, ``I, with my shining sword--'' In that house there
sat the company of my soldiers who had carried that boy across the Carolina
rivers that he might not wet his feet. Some of them had gone far out to get
a pig or a chicken. Some of them had gone to death under the shell-swept pines
in the mountains of Tennessee, yet in the good man's speech they were scarcely
known. He did refer to them, but only incidentally. The hero of the hour was
this boy. Did the nation owe him anything? No, nothing then and nothing now.
Why was he the hero? Simply because that man fell into that same human error--that
this boy was great because he was an officer and these were only private soldiers.
Oh, I learned the lesson then that I will never forget so long as the tongue
of the bell of time continues to swing for me. Greatness consists not in the
holding of some future office, but really consists in doing great deeds with
little means and the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks
of life. To be great at all one must be great here, now, in Philadelphia. He
who can give to this city better streets and better sidewalks, better schools
and more colleges, more happiness and more civilization, more of God, he will
be great anywhere. Let every man or woman here, if you never hear me again,
remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you
are and what you are, in Philadelphia, now. He that can give to his city any
blessing, he who can be a good citizen while he lives here, he that can make
better homes, he that can be a blessing whether he works in the shop or sits
behind the counter or keeps house, whatever be his life, he who would be great
anywhere must first be great in his own Philadelphia.
HIS LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS BY ROBERT SHACKLETON
THE STORY OF THE SWORD[2]
[2] _Dr, Conwell was living, and actively at work, when these pages were written.
It is, therefore, a much truer picture of his personality than anything written
in the past tense_.
I SHALL write of a remarkable man, an interesting man, a man of power, of initiative,
of will, of persistence; a man who plans vastly and who realizes his plans;
a man who not only does things himself, but who, even more important than that,
is the constant inspiration of others. I shall write of Russell H. Conwell.
As a farmer's boy he was the leader of the boys of the rocky region that was
his home; as a school- teacher he won devotion; as a newspaper correspondent
he gained fame; as a soldier in the Civil War he rose to important rank; as
a lawyer he developed a large practice; as an author he wrote books that reached
a mighty total of sales. He left the law for the ministry and is the active
head of a great church that he raised from nothingness. He is the most popular
lecturer in the world and yearly speaks to many thousands. He is, so to speak,
the discoverer of ``Acres of Diamonds,'' through which thousands of men and
women have achieved success out of failure. He is the head of two hospitals,
one of them founded by himself, that have cared for a host of patients, both
the poor and the rich, irrespective of race or creed. He is the founder and
head of a university that has already had tens of thousands of students. His
home is in Philadelphia; but he is known in every corner of every state in the
Union, and everywhere he has hosts of friends. All of his life he has helped
and inspired others.
Quite by chance, and only yesterday, literally yesterday and by chance, and
with no thought at the moment of Conwell although he had been much in my mind
for some time past, I picked up a thin little book of description by William
Dean Howells, and, turning the pages of a chapter on Lexington, old Lexington
of the Revolution, written, so Howells had set down, in 1882, I noticed, after
he had written of the town itself, and of the long-past fight there, and of
the present- day aspect, that he mentioned the church life of the place and
remarked on the striking advances made by the Baptists, who had lately, as he
expressed it, been reconstituted out of very perishing fragments and made strong
and flourishing, under the ministrations of a lay preacher, formerly a colonel
in the Union army. And it was only a few days before I chanced upon this description
that Dr. Conwell, the former colonel and former lay preacher, had told me of
his experiences in that little old Revolutionary town.
Howells went on to say that, so he was told, the colonel's success was principally
due to his making the church attractive to young people. Howells says no more
of him; apparently he did not go to hear him; and one wonders if he has ever
associated that lay preacher of Lexington with the famous Russell H. Conwell
of these recent years!
``Attractive to young people.'' Yes, one can recognize that to-day, just as
it was recognized in Lexington. And it may be added that he at the same time
attracts older people, too! In this, indeed, lies his power. He makes his church
interesting, his sermons interesting, his lectures interesting. He is himself
interesting! Because of his being interesting, he gains attention. The attention
gained, he inspires.
Biography is more than dates. Dates, after all, are but mile-stones along the
road of life. And the most important fact of Conwell's life is that he lived
to be eighty-two, working sixteen hours every day for the good of his fellow-men.
He was born on February 15, 1843--born of poor parents, in a low-roofed cottage
in the eastern Berkshires, in Massachusetts.
``I was born in this room,'' he said to me, simply, as we sat together recently[3]
in front of the old fireplace in the principal room of the little cottage; for
he has bought back the rocky farm of his father, and has retained and restored
the little old home. ``I was born in this room. It was bedroom and kitchen.
It was poverty.'' And his voice sank with a kind of grimness into silence.
[3] _This interview took place at the old Conwell farm in the summer of 1915_.
Then he spoke a little of the struggles of those long-past years; and we went
out on the porch, as the evening shadows fell, and looked out over the valley
and stream and hills of his youth, and he told of his grandmother, and of a
young Marylander who had come to the region on a visit; it was a tale of the
impetuous love of those two, of rash marriage, of the interference of parents,
of the fierce rivalry of another suitor, of an attack on the Marylander's life,
of passionate hastiness, of unforgivable words, of separation, of lifelong sorrow.
``Why does grandmother cry so often?'' he remembers asking when he was a little
boy. And he was told that it was for the husband of her youth.
We went back into the little house, and he showed me the room in which he first
saw John Brown. ``I came down early one morning, and saw a huge, hairy man sprawled
upon the bed there--and I was frightened,'' he says.
But John Brown did not long frighten him! For he was much at their house after
that, and was so friendly with Russell and his brother that there was no chance
for awe; and it gives a curious side- light on the character of the stern abolitionist
that he actually, with infinite patience, taught the old horse of the Conwells
to go home alone with the wagon after leaving the boys at school, a mile or
more away, and at school-closing time to trot gently off for them without a
driver when merely faced in that direction and told to go! Conwell remembers
how John Brown, in training it, used patiently to walk beside the horse, and
control its going and its turnings, until it was quite ready to go and turn
entirely by itself.
The Conwell house was a station on the Underground Railway, and Russell Conwell
remembers, when a lad, seeing the escaping slaves that his father had driven
across country and temporarily hidden. ``Those were heroic days,'' he says,
quietly. ``And once in a while my father let me go with him. They were wonderful
night drives-- the cowering slaves, the darkness of the road, the caution and
the silence and dread of it all.'' This underground route, he remembers, was
from Philadelphia to New Haven, thence to Springfield, where Conwell's father
would take his charge, and onward to Bellows Falls and Canada.
Conwell tells, too, of meeting Frederick Douglass, the colored orator, in that
little cottage in the hills. `` `I never saw my father,' Douglass said one day--his
father was a white man--`and I remember little of my mother except that once
she tried to keep an overseer from whipping me, and the lash cut across her
own face, and her blood fell over me.'
``When John Brown was captured,'' Conwell went on, ``my father tried to sell
this place to get a little money to send to help his defense. But he couldn't
sell it, and on the day of the execu- tion we knelt solemnly here, from eleven
to twelve, just praying, praying in silence for the passing soul of John Brown.
And as we prayed we knew that others were also praying, for a church-bell tolled
during that entire hour, and its awesome boom went sadly sounding over these
hills.''
Conwell believes that his real life dates from a happening of the time of the
Civil War--a happening that still looms vivid and intense before him, and which
undoubtedly did deepen and strengthen his strong and deep nature. Yet the real
Conwell was always essentially the same. Neighborhood tradition still tells
of his bravery as a boy and a youth, of his reckless coasting, his skill as
a swimmer and his saving of lives, his strength and endurance, his plunging
out into the darkness of a wild winter night to save a neighbor's cattle. His
soldiers came home with tales of his devotion to them, and of how he shared
his rations and his blankets and bravely risked his life; of how he crept off
into a swamp, at imminent peril, to rescue one of his men lost or mired there.
The present Conwell was always Conwell; in fact, he may be traced through his
ancestry, too, for in him are the sturdy virtues, the bravery, the grim determination,
the practicality, of his father; and romanticism, that comes from his grandmother;
and the dreamy qualities of his mother, who, practical and hardworking New England
woman that she was, was at the same time influenced by an almost startling mysticism.
