The Story of Fifty-Seven Cents

By Robert Shackleton

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Title: The Story of Fifty-Seven Cents and Others

Author: Robert Shackleton

Release Date: July 31, 2011 [EBook #36917]

Language: English


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                     The Story of Fifty-Seven Cents

                         _By_ ROBERT SHACKLETON


                        The Story of the Sword
                    The Beginning at Old Lexington
                    The Story of Fifty-Seven Cents
                        His Power as a Preacher
                       Gift for Inspiring Others


    VOLUME 6

    NATIONAL
    EXTENSION UNIVERSITY

    597 Fifth Avenue, New York

    ACRES OF DIAMONDS

    Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers
    Printed in the United States of America




I

THE STORY OF THE SWORD[1]


[Footnote 1: _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[2] 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.

[Footnote 2: _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 execution 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
captain; and I could only take him along as 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 would 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 covered 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
without 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 moment 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 in 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 fellow-man, 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
perfectly 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 misunderstood 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 electricity, 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!





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