Russell H. Conwell and his work, one man's interpretation of life

Front matter

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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library

Foreword

HE biggest problem that confronts a man is life. It includes all problems. ‘To find a satisfactory solution is every man’s earnest desire and persistent quest.

How others have solved the problem is often enlightening. Particularly do the records of those whose lives have been greatly useful to the world have much in them of help, especially when they began life with none of the aids considered necessary to achievement, yet have achieved.

Such is the career of Russel H. Conwell. He started life as a penniless boy on a rocky New England farm. He had neither money nor influence to help toward success. Yet he achieved success in great measure— a success that ranks higher than the gaining of wealth or fame, though these have been won—in that its finest flower is great service to his fellowmen.

The road he hewed for himself may prove both interesting and helpful to trace. This record of it is offered with the hope that the sign-posts along the way may be of use to others in faring toward their goal.

This book was revised by the author and approved by Doctor Conwell a few months before his death. A new and final chapter tells of his last days on earth and gathers a few tributes to his memory.

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Contents

Tue Story OF THE SWORD.

Doctor Conwell’s Favorite Occupation. He Tells the Cause of His Unceasing Work...............

THe Man He Grew To BE.

CHAPTER II Tur Man He Grew to Be

His Life Harvest. His» Wide Actintes. His Many Charities. His Avms wn Lnfe.

tragic death of John Ring and the vow taken then by the boy of nineteen to do two men’s work.

How has the vow been kept? What is the fruitage of these years? Russell Conwell lived to pass the four-score mark. One might be justified in saying that his life-work came to its harvest. What, then, is this harvest? What does Russell Conwell represent in the eyes of his fellowmen, and what was he, when he had come to those years when one is supposed to rest from his labors?

Until the very end, Russell Conwell was still a driving forcee—a, resistless energy. He impressed at once with a sense of power and vitality. He was tall, broadshouldered and deep-chested. His features were rugged and strong; his glance, penetrating but kindly. He was keen to see and quick to do. His vision was still toward the future. When a work to which he had put his hand was accomplished, he did not stop. He did the next thing—and he did it at once.

Russell Conwell built up from almost nothing the largest Protestant Church in America, and baptized ik: milestones of the years are many since the

THE MAN HE GREW TO BE 27 there almost ten thousand adults. Through the University which he founded, life has been broadened and enriched for men and women numbering into the hundred thousand who otherwise might not have had the opportunity for this greater measure of living. Through the hospitals which have grown out of his work, health and healing have been brought to the sick poor. His lectures have given material aid to thousands of poor students, and inspiration that has meant success and happiness to literally millions of hearers.

Although he had established for working men and women a university that annually enrolls thousands of students, he still foresaw the possibilities of branch universities in every ward of Philadelphia, where those who earn their living can, when working hours are over, quickly reach classrooms near their homes. He kept pressing toward this goal.

Through his close touch with educational matters and because of his own struggles as a boy to secure an education, Russell Conwell recently discerned in certain legislation an attempt to shut the poor boy out of the professions. He not only felt the injustice of this, but he saw what it would mean to the American people if not prevented. He immediately raised his voice in protest. Wherever he spoke he gave a stirring warning of this danger to democracy, with the result that newspapers and magazines took the matter up and the evil is likely to be scotched in its inception. (See Appendix, ‘‘ Peril to Democracy.’’)

Russell Conwell stood ever for forwardness perhaps more than for anything else; for not resting content with what he had done, but for vigorously going on to do more.

Doctor Conwell stood also for another thing. He was a penniless millionaire. He was a rich man without a bank account. He had little of what the world calls wealth. This was not because of inability to earn. He could have been many times a millionaire had he been so inclined. Yet, without money, he represents success—a success surely as great as that to which any millionaire can point.

Dr. Newell Dwight Hillis, pastor of Henry Ward Beecher’s old church in Brooklyn, accounts Doctor Conwell among the world’s foremost one hundred men. In a contest in a national magazine, his name was selected for the Hall of Fame, and the people of Pennsylvania voted him as one of its three most distinguished citizens. In 1923, he was given the Philadelphia award founded by Edward W. Bok in 1921, one of the highest honors that could come to him as a citizen of Philadelphia. Thus stood Doctor Conwell in the public eye. Though sincerely appreciative of these worldly honors they occupied very little of his attention.

Russell Conwell was concerned chiefly with the work he felt he must do as long as he lived. His one desire was, aS a writer has expressed it, ‘‘to put his ideals over.” His sincere query to himself always was, ‘‘ Did my message drive home? Is some one benefited by what I have said or done today?’”’ And this is not said egotistically. He believed that every one is in this life for a purpose; that it is his duty to find that purpose and fulfil it. One might say, both in what Doctor Conwell achieved in the past and in what he was still desirous of achieving, that he represented full living; for he was never niggardly of life, either through a desire to hoard it for himself, or through fear of draining its powers too soon.