And Conwell himself is a dreamer: first of all he is a dreamer; it is the most
important fact in regard to him! It is because he is a dreamer and visualizes
his dreams that he can plan the great things that to other men would seem impossibilities;
and then his intensely practical side his intense efficiency, his power, his
skill, his patience, his fine earnestness, his mastery over others, develop
his dreams into realities. He dreams dreams and sees visions--but his visions
are never visionary and his dreams become facts.
The rocky hills which meant a dogged struggle for very existence, the fugitive
slaves, John Brown --what a school for youth! And the literal school was a tiny
one-room school-house where young Conwell came under the care of a teacher who
realized the boy's unusual capabilities and was able to give him broad and unusual
help. Then a wise country preacher also recognized the unusual, and urged the
parents to give still more education, whereupon supreme effort was made and
young Russell was sent to Wilbraham Academy. He likes to tell of his life there,
and of the hardships, of which he makes light; and of the joy with which week-end
pies and cakes were received from home!
He tells of how he went out on the roads selling books from house to house,
and of how eagerly he devoured the contents of the sample books that he carried.
``They were a foundation of learning for me,'' he says, soberly. ``And they
gave me a broad idea of the world.''
He went to Yale in 1860, but the outbreak of the war interfered with college,
and he enlisted in 1861. But he was only eighteen, and his father objected,
and he went back to Yale. But next year he again enlisted, and men of his Berkshire
neighborhood, likewise enlisting, insisted that he be their captain; and Governor
Andrews, appealed to, consented to commission the nineteen-year- old youth who
was so evidently a natural leader; and the men gave freely of their scant money
to get for him a sword, all gay and splendid with gilt, and upon the sword was
the declaration in stately Latin that, ``True friendship is eternal.''
And with that sword is associated the most vivid, the most momentous experience
of Russell Conwell's life.
That sword hangs at the head of Conwell's bed in his home in Philadelphia. Man
of peace that he is, and minister of peace, that symbol of war has for over
half a century been of infinite importance to him.
He told me the story as we stood together before that sword. And as he told
the story, speaking with quiet repression, but seeing it all and living it all
just as vividly as if it had occurred but yesterday, ``That sword has meant
so much to me,'' he murmured; and then he began the tale:
``A boy up there in the Berkshires, a neighbor's son, was John Ring; I call
him a boy, for we all called him a boy, and we looked upon him as a boy, for
he was under-sized and under-developed-- so much so that he could not enlist.
``But for some reason he was devoted to me, and he not only wanted to enlist,
but he also wanted to be in the artillery company of which I was captain; and
I could only take him along as my servant. I didn't want a servant, but it was
the only way to take poor little Johnnie Ring.
``Johnnie was deeply religious, and would read the Bible every evening before
turning in. In those days I was an atheist, or at least thought I was, and I
used to laugh at Ring, and after a while he took to reading the Bible outside
the tent on account of my laughing at him! But he did not stop reading it, and
his faithfulness to me remained unchanged.
``The scabbard of the sword was too glittering for the regulations''--the ghost
of a smile hovered on Conwell's lips--``and I could not wear it, and could only
wear a plain one for service and keep this hanging in my tent on the tent-pole.
John Ring used to handle it adoringly, and kept it polished to brilliancy.--It's
dull enough these many years,'' he added, somberly. ``To Ring it represented
not only his captain, but the very glory and pomp of war.
``One day the Confederates suddenly stormed our position near New Berne and
swept through the camp, driving our entire force before them; and all, including
my company, retreated hurriedly across the river, setting fire to a long wooden
bridge as we went over. It soon blazed up furiously, making a barrier that the
Confederates could not pass.
``But, unknown to everybody, and unnoticed, John Ring had dashed back to my
tent. I think he was able to make his way back because he just looked like a
mere boy; but however that was, he got past the Confederates into my tent and
took down, from where it was hanging on the tent- pole, my bright, gold-scabbarded
sword.
``John Ring seized the sword that had long been so precious to him. He dodged
here and there, and actually managed to gain the bridge just as it was beginning
to blaze. He started across. The flames were every moment getting fiercer, the
smoke denser, and now and then, as he crawled and staggered on, he leaned for
a few seconds far over the edge of the bridge in an effort to get air. Both
sides saw him; both sides watched his terrible progress, even while firing was
fiercely kept up from each side of the river. And then a Confederate officer--he
was one of General Pickett's officers--ran to the water's edge and waved a white
handkerchief and the firing ceased.
`` `Tell that boy to come back here!' he cried. `Tell him to come back here
and we will let him go free!'
``He called this out just as Ring was about to enter upon the worst part of
the bridge--the cov- ered part, where there were top and bottom and sides of
blazing wood. The roar of the flames was so close to Ring that he could not
hear the calls from either side of the river, and he pushed desperately on and
disappeared in the covered part.
``There was dead silence except for the crackling of the fire. Not a man cried
out. All waited in hopeless expectancy. And then came a mighty yell from Northerner
and Southerner alike, for Johnnie came crawling out of the end of the covered
way--he had actually passed through that frightful place--and his clothes were
ablaze, and he toppled over and fell into shallow water; and in a few moments
he was dragged out, unconscious, and hurried to a hospital.
``He lingered for a day or so, still unconscious, and then came to himself and
smiled a little as he found that the sword for which he had given his life had
been left beside him. He took it in his arms. He hugged it to his breast. He
gave a few words of final message for me. And that was all.''
Conwell's voice had gone thrillingly low as he neared the end, for it was all
so very, very vivid to him, and his eyes had grown tender and his lips more
strong and firm. And he fell silent, thinking of that long-ago happening, and
though he looked down upon the thronging traffic of Broad Street, it was clear
that he did not see it, and that if the rumbling hubbub of sound meant anything
to him it was the rumbling of the guns of the distant past. When he spoke again
it was with a still tenser tone of feeling.
``When I stood beside the body of John Ring and realized that he had died for
love of me, I made a vow that has formed my life. I vowed that from that moment
I would live not only my own life, but that I would also live the life of John
Ring. And from that moment I have worked sixteen hours every day--eight for
John Ring's work and eight hours for my own.''
A curious note had come into his voice, as of one who had run the race and neared
the goal, fought the good fight and neared the end.
``Every morning when I rise I look at this sword, or if I am away from home
I think of the sword, and vow anew that another day shall see sixteen hours
of work from me.'' And when one comes to know Russell Conwell one realizes that
never did a man work more hard and constantly,
``It was through John Ring and his giving his life through devotion to me that
I became a Christian,'' he went on. ``This did not come about immediately, but
it came before the war was over, and it came through faithful Johnnie Ring.''
There is a little lonely cemetery in the Berkshires, a tiny burying-ground on
a wind-swept hill, a few miles from Conwell's old home. In this isolated burying-ground
bushes and vines and grass grow in profusion, and a few trees cast a gentle
shade; and tree-clad hills go billowing off for miles and miles in wild and
lonely beauty. And in that lonely little graveyard I found the plain stone that
marks the resting-place of John Ring.
II
THE BEGINNING AT OLD LEXINGTON
IT is not because he is a minister that Russell Conwell is such a force in the
world. He went into the ministry because he was sincerely and profoundly a Christian,
and because he felt that as a minister he could do more good in the world than
in any other capacity. But being a minister is but an incident, so to speak.
The important thing is not that he is a minister, but that he is himself!
Recently I heard a New-Yorker, the head of a great corporation, say: ``I believe
that Russell Conwell is doing more good in the world than any man who has lived
since Jesus Christ.'' And he said this in serious and unexaggerated earnest.
Yet Conwell did not get readily into his life- work. He might have seemed almost
a failure until he was well on toward forty, for although he kept making successes
they were not permanent successes, and he did not settle himself into a definite
line. He restlessly went westward to make his home, and then restlessly returned
to the East. After the war was over he was a lawyer, he was a lecturer, he was
an editor, he went around the world as a correspondent, he wrote books. He kept
making money, and kept losing it; he lost it through fire, through investments,
through aiding his friends. It is probable that the unsettledness of the years
following the war was due to the unsettling effect of the war itself, which
thus, in its influence, broke into his mature life after breaking into his years
at Yale. But however that may be, those seething, changing, stirring years were
years of vital importance to him, for in the myriad experiences of that time
he was building the foundation of the Conwell that was to come. Abroad he met
the notables of the earth. At home he made hosts of friends and loyal admirers.
