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, Inoticed, 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.