CHAPTER III Doctor CoNWELL’s ANCESTRY

The Conwell Family Tree. Doctor Conwell Tells His Views on Ancestry.

His father was Martin Conwell, a Massachusetts

farmer—a tall, vigorous man, “always in a

hurry,’ says Doctor Conwell, in recollecting him. Many say that Doctor Conwell resembled his father.

His mother was Miranda Wickham. She came of a family from the central part of New York State. She was slender, with a thin, earnest face and large blue eyes, was quiet and loving; a great reader; a devoted student of the Bible, and a tireless worker. ‘‘She seems to have been an inexhaustible person,’ Doctor Conwell says, in speaking of her, ‘‘She never seemed to get tired. I remember her as always working, working, working.”

Martin Conwell’s father was a Southerner—Martin Conwell, of Baltimore. The injection of the hotblooded, impulsive, Southern temperament into this New England family 1s said by many who knew them to have left its traces upon them.

The members of this family were demonstrative and expressed their feelings—especially their affections—with less reserve than the usual New Englander. The imaginative faculty was strongly developed, and it was not checked or restrained. In many qualities of the heart and mind, they exhibited the warmth

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B: birth Russell Conwell was a New Englander.

and impulsiveness of the South rather than the cold restraint of the North.

Behind Martin Conwell of Baltimore stretched a long line of ancestors reaching, so far as records and family traditions go, to the days of William the Conqueror of England. They were men who did things. One of them—John Conwell—fought for the preservation of the Anglo-Saxon tongue in England when there was danger of its being swept away by the Norman French. The fact that they were among the first to seek homes in a new land shows their mettle. They were of the kind to whom the adventure of the undertaking and the hope of greater liberty made an instant appeal.

The mother’s family were of the scholarly, less adventurous, sort. Some were school teachers and professors, and one was quite an authority on certain branches of zoology, especially sea-shells. Through her came strongly the thought of study; of books; of education and its value; of what the members of her family had done in these lines and what it meant to them.

Thus, in the family into which Russell Conwell was born, were blended the practical, shrewd New England character; the impulsive, romantic, imaginative Southern temperament, the eager quest of adventure and zest of the pioneer, and the thirst for know]ledge of the scholar. Whether the generations that have gone have any direct effect upon those that come after is a much-discussed question today. In regard to ancestry, Doctor Conwell, in his biography of James A. Garfield, has this to say:

‘“Having no faith in the theory that the men of today are but the aggregation of experiences and development in the past, and giving but little credit to the

DOCTOR CONWELL’S ANCESTRY 31 aristocratic claim that ancestry makes the nobleman, we give the line of the Garfield family for the benefit of such as may deem it important.

“The tendency of the records is to show that all the individuals of the different races are born into the world with very similar characteristics and with much greater equality in mental endowments than aristocracy is willing to admit. It shows, too, that it is not what our fathers were so much as what we make ourselves that determines our right to nobility or praise. Ancestry and health wield a perceptible and sometimes a strong influence; but the capital we are born with may be increased a hundredfold by our own exertion. It is this increase which constitutes the noblest claim to human greatness.”

CHAPTER IV THe CoNWELL Home WitTHouT AND WITHIN

Doctor Conwell Describes the Daily Life of His Boyhood. The Mental and Spiritual Atmosphere of the Home.

made for themselves, and in which Russell H. Conwell was born, February 15, 1848, was the home of a poor New England farmer of the middle of the last century. It was situated in the Hampshire Highlands of the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts, near the town of South Worthington.

The house was small, consisting of two rooms and a lean-to downstairs, and an attic upstairs. It stood on ground that sloped upward from one of the little flat, grassy meadows found so frequently in the Berkshires. Through this meadow flashed a mountain stream, and encircling it were hills and woods. Through a gap in these hills could be seen, far in the distance, Mount Tom.

It was a beautiful location. The swift stream that flowed in front of the house; the vast woods that enclosed the little home; and the ranges of mountains that rose against the horizon made a scene of loveliness that delighted the gaze wherever it rested. And this beauty was ever changing. Spring made the hills a mist of delicate colors. Summer transformed them into a riotous sea of billowing foliage. Autumn draped them with a glorious tapestry of red and gold and orange; and winter changed them into a sparkling fairyland of ice and snow.

[= home that Martin and Miranda Conwell

Nature had lavished beauty on this spot; but she had given little else. The farm was rocky and unproductive. Martin Conwell toiled early and late to wrest from it a living. Even then he had to work at other tasks to eke out the family income. He labored as a stonemason, and in the little lean-to of the house he opened a store.