It is worth while noting that as a lawyer he would never take a case, either
civil or criminal, that he considered wrong. It was basic with him that he could
not and would not fight on what he thought was the wrong side. Only when his
client was right would he go ahead!
Yet he laughs, his quiet, infectious, characteristic laugh, as he tells of how
once he was deceived, for he defended a man, charged with stealing a watch,
who was so obviously innocent that he took the case in a blaze of indignation
and had the young fellow proudly exonerated. The next day the wrongly accused
one came to his office and shamefacedly took out the watch that he had been
charged with stealing. ``I want you to send it to the man I took it from,''
he said. And he told with a sort of shamefaced pride of how he had got a good
old deacon to give, in all sincerity, the evidence that exculpated him. ``And,
say, Mr. Conwell--I want to thank you for getting me off--and I hope you'll
excuse my deceiving you--and--I won't be any worse for not going to jail.''
And Conwell likes to remember that thereafter the young man lived up to the
pride of exoneration; and, though Conwell does not say it or think it, one knows
that it was the Conwell influence that inspired to honesty--for always he is
an inspirer.
Conwell even kept certain hours for consultation with those too poor to pay
any fee; and at one time, while still an active lawyer, he was guardian for
over sixty children! The man has always been a marvel, and always one is coming
upon such romantic facts as these.
That is a curious thing about him--how much there is of romance in his life!
Worshiped to the end by John Ring; left for dead all night at Kenesaw Mountain;
calmly singing ``Nearer, my God, to Thee,'' to quiet the passengers on a supposedly
sinking ship; saving lives even when a boy; never disappointing a single audience
of the thousands of audiences he has arranged to address during all his years
of lecturing! He himself takes a little pride in this last point, and it is
characteristic of him that he has actually forgotten that just once he did fail
to appear: he has quite forgotten that one evening, on his way to a lecture,
he stopped a runaway horse to save two women's lives, and went in consequence
to a hospital instead of to the platform! And it is typical of him to forget
that sort of thing.
The emotional temperament of Conwell has always made him responsive to the great,
the striking, the patriotic. He was deeply influenced by knowing John Brown,
and his brief memories of Lincoln are intense, though he saw him but three times
in all.
The first time he saw Lincoln was on the night when the future President delivered
the address, which afterward became so famous, in Cooper Union, New York. The
name of Lincoln was then scarcely known, and it was by mere chance that young
Conwell happened to be in New York on that day. But being there, and learning
that Abraham Lincoln from the West was going to make an address, he went to
hear him.
He tells how uncouthly Lincoln was dressed, even with one trousers-leg higher
than the other, and of how awkward he was, and of how poorly, at first, he spoke
and with what apparent embarrassment. The chairman of the meeting got Lincoln
a glass of water, and Conwell thought that it was from a personal desire to
help him and keep him from breaking down. But he loves to tell how Lincoln became
a changed man as he spoke; how he seemed to feel ashamed of his brief embarrassment
and, pulling himself together and putting aside the written speech which he
had prepared, spoke freely and powerfully, with splendid conviction, as only
a born orator speaks. To Conwell it was a tremendous experience.
The second time he saw Lincoln was when he went to Washington to plead for the
life of one of his men who had been condemned to death for sleeping on post.
He was still but a captain (his promotion to a colonelcy was still to come),
a youth, and was awed by going into the presence of the man he worshiped. And
his voice trembles a little, even now, as he tells of how pleasantly Lincoln
looked up from his desk, and how cheerfully he asked his business with him,
and of how absorbedly Lincoln then listened to his tale, although, so it appeared,
he already knew of the main outline.
``It will be all right,'' said Lincoln, when Conwell finished. But Conwell was
still frightened. He feared that in the multiplicity of public matters this
mere matter of the life of a mountain boy, a private soldier, might be forgotten
till too late. ``It is almost the time set--'' he faltered. And Conwell's voice
almost breaks, man of emotion that he is, as he tells of how Lincoln said, with
stern gravity: ``Go and telegraph that soldier's mother that Abraham Lincoln
never signed a warrant to shoot a boy under twenty, and never will.'' That was
the one and only time that he spoke with Lincoln, and it remains an indelible
impression.
The third time he saw Lincoln was when, as officer of the day, he stood for
hours beside the dead body of the President as it lay in state in Washington.
In those hours, as he stood rigidly as the throng went shuffling sorrowfully
through, an immense impression came to Colonel Conwell of the work and worth
of the man who there lay dead, and that impression has never departed.
John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, old Revolutionary Lexington--how Conwell's life
is associated with famous men and places!--and it was actually at Lexington
that he made the crucial decision as to the course of his life! And it seems
to me that it was, although quite unconsciously, because of the very fact that
it was Lexington that Conwell was influenced to decide and to act as he did.
Had it been in some other kind of place, some merely ordinary place, some quite
usual place, he might not have taken the important step. But it was Lexington,
it was brave old Lexington, inspiring Lexington; and he was inspired by it,
for the man who himself inspires nobly is always the one who is himself open
to noble inspiration. Lexington inspired him.
``When I was a lawyer in Boston and almost thirty-seven years old,'' he told
me, thinking slowly back into the years, ``I was consulted by a woman who asked
my advice in regard to disposing of a little church in Lexington whose congregation
had become unable to support it. I went out and looked at the place, and I told
her how the property could be sold. But it seemed a pity to me that the little
church should be given up. However, I advised a meeting of the church members,
and I attended the meeting. I put the case to them--it was only a handful of
men and women--and there was silence for a little. Then an old man rose and,
in a quavering voice, said the matter was quite clear; that there evidently
was nothing to do but to sell, and that he would agree with the others in the
necessity; but as the church had been his church home from boyhood, so he quavered
and quivered on, he begged that they would excuse him from actually taking part
in disposing of it; and in a deep silence he went haltingly from the room.
``The men and the women looked at one another, still silent, sadly impressed,
but not knowing what to do. And I said to them: `Why not start over again, and
go on with the church, after all!' ''
Typical Conwellism, that! First, the impulse to help those who need helping,
then the inspiration and leadership.
`` `But the building is entirely too tumble- down to use,' said one of the men,
sadly; and I knew he was right, for I had examined it; but I said:
`` `Let us meet there to-morrow morning and get to work on that building ourselves
and put it in shape for a service next Sunday.'
``It made them seem so pleased and encouraged, and so confident that a new possibility
was opening that I never doubted that each one of those present, and many friends
besides, would be at the building in the morning. I was there early with a hammer
and ax and crowbar that I had secured, ready to go to work--but no one else
showed up!''
He has a rueful appreciation of the humor of it, as he pictured the scene; and
one knows also that, in that little town of Lexington, where Americans had so
bravely faced the impossible, Russell Conwell also braced himself to face the
impossible. A pettier man would instantly have given up the entire matter when
those who were most interested failed to respond, but one of the strongest features
in Conwell's character is his ability to draw even doubters and weaklings into
line, his ability to stir even those who have given up.
``I looked over that building,'' he goes on, whimsically, ``and I saw that repair
really seemed out of the question. Nothing but a new church would do! So I took
the ax that I had brought with me and began chopping the place down. In a little
while a man, not one of the church members, came along, and he watched me for
a time and said, `What are you going to do there?'
``And I instantly replied, `Tear down this old building and build a new church
here!'
``He looked at me. `But the people won't do that,' he said.
`` `Yes, they will,' I said, cheerfully, keeping at my work. Whereupon he watched
me a few minutes longer and said:
`` `Well, you can put me down for one hundred dollars for the new building.
Come up to my livery-stable and get it this evening.'
`` `All right; I'll surely be there,' I replied.
``In a little while another man came along and stopped and looked, and he rather
gibed at the idea of a new church, and when I told him of the livery-stable
man contributing one hundred dollars, he said, `But you haven't got the money
yet!'
`` `No,' I said; `but I am going to get it to-night.'
`` `You'll never get it,' he said. `He's not that sort of a man. He's not even
a church man!'
``But I just went quietly on with the work, without answering, and after quite
a while he left; but he called back, as he went off, `Well, if he does give
you that hundred dollars, come to me and I'll give you another hundred.' ''
Conwell smiles in genial reminiscence and without any apparent sense that he
is telling of a great personal triumph, and goes on:
``Those two men both paid the money, and of course the church people themselves,
who at first had not quite understood that I could be in earnest, joined in
and helped, with work and money, and as, while the new church was building,
it was peculiarly important to get and keep the congregation together, and as
they had ceased to have a minister of their own, I used to run out from Boston
and preach for them, in a room we hired.
``And it was there in Lexington, in 1879, that I determined to become a minister.
I had a good law practice, but I determined to give it up. For many years I
had felt more or less of a call to the ministry, and here at length was the
definite time to begin.
``Week by week I preached there''--how strange, now, to think of William Dean
Howells and the colonel-preacher!--``and after a while the church was completed,
and in that very church, there in Lexington, I was ordained a minister.''
A marvelous thing, all this, even without considering the marvelous heights
that Conwell has since attained--a marvelous thing, an achievement of positive
romance! That little church stood for American bravery and initiative and self-sacrifice
and romanticism in a way that well befitted good old Lexington.
To leave a large and overflowing law practice and take up the ministry at a
salary of six hundred dollars a year seemed to the relatives of Conwell's wife
the extreme of foolishness, and they did not hesitate so to express themselves.
Naturally enough, they did not have Conwell's vision. Yet he himself was fair
enough to realize and to admit that there was a good deal of fairness in their
objections; and so he said to the congregation that, although he was quite ready
to come for the six hundred dollars a year, he expected them to double his salary
as soon as he doubled the church membership. This seemed to them a good deal
like a joke, but they answered in perfect earnestness that they would be quite
willing to do the doubling as soon as he did the doubling, and in less than
a year the salary was doubled accordingly.
I asked him if he had found it hard to give up the lucrative law for a poor
ministry, and his reply gave a delightful impression of his capacity for humorous
insight into human nature, for he said, with a genial twinkle:
``Oh yes, it was a wrench; but there is a sort of romance of self-sacrifice,
you know. I rather suppose the old-time martyrs rather enjoyed themselves in
being martyrs!''
Conwell did not stay very long in Lexington. A struggling little church in Philadelphia
heard of what he was doing, and so an old deacon went up to see and hear him,
and an invitation was given; and as the Lexington church seemed to be prosperously
on its feet, and the needs of the Philadelphia body keenly appealed to Conwell's
imagination, a change was made, and at a salary of eight hundred dollars a year
he went, in 1882, to the little struggling Philadelphia congregation, and of
that congregation he is still pastor--only, it ceased to be a struggling congregation
a great many years ago! And long ago it began paying him more thousands every
year than at first it gave him hundreds.
Dreamer as Conwell always is in connection with his immense practicality, and
moved as he is by the spiritual influences of life, it is more than likely that
not only did Philadelphia's need appeal, but also the fact that Philadelphia,
as a city, meant much to him, for, coming North, wounded from a battle-field
of the Civil War, it was in Philadelphia that he was cared for until his health
and strength were recovered. Thus it came that Philadelphia had early become
dear to him.
And here is an excellent example of how dreaming great dreams may go hand-in-hand
with winning superb results. For that little struggling congregation now owns
and occupies a great new church building that seats more people than any other
Protestant church in America--and Dr. Conwell fills it!
III
STORY OF THE FIFTY-SEVEN CENTS
AT every point in Conwell's life one sees that he wins through his wonderful
personal influence on old and young. Every step forward, every triumph achieved,
comes not alone from his own enthusiasm, but because of his putting that enthusiasm
into others. And when I learned how it came about that the present church buildings
were begun, it was another of those marvelous tales of fact that are stranger
than any imagination could make them. And yet the tale was so simple and sweet
and sad and unpretending.
When Dr. Conwell first assumed charge of the little congregation that led him
to Philadelphia it was really a little church both in its numbers and in the
size of the building that it occupied, but it quickly became so popular under
his leadership that the church services and Sunday- school services were alike
so crowded that there was no room for all who came, and always there were people
turned from the doors.
One afternoon a little girl, who had eagerly wished to go, turned back from
the Sunday-school door, crying bitterly because they had told her that there
was no more room. But a tall, black- haired man met her and noticed her tears
and, stopping, asked why it was that she was crying, and she sobbingly replied
that it was because they could not let her into the Sunday-school.
``I lifted her to my shoulder,'' says Dr. Conwell, in telling of this; for after
hearing the story elsewhere I asked him to tell it to me himself, for it seemed
almost too strange to be true. ``I lifted her to my shoulder''--and one realizes
the pretty scene it must have made for the little girl to go through the crowd
of people, drying her tears and riding proudly on the shoulders of the kindly,
tall, dark man! ``I said to her that I would take her in, and I did so, and
I said to her that we should some day have a room big enough for all who should
come. And when she went home she told her parents--I only learned this afterward--that
she was going to save money to help build the larger church and Sunday-school
that Dr. Conwell wanted! Her parents pleasantly humored her in the idea and
let her run errands and do little tasks to earn pennies, and she began dropping
the pennies into her bank.
``She was a lovable little thing--but in only a few weeks after that she was
taken suddenly ill and died; and at the funeral her father told me, quietly,
of how his little girl had been saving money for a building-fund. And there,
at the funeral, he handed me what she had saved--just fifty- seven cents in
pennies.''
Dr. Conwell does not say how deeply he was moved; he is, after all, a man of
very few words as to his own emotions. But a deep tenderness had crept into
his voice.
``At a meeting of the church trustees I told of this gift of fifty-seven cents--the
first gift toward the proposed building-fund of the new church that was some
time to exist. For until then the matter had barely been spoken of, as a new
church building had been simply a possibility for the future.
``The trustees seemed much impressed, and it turned out that they were far more
impressed than I could possibly have hoped, for in a few days one of them came
to me and said that he thought it would be an excellent idea to buy a lot on
Broad Street--the very lot on which the building now stands.'' It was characteristic
of Dr. Conwell that he did not point out, what every one who knows him would
understand, that it was his own inspiration put into the trustees which resulted
in this quick and definite move on the part of one of them. ``I talked the matter
over with the owner of the property, and told him of the beginning of the fund,
the story of the little girl. The man was not one of our church, nor in fact,
was he a church-goer at all, but he listened attentively to the tale of the
fifty-seven cents and simply said he was quite ready to go ahead and sell us
that piece of land for ten thousand dollars, taking--and the unexpectedness
of this deeply touched me taking a first payment of just fifty-seven cents and
letting the entire balance stand on a five-per-cent. mortgage!
``And it seemed to me that it would be the right thing to accept this unexpectedly
liberal proposition, and I went over the entire matter on that basis with the
trustees and some of the other members, and all the people were soon talking
of having a new church. But it was not done in that way, after all, for, fine
though that way would have been, there was to be one still finer.
``Not long after my talk with the man who owned the land, and his surprisingly
good-hearted proposition, an exchange was arranged for me one evening with a
Mount Holly church, and my wife went with me. We came back late, and it was
cold and wet and miserable, but as we approached our home we saw that it was
all lighted from top to bottom, and it was clear that it was full of people.
I said to my wife that they seemed to be having a better time than we had had,
and we went in, curious to know what it was all about. And it turned out that
our absence had been intentionally arranged, and that the church people had
gathered at our home to meet us on our return. And I was utterly amazed, for
the spokesman told me that the entire ten thousand dollars had been raised and
that the land for the church that I wanted was free of debt. And all had come
so quickly and directly from that dear little girl's fifty-seven cents.''
Doesn't it seem like a fairy tale! But then this man has all his life been making
fairy tales into realities. He inspired the child. He inspired the trustees.
He inspired the owner of the land. He inspired the people.
The building of the great church--the Temple Baptist Church, as it is termed--was
a great undertaking for the congregation; even though it had been swiftly growing
from the day of Dr. Conwell's taking charge of it, it was something far ahead
of what, except in the eyes of an enthusiast, they could possibly complete and
pay for and support. Nor was it an easy task.
Ground was broken for the building in 1889, in 1891 it was opened for worship,
and then came years of raising money to clear it. But it was long ago placed
completely out of debt, and with only a single large subscription--one of ten
thousand dollars--for the church is not in a wealthy neighborhood, nor is the
congregation made up of the great and rich.
The church is built of stone, and its interior is a great amphitheater. Special
attention has been given to fresh air and light; there is nothing of the dim,
religious light that goes with medieval churchliness. Behind the pulpit are
tiers of seats for the great chorus choir. There is a large organ. The building
is peculiarly adapted for hearing and seeing, and if it is not, strictly speaking,
beautiful in itself, it is beautiful when it is filled with encircling rows
of men and women.
Man of feeling that he is, and one who appreciates the importance of symbols,
Dr. Conwell had a heart of olive-wood built into the front of the pulpit, for
the wood was from an olive-tree in the Garden of Gethsemane. And the amber-colored
tiles in the inner walls of the church bear, under the glaze, the names of thousands
of his people; for every one, young or old, who helped in the building, even
to the giving of a single dollar, has his name inscribed there. For Dr. Conwell
wished to show that it is not only the house of the Lord, but also, in a keenly
personal sense, the house of those who built it.
The church has a possible seating capacity of 4,200, although only 3,135 chairs
have been put in it, for it has been the desire not to crowd the space needlessly.
There is also a great room for the Sunday-school, and extensive rooms for the
young men's association, the young women's association, and for a kitchen, for
executive offices, for meeting-places for church officers and boards and committees.
It is a spacious and practical and complete church home, and the people feel
at home there.
``You see again,'' said Dr. Conwell, musingly, ``the advantage of aiming at
big things. That building represents $109,000 above ground. It is free from
debt. Had we built a small church, it would now be heavily mortgaged.''
IV
HIS POWER AS ORATOR AND PREACHER
EVEN as a young man Conwell won local fame as an orator. At the outbreak of
the Civil War he began making patriotic speeches that gained enlistments. After
going to the front he was sent back home for a time, on furlough, to make more
speeches to draw more recruits, for his speeches were so persuasive, so powerful,
so full of homely and patriotic feeling, that the men who heard them thronged
into the ranks. And as a preacher he uses persuasion, power, simple and homely
eloquence, to draw men to the ranks of Christianity.
He is an orator born, and has developed this inborn power by the hardest of
study and thought and practice. He is one of those rare men who always seize
and hold the attention. When he speaks, men listen. It is quality, temperament,
control--the word is immaterial, but the fact is very material indeed.
Some quarter of a century ago Conwell published a little book for students on
the study and practice of oratory. That ``clear-cut articulation is the charm
of eloquence'' is one of his insisted-upon statements, and it well illustrates
the lifelong practice of the man himself, for every word as he talks can be
heard in every part of a large building, yet always he speaks without apparent
effort. He avoids ``elocution.'' His voice is soft-pitched and never breaks,
even now when he is over seventy, because, so he explains it, he always speaks
in his natural voice. There is never a straining after effect.
``A speaker must possess a large-hearted regard for the welfare of his audience,''
he writes, and here again we see Conwell explaining Conwellism. ``Enthusiasm
invites enthusiasm,'' is another of his points of importance; and one understands
that it is by deliberate purpose, and not by chance, that he tries with such
tremendous effort to put enthusiasm into his hearers with every sermon and every
lecture that he delivers.
``It is easy to raise a laugh, but dangerous, for it is the greatest test of
an orator's control of his audience to be able to land them again on the solid
earth of sober thinking.'' I have known him at the very end of a sermon have
a ripple of laughter sweep freely over the entire congregation, and then in
a moment he has every individual under his control, listening soberly to his
words.
He never fears to use humor, and it is always very simple and obvious and effective.
With him even a very simple pun may be used, not only with- out taking away
from the strength of what he is saying, but with a vivid increase of impressiveness.
And when he says something funny it is in such a delightful and confidential
way, with such a genial, quiet, infectious humorousness, that his audience is
captivated. And they never think that he is telling something funny of his own;
it seems, such is the skill of the man, that he is just letting them know of
something humorous that they are to enjoy with him.
``Be absolutely truthful and scrupulously clear,'' he writes; and with delightfully
terse common sense, he says, ``Use illustrations that illustrate''-- and never
did an orator live up to this injunction more than does Conwell himself. Nothing
is more surprising, nothing is more interesting, than the way in which he makes
use as illustrations of the impressions and incidents of his long and varied
life, and, whatever it is, it has direct and instant bearing on the progress
of his discourse. He will refer to something that he heard a child say in a
train yesterday; in a few minutes he will speak of something that he saw or
some one whom he met last month, or last year, or ten years ago-- in Ohio, in
California, in London, in Paris, in New York, in Bombay; and each memory, each
illustration, is a hammer with which he drives home a truth.
The vast number of places he has visited and people he has met, the infinite
variety of things his observant eyes have seen, give him his ceaseless flow
of illustrations, and his memory and his skill make admirable use of them. It
is seldom that he uses an illustration from what he has read; everything is,
characteristically, his own. Henry M. Stanley, who knew him well, referred to
him as ``that double-sighted Yankee,'' who could ``see at a glance all there
is and all there ever was.''
And never was there a man who so supplements with personal reminiscence the
place or the person that has figured in the illustration. When he illustrates
with the story of the discovery of California gold at Sutter's he almost parenthetically
remarks, ``I delivered this lecture on that very spot a few years ago; that
is, in the town that arose on that very spot.'' And when he illustrates by the
story of the invention of the sewing-machine, he adds: ``I suppose that if any
of you were asked who was the inventor of the sewing-machine, you would say
that it was Elias Howe. But that would be a mistake. I was with Elias Howe in
the Civil War, and he often used to tell me how he had tried for fourteen years
to invent the sewing-machine and that then his wife, feeling that something
really had to be done, invented it in a couple of hours.'' Listening to him,
you begin to feel in touch with everybody and everything, and in a friendly
and intimate way.
Always, whether in the pulpit or on the platform, as in private conversation,
there is an absolute simplicity about the man and his words; a simplicity, an
earnestness, a complete honesty. And when he sets down, in his book on oratory,
``A man has no right to use words carelessly,'' he stands for that respect for
word-craftsmanship that every successful speaker or writer must feel.
``Be intensely in earnest,'' he writes; and in writing this he sets down a prime
principle not only of his oratory, but of his life.
A young minister told me that Dr. Conwell once said to him, with deep feeling,
``Always remember, as you preach, that you are striving to save at least one
soul with every sermon.'' And to one of his close friends Dr. Conwell said,
in one of his self-revealing conversations:
``I feel, whenever I preach, that there is always one person in the congregation
to whom, in all probability, I shall never preach again, and therefore I feel
that I must exert my utmost power in that last chance.'' And in this, even if
this were all, one sees why each of his sermons is so impressive, and why his
energy never lags. Always, with him, is the feeling that he is in the world
to do all the good he can possibly do; not a moment, not an opportunity, must
be lost.
The moment he rises and steps to the front of his pulpit he has the attention
of every one in the building, and this attention he closely holds till he is
through. Yet it is never by a striking effort that attention is gained, except
in so far that his utter simplicity is striking. ``I want to preach so simply
that you will not think it preaching, but just that you are listening to a friend,''
I remember his saying, one Sunday morning, as he began his sermon; and then
he went on just as simply as such homely, kindly, friendly words promised. And
how effectively!
He believes that everything should be so put as to be understood by all, and
this belief he applies not only to his preaching, but to the reading of the
Bible, whose descriptions he not only visualizes to himself, but makes vividly
clear to his hearers; and this often makes for fascination in result.
For example, he is reading the tenth chapter of I Samuel, and begins, `` `Thou
shalt meet a company of prophets.' ''
`` `Singers,' it should be translated,'' he puts in, lifting his eyes from the
page and looking out over his people. Then he goes on, taking this change as
a matter of course, `` `Thou shalt meet a company of singers coming down from
the high place--' ''
Whereupon he again interrupts himself, and in an irresistible explanatory aside,
which instantly raises the desired picture in the mind of every one, he says:
``That means, from the little old church on the hill, you know.'' And how plain
and clear and real and interesting--most of all, interesting--it is from this
moment! Another man would have left it that prophets were coming down from a
high place, which would not have seemed at all alive or natural, and here, suddenly,
Conwell has flashed his picture of the singers coming down from the little old
church on the hill! There is magic in doing that sort of thing.
And he goes on, now reading: `` `Thou shalt meet a company of singers coming
down from the little old church on the hill, with a psaltery, and a tabret,
and a pipe, and a harp, and they shall sing.' ''
Music is one of Conwell's strongest aids. He sings himself; sings as if he likes
to sing, and often finds himself leading the singing--usually so, indeed, at
the prayer-meetings, and often, in effect, at the church services.
I remember at one church service that the choir-leader was standing in front
of the massed choir ostensibly leading the singing, but that Conwell himself,
standing at the rear of the pulpit platform, with his eyes on his hymn-book,
silently swaying a little with the music and unconsciously beating time as he
swayed, was just as unconsciously the real leader, for it was he whom the congregation
were watching and with him that they were keeping time! He never suspected it;
he was merely thinking along with the music; and there was such a look of contagious
happiness on his face as made every one in the building similarly happy. For
he possesses a mysterious faculty of imbuing others with his own happiness.
Not only singers, but the modern equivalent of psaltery and tabret and cymbals,
all have their place in Dr. Conwell's scheme of church service; for there may
be a piano, and there may even be a trombone, and there is a great organ to
help the voices, and at times there are chiming bells. His musical taste seems
to tend toward the thunderous--or perhaps it is only that he knows there are
times when people like to hear the thunderous and are moved by it.
And how the choir themselves like it! They occupy a great curving space behind
the pulpit, and put their hearts into song. And as the congregation disperse
and the choir filter down, sometimes they are still singing and some of them
continue to sing as they go slowly out toward the doors. They are happy--Conwell
himself is happy--all the congregation are happy. He makes everybody feel happy
in coming to church; he makes the church attractive just as Howells was so long
ago told that he did in Lexington.
And there is something more than happiness; there is a sense of ease, of comfort,
of general joy, that is quite unmistakable. There is nothing of stiffness or
constraint. And with it all there is full reverence. It is no wonder that he
is accustomed to fill every seat of the great building.
His gestures are usually very simple. Now and then, when he works up to emphasis,
he strikes one fist in the palm of the other hand. When he is through you do
not remember that he has made any gestures at all, but the sound of his voice
remains with you, and the look of his wonderful eyes. And though he is past
the threescore years and ten, he looks out over his people with eyes that still
have the veritable look of youth.
Like all great men, he not only does big things, but keeps in touch with myriad
details. When his assistant, announcing the funeral of an old member, hesitates
about the street and number and says that they can be found in the telephone
directory, Dr. Conwell's deep voice breaks quietly in with, ``Such a number
[giving it], Dauphin Street''--quietly, and in a low tone, yet every one in
the church hears distinctly every syllable of that low voice.
His fund of personal anecdote, or personal reminiscence, is constant and illustrative
in his preaching, just as it is when he lectures, and the reminiscences sweep
through many years, and at times are really startling in the vivid and homelike
pictures they present of the famous folk of the past that he knew.
One Sunday evening he made an almost casual reference to the time when he first
met Garfield, then a candidate for the Presidency. ``I asked Major McKinley,
whom I had met in Washington, and whose home was in northern Ohio, as was that
of Mr. Garfield, to go with me to Mr. Garfield's home and introduce me. When
we got there, a neighbor had to find him. `Jim! Jim!' he called. You see, Garfield
was just plain Jim to his old neighbors. It's hard to recognize a hero over
your back fence!'' He paused a mo- ment for the appreciative ripple to subside,
and went on:
``We three talked there together''--what a rare talking that must have been-McKinley,
Garfield, and Conwell--``we talked together, and after a while we got to the
subject of hymns, and those two great men both told me how deeply they loved
the old hymn, `The Old-Time Religion.' Garfield especially loved it, so he told
us, because the good old man who brought him up as a boy and to whom he owed
such gratitude, used to sing it at the pasture bars outside of the boy's window
every morning, and young Jim knew, whenever he heard that old tune, that it
meant it was time for him to get up. He said that he had heard the best concerts
and the finest operas in the world, but had never heard anything he loved as
he still loved `The Old-Time Religion.' I forget what reason there was for McKinley's
especially liking it, but he, as did Garfield, liked it immensely.''
What followed was a striking example of Conwell's intentness on losing no chance
to fix an impression on his hearers' minds, and at the same time it was a really
astonishing proof of his power to move and sway. For a new expression came over
his face, and he said, as if the idea had only at that moment occurred to him--as
it most probably had--``I think it's in our hymnal!'' And in a moment he announced
the number, and the great organ struck up, and every person in the great church
every man, woman, and child --joined in the swinging rhythm of verse after verse,
as if they could never tire, of ``The Old- Time Religion.'' It is a simple melody--barely
more than a single line of almost monotone music:
_It was good enough for mother and it's good enough for me! It was good on the
fiery furnace and it's good enough for me!_
Thus it went on, with never-wearying iteration, and each time with the refrain,
more and more rhythmic and swaying:
_The old-time religion, The old-time religion, The old-time religion-- It's
good enough for me!_
That it was good for the Hebrew children, that it was good for Paul and Silas,
that it will help you when you're dying, that it will show the way to heaven--all
these and still other lines were sung, with a sort of wailing softness, a curious
monotone, a depth of earnestness. And the man who had worked this miracle of
control by evoking out of the past his memory of a meeting with two of the vanished
great ones of the earth, stood before his people, leading them, singing with
them, his eyes aglow with an inward light. His magic had suddenly set them into
the spirit of the old camp-meeting days, the days of pioneering and hardship,
when religion meant so much to everybody, and even those who knew nothing of
such things felt them, even if but vaguely. Every heart was moved and touched,
and that old tune will sing in the memory of all who thus heard it and sung
it as long as they live.
V
GIFT FOR INSPIRING OTHERS
THE constant earnestness of Conwell, his desire to let no chance slip by of
helping a fellowman, puts often into his voice, when he preaches, a note of
eagerness, of anxiety. But when he prays, when he turns to God, his manner undergoes
a subtle and unconscious change. A load has slipped off his shoulders and has
been assumed by a higher power. Into his bearing, dignified though it was, there
comes an unconscious increase of the dignity. Into his voice, firm as it was
before, there comes a deeper note of firmness. He is apt to fling his arms widespread
as he prays, in a fine gesture that he never uses at other times, and he looks
upward with the dignity of a man who, talking to a higher being, is proud of
being a friend and confidant. One does not need to be a Christian to appreciate
the beauty and fineness of Conwell's prayers.
He is likely at any time to do the unexpected, and he is so great a man and
has such control that whatever he does seems to everybody a per- fectly natural
thing. His sincerity is so evident, and whatever he does is done so simply and
naturally, that it is just a matter of course.
I remember, during one church service, while the singing was going on, that
he suddenly rose from his chair and, kneeling beside it, on the open pulpit,
with his back to the congregation, remained in that posture for several minutes.
No one thought it strange. I was likely enough the only one who noticed it.
His people are used to his sincerities. And this time it was merely that he
had a few words to say quietly to God and turned aside for a few moments to
say them.
His earnestness of belief in prayer makes him a firm believer in answers to
prayer, and, in fact, to what may be termed the direct interposition of Providence.
Doubtless the mystic strain inherited from his mother has also much to do with
this. He has a typically homely way of expressing it by one of his favorite
maxims, one that he loves to repeat encouragingly to friends who are in difficulties
themselves or who know of the difficulties that are his; and this heartening
maxim is, ``Trust in God and do the next thing.''
At one time in the early days of his church work in Philadelphia a payment of
a thousand dollars was absolutely needed to prevent a law- suit in regard to
a debt for the church organ. In fact, it was worse than a debt; it was a note
signed by himself personally, that had become due--he was always ready to assume
personal liability for debts of his church--and failure to meet the note would
mean a measure of disgrace as well as marked church discouragement.
He had tried all the sources that seemed open to him, but in vain. He could
not openly appeal to the church members, in this case, for it was in the early
days of his pastorate, and his zeal for the organ, his desire and determination
to have it, as a necessary part of church equipment, had outrun the judgment
of some of his best friends, including that of the deacon who had gone to Massachusetts
for him. They had urged a delay till other expenses were met, and he had acted
against their advice.
He had tried such friends as he could, and he had tried prayer. But there was
no sign of aid, whether supernatural or natural.
And then, literally on the very day on which the holder of the note was to begin
proceedings against him, a check for precisely the needed one thousand dollars
came to him, by mail, from a man in the West--a man who was a total stranger
to him. It turned out that the man's sister, who was one of the Temple membership,
had written to her brother of Dr. Conwell's work. She knew nothing of any special
need for money, knew nothing whatever of any note or of the demand for a thousand
dollars; she merely outlined to her brother what Dr. Conwell was accomplishing,
and with such enthusiasm that the brother at once sent the opportune check.
At a later time the sum of ten thousand dollars was importunately needed. It
was due, payment had been promised. It was for some of the construction work
of the Temple University buildings. The last day had come, and Conwell and the
very few who knew of the emergency were in the depths of gloom. It was too large
a sum to ask the church people to make up, for they were not rich and they had
already been giving splendidly, of their slender means, for the church and then
for the university. There was no rich man to turn to; the men famous for enormous
charitable gifts have never let themselves be interested in any of the work
of Russell Conwell. It would be unkind and gratuitous to suggest that it has
been because their names could not be personally attached, or because the work
is of an unpretentious kind among unpretentious people; it need merely be said
that neither they nor their agents have cared to aid, except that one of the
very richest, whose name is the most distinguished in the entire world as a
giver, did once, in response to a strong personal application, give thirty-five
hundred dollars, this being the extent of the association of the wealthy with
any of the varied Conwell work.
So when it was absolutely necessary to have ten thousand dollars the possibilities
of money had been exhausted, whether from congregation or individuals.
Russell Conwell, in spite of his superb optimism, is also a man of deep depressions,
and this is because of the very fire and fervor of his nature, for always in
such a nature there is a balancing. He believes in success; success must come!--success
is in itself almost a religion with him--success for himself and for all the
world who will try for it! But there are times when he is sad and doubtful over
some particular possibility. And he intensely believes in prayer--faith can
move mountains; but always he believes that it is better not to wait for the
mountains thus to be moved, but to go right out and get to work at moving them.
And once in a while there comes a time when the mountain looms too threatening,
even after the bravest efforts and the deepest trust. Such a time had come--the
ten-thousand-dollar debt was a looming mountain that he had tried in vain to
move. He could still pray, and he did, but it was one of the times when he could
only think that something had gone wrong.
The dean of the university, who has been closely in touch with all his work
for many years, told me of how, in a discouragement which was the more notable
through contrast with his usual unfailing courage, he left the executive offices
for his home, a couple of blocks away
``He went away with everything looking dark before him. It was Christmas-time,
but the very fact of its being Christmas only added to his depression--Christmas
was such an unnatural time for unhappiness! But in a few minutes he came flying
back, radiant, overjoyed, sparkling with happiness, waving a slip of paper in
his hand which was a check for precisely ten thousand dollars! For he had just
drawn it out of an envelope handed to him, as he reached home, by the mail-carrier.
``And it had come so strangely and so naturally! For the check was from a woman
who was profoundly interested in his work, and who had sent the check knowing
that in a general way it was needed, but without the least idea that there was
any immediate need. That was eight or nine years ago, but although the donor
was told at the time that Dr. Conwell and all of us were most grateful for the
gift, it was not until very recently that she was told how opportune it was.
And the change it made in Dr. Conwell! He is a great man for maxims, and all
of us who are associated with him know that one of his favorites is that `It
will all come out right some time!' And of course we had a rare opportunity
to tell him that he ought never to be discouraged. And it is so seldom that
he is!''
When the big new church was building the members of the church were vaguely
disturbed by noticing, when the structure reached the second story, that at
that height, on the side toward the vacant and unbought land adjoining, there
were several doors built that opened literally into nothing but space!
When asked about these doors and their purpose, Dr. Conwell would make some
casual reply, generally to the effect that they might be excellent as fire-escapes.
To no one, for quite a while, did he broach even a hint of the great plan that
was seething in his mind, which was that the buildings of a university were
some day to stand on that land immediately adjoining the church!
At that time the university, the Temple University as it is now called, was
not even a college, although it was probably called a college. Conwell had organized
it, and it consisted of a number of classes and teachers, meeting in highly
inadequate quarters in two little houses. But the imagination of Conwell early
pictured great new buildings with accommodations for thousands! In time the
dream was realized, the imagination became a fact, and now those second-floor
doors actually open from the Temple Church into the Temple University!
You see, he always thinks big! He dreams big dreams and wins big success. All
his life he has talked and preached success, and it is a real and very practical
belief with him that it is just as easy to do a large thing as a small one,
and, in fact, a little easier! And so he naturally does not see why one should
be satisfied with the small things of life. ``If your rooms are big the people
will come and fill them,'' he likes to say. The same effort that wins a small
success would, rightly directed, have won a great success. ``Think big things
and then do them!''
Most favorite of all maxims with this man of maxims, is ``Let Patience have
her perfect work.'' Over and over he loves to say it, and his friends laugh
about his love for it, and he knows that they do and laughs about it himself.
``I tire them all,'' he says, ``for they hear me say it every day.''
But he says it every day because it means so much to him. It stands, in his
mind, as a constant warning against anger or impatience or over-haste --faults
to which his impetuous temperament is prone, though few have ever seen him either
angry or impatient or hasty, so well does he exercise self-control. Those who
have long known him well have said to me that they have never heard him censure
any one; that his forbearance and kindness are wonderful.
He is a sensitive man beneath his composure; he has suffered, and keenly, when
he has been unjustly attacked; he feels pain of that sort for a long time, too,
for even the passing of years does not entirely deaden it.
``When I have been hurt, or when I have talked with annoying cranks, I have
tried to let Patience have her perfect work, for those very people, if you have
patience with them, may afterward be of help.''
And he went on to talk a little of his early years in Philadelphia, and he said,
with sadness, that it had pained him to meet with opposition, and that it had
even come from ministers of his own denomination, for he had been so misunder-
stood and misjudged; but, he added, the momentary somberness lifting, even his
bitter enemies had been won over with patience.
I could understand a good deal of what he meant, for one of the Baptist ministers
of Philadelphia had said to me, with some shame, that at first it used actually
to be the case that when Dr. Conwell would enter one of the regular ministers'
meetings, all would hold aloof, not a single one stepping forward to meet or
greet him.
``And it was all through our jealousy of his success,'' said the minister, vehemently.
``He came to this city a stranger, and he won instant popularity, and we couldn't
stand it, and so we pounced upon things that he did that were altogether unimportant.
The rest of us were so jealous of his winning throngs that we couldn't see the
good in him. And it hurt Dr. Conwell so much that for ten years he did not come
to our conferences. But all this was changed long ago. Now no minister is so
welcomed as he is, and I don't believe that there ever has been a single time
since he started coming again that he hasn't been asked to say something to
us. We got over our jealousy long ago and we all love him.''
Nor is it only that the clergymen of his own denomination admire him, for not
long ago, such having been Dr. Conwell's triumph in the city of his adoption,
the rector of the most powerful and aristocratic church in Philadelphia voluntarily
paid lofty tribute to his aims and ability, his work and his personal worth.
``He is an inspiration to his brothers in the ministry of Jesus Christ,'' so
this Episcopalian rector wrote. ``He is a friend to all that is good, a foe
to all that is evil, a strength to the weak, a comforter to the sorrowing, a
man of God. These words come from the heart of one who loves, honors, and reverences
him for his character and his deeds.''
Dr. Conwell did some beautiful and unusual things in his church, instituted
some beautiful and unusual customs, and one can see how narrow and hasty criticisms
charged him, long ago, with sensationalism--charges long since forgotten except
through the hurt still felt by Dr. Conwell himself. ``They used to charge me
with making a circus of the church--as if it were possible for me to make a
circus of the church!'' And his tone was one of grieved amazement after all
these years.
But he was original and he was popular, and therefore there were misunderstanding
and jealousy. His Easter services, for example, years ago, became widely talked
of and eagerly anticipated because each sermon would be wrought around some
fine symbol; and he would hold in his hand, in the pulpit, the blue robin's
egg, or the white dove, or the stem of lilies, or whatever he had chosen as
the particular symbol for the particular sermon, and that symbol would give
him the central thought for his discourse, accented as it would be by the actual
symbol itself in view of the congregation. The cross lighted by elec- tricity,
to shine down over the baptismal pool, the little stream of water cascading
gently down the steps of the pool during the baptismal rite, the roses floating
in the pool and his gift of one of them to each of the baptized as he or she
left the water-- all such things did seem, long ago, so unconventional. Yet
his own people recognized the beauty and poetry of them, and thousands of Bibles
in Philadelphia have a baptismal rose from Dr. Conwell pressed within the pages.
His constant individuality of mind, his constant freshness, alertness, brilliancy,
warmth, sympathy, endear him to his congregation, and when he returns from an
absence they bubble and effervesce over him as if he were some brilliant new
preacher just come to them. He is always new to them. Were it not that he possesses
some remarkable quality of charm he would long ago have become, so to speak,
an old story, but instead of that he is to them an always new story, an always
entertaining and delightful story, after all these years.
It is not only that they still throng to hear him either preach or lecture,
though that itself would be noticeable, but it is the delightful and delighted
spirit with which they do it. Just the other evening I heard him lecture in
his own church, just after his return from an absence, and every face beamed
happily up at him to welcome him back, and every one listened as intently to
his every word as if he had never been heard there before; and when the lecture
was over a huge bouquet of flowers was handed up to him, and some one embarrassedly
said a few words about its being because he was home again. It was all as if
he had just returned from an absence of months--and he had been away just five
and a half days!
VI
MILLIONS OF HEARERS
THAT Conwell is not primarily a minister-- that he is a minister because he
is a sincere Christian, but that he is first of all an Abou Ben Adhem, a man
who loves his fellow-men, becomes more and more apparent as the scope of his
life- work is recognized. One almost comes to think that his pastorate of a
great church is even a minor matter beside the combined importance of his educational
work, his lecture work, his hospital work, his work in general as a helper to
those who need help.
For my own part, I should say that he is like some of the old-time prophets,
the strong ones who found a great deal to attend to in addition to matters of
religion. The power, the ruggedness, the physical and mental strength, the positive
grandeur of the man--all these are like the general conceptions of the big Old
Testament prophets. The suggestion is given only because it has often recurred,
and therefore with the feeling that there is something more than fanciful in
the com- parison; and yet, after all, the comparison fails in one important
particular, for none of the prophets seems to have had a sense of humor!
It is perhaps better and more accurate to describe him as the last of the old
school of American philosophers, the last of those sturdy-bodied, high- thinking,
achieving men who, in the old days, did their best to set American humanity
in the right path--such men as Emerson, Alcott, Gough, Wendell Phillips, Garrison,
Bayard Taylor, Beecher; men whom Conwell knew and admired in the long ago, and
all of whom have long since passed away.
And Conwell, in his going up and down the country, inspiring his thousands and
thousands, is the survivor of that old-time group who used to travel about,
dispensing wit and wisdom and philosophy and courage to the crowded benches
of country lyceums, and the chairs of school-houses and town halls, or the larger
and more pretentious gathering-places of the cities.
Conwell himself is amused to remember that he wanted to talk in public from
his boyhood, and that very early he began to yield to the inborn impulse. He
laughs as he remembers the variety of country fairs and school commencements
and anniversaries and even sewing-circles where he tried his youthful powers,
and all for experience alone, in the first few years, except possibly for such
a thing as a ham or a jack-knife! The first money that he ever received for
speaking was, so he remembers with glee, seventy-five cents; and even that was
not for his talk, but for horse hire! But at the same time there is more than
amusement in recalling these experiences, for he knows that they were invaluable
to him as training. And for over half a century he has affectionately remembered
John B. Gough, who, in the height of his own power and success, saw resolution
and possibilities in the ardent young hill-man, and actually did him the kindness
and the honor of introducing him to an audience in one of the Massachusetts
towns; and it was really a great kindness and a great honor, from a man who
had won his fame to a young man just beginning an oratorical career.
Conwell's lecturing has been, considering everything, the most important work
of his life, for by it he has come into close touch with so many millions--literally
millions!--of people.
I asked him once if he had any idea how many he had talked to in the course
of his career, and he tried to estimate how many thousands of times he had lectured,
and the average attendance for each, but desisted when he saw that it ran into
millions of hearers. What a marvel is such a fact as that! Millions of hearers!
I asked the same question of his private secretary, and found that no one had
ever kept any sort of record; but as careful an estimate as could be made gave
a conservative result of fully eight million hearers for his lectures; and adding
the number to whom he has preached, who have been over five million, there is
a total of well over thirteen million who have listened to Russell Conwell's
voice! And this staggering total is, if anything, an underestimate. The figuring
was done cautiously and was based upon such facts as that he now addresses an
average of over forty-five hundred at his Sunday services (an average that would
be higher were it not that his sermons in vacation time are usually delivered
in little churches; when at home, at the Temple, he addresses three meetings
every Sunday), and that he lectures throughout the entire course of each year,
including six nights a week of lecturing during vacation-time. What a power
is wielded by a man who has held over thirteen million people under the spell
of his voice! Probably no other man who ever lived had such a total of hearers.
And the total is steadily mounting, for he is a man who has never known the
meaning of rest.
I think it almost certain that Dr. Conwell has never spoken to any one of what,
to me, is the finest point of his lecture-work, and that is that he still goes
gladly and for small fees to the small towns that are never visited by other
men of great reputation. He knows that it is the little places, the out-of-the-way
places, the submerged places, that most need a pleasure and a stimulus, and
he still goes out, man of well over seventy that he is, to tiny towns in distant
states, heedless of the discomforts of traveling, of the poor little hotels
that seldom have visitors, of the oftentimes hopeless cooking and the uncleanliness,
of the hardships and the discomforts, of the unventilated and overheated or
underheated halls. He does not think of claiming the relaxation earned by a
lifetime of labor, or, if he ever does, the thought of the sword of John Ring
restores instantly his fervid earnestness.
How he does it, how he can possibly keep it up, is the greatest marvel of all.
I have before me a list of his engagements for the summer weeks of this year,
1915, and I shall set it down because it will specifically show, far more clearly
than general statements, the kind of work he does. The list is the itinerary
of his vacation. Vacation! Lecturing every evening but Sunday, and on Sundays
preaching in the town where he happens to be!
June 24 Ackley, Ia. July 11 *Brookings, S. D.
`` 25 Waterloo, Ia. `` 12 Pipestone, Minn.
`` 26 Decorah, Ia. `` 13 Hawarden, Ia.
`` 27 *Waukon, Ia. `` 14 Canton, S. D
`` 28 Red Wing, Minn. `` 15 Cherokee, Ia
`` 29 River Falls, Wis. `` 16 Pocahontas, Ia
`` 30 Northfield, Minn. `` 17 Glidden, Ia.
July 1 Faribault, Minn. `` 18 *Boone, Ia.
`` 2 Spring Valley, Minn. `` 19 Dexter, Ia.
`` 3 Blue Earth, Minn. `` 20 Indianola, Ia
`` 4 *Fairmount, Minn. `` 21 Corydon, Ia
`` 5 Lake Crystal, Minn. `` 22 Essex, Ia.
`` 6 Redwood Falls, `` 23 Sidney, Ia.
Minn. `` 24 Falls City, Nebr.
`` 7 Willmer, Minn. `` 25 *Hiawatha, Kan.
`` 8 Dawson, Minn. `` 26 Frankfort, Kan.
`` 9 Redfield, S. D. `` 27 Greenleaf, Kan.
`` 10 Huron, S. D. `` 28 Osborne, Kan.
July 29 Stockton, Kan. Aug. 14 Honesdale, Pa.
`` 30 Phillipsburg, Kan. `` 15 *Honesdale, Pa.
`` 31 Mankato, Kan. `` 16 Carbondale, Pa.
_En route to next date on_ `` 17 Montrose, Pa.
_circuit_. `` 18 Tunkhannock, Pa.
Aug. 3 Westfield, Pa. `` 19 Nanticoke, Pa.
`` 4 Galston, Pa. `` 20 Stroudsburg, Pa.
`` 5 Port Alleghany, Pa. `` 21 Newton, N. J.
`` 6 Wellsville, N. Y. `` 22 *Newton, N. J.
`` 7 Bath, N. Y. `` 23 Hackettstown, N. J.
`` 8 *Bath, N. Y. `` 24 New Hope, Pa.
`` 9 Penn Yan, N. Y. `` 25 Doylestown, Pa.
`` 10 Athens, N. Y. `` 26 Ph