The house inside was sparsely furnished, and to the casual observer it was a home of poverty. Miranda Conwell worked as hard as her husband and, in addition to her household duties of caring for a family of five, she also took in sewing. There were two children besides Russell: a brother, Charles, older, and a sister, Harriet, younger. Of this home-life Doctor Conwell says:

“Tt is a difficult matter for me to realize that any person should now care what was done in those years so long gone by. ‘That little cottage in the Hampshire Highlands of the Berkshire Hills had but three rooms and a woodshed; it was very rudely finished and poorly furnished. As I look upon it now, it seems to have been almost a hovel in its construction, being only one story and a half high and about thirty feet square. The half story under the roof was not finished, except that the floor was of rough plank, and it was reached by a ruce stairway of slabs from the sawmill.

“The home life in my father’s house was very plain and simple in the extreme. I had one brother, older than myself, and one sister, younger than myself; consequently there were five in our family.

“‘Qur food consisted chiefly of Indian pudding and baked potatoes. Those luxuries loom high on the horizon of time, and the sweetness of their joys are engraved in stone upon the hillside of my memory.

“My father always began the day at sunrise, and we worked an hour or two before breakfast. After our simple repast, which was sometimes varied by salt pork and cider-apple sauce, my father always read the Bible and led in the family prayers. He often commented upon the Scriptures when the reading brought out any special lesson for the good of the children. And there—kneeling by the old fireplace— he gave to his children the foundations of morality, industry and religion, which saved them from many a fall in after years and instinctively caused them to avoid bad company.

‘‘My mother was always engaged in some occupation having for its end the payment of the mortgage on the farm. ‘That mortgage was the great affliction of our family; its ghost appeared on every occasion and it was often the topic of my father’s prayer. He was a strong believer in the duty of every prayerful Christian to answer his own prayers when he could do so; and he taught his children to believe that it was wrong to ask the Lord to do anything for them which they could do for themselves. ‘To him prayer was work and man’s extremity was the Lord’s opportunity. He once said that neither God nor man is going to push the team of a man who is lying beside the road smoking. J remember that he told us, when we were shingling the barn, that we should remember, ‘If the world sees a man coming very fast, every one will get out of the way for him and will turn in and push as he goes by.’

‘“My father and mother were both very plain persons brought up in the ranks of the hard-working poor of the New England hills) They had none of the luxuries of life and were very sparsely supplied with the necessities. When I look down upon this

THE BIRTHPLACE OF RUSSELL H. CONWELL

Russet, H. ConweLt was Born NEAR SoutH WoRTHINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS, FEBRUARY 15, 1843 old home-place now from Eagle’s Nest Rock at the top of the mountain, I cannot realize that lawns, fields, gardens and the newly-made lake are in the same locality as that old cottage with its little barn and woodshed and pig-pen. Mark Twain very readily and helpfully said, ‘The fault with old men’s memories is that they remember so many things that ain’t so;’ and I do find it a difficult thing to appreciate the extreme poverty in which the farmers lived in New England in the days when I was born.

“The newly-cleared mountain sides, the projecting ledges, the boulders and innumerable small stones which made it almost impossible to plow any field, did somehow return to the cultivators enough to enable them to sustain life. Our little cellar was only twelve feet square and yet, as I recall my childhood dreams, it was a large dark cavern wherein it was dangerous to travel in the dark from the foot of the stairway to the cider barrel or potato bin. ‘The snow drifted so deep in the winter that we sometimes could tunnel under the drifts between the kitchen door and the barn—a distance of about twenty yards.

‘‘In the days of our greatest prosperity we had three cows, a horse and two pigs. My father bought the farm the year he was married, agreeing to pay $1,200 for the three hundred and fifty acres, mostly rocks; and it took him twelve years of hard work, strict economy and privation to pay off the mortgage. My mother used to work late every evening on suspenders or boys’ ready-made clothing, when she was not engaged in spinning wool for the old loom in the attic.

“Our cooking was done at a large fireplace and the kettles hung on an iron crane. ‘There comes to me now a strong appetite when I think what sweet odors came from those kettles as mother swung them out from over the fireplace to test their contents with a long wooden fork.

‘My mother made the cloth for our clothes, cut out the garments and sewed them with her own fingers until my sister was old enough to help. I well remember the time my father persuaded mother to take a little money out of the old pewter tea-pot in the spare room and go to the woolen factory in the town of Chester Village and buy enough cloth to make my brother and me each a pair of trousers. That was a proud day for us when we made our appearance in school in all that finery and it awakened as much pain as joy— as much jealousy as love. JI remember a pug-nosed girl on the seat in front of me who turned round, curled her lips and stuck out her tongue, thus delivering a volley of shrapnel and gas-laden bombs, which was worse to bear than the shot and shell of Antietam. I saw the grave of her husband in Blandford a short time ago, and by the date on the tombstone I knew that he died one year after their marriage; since which time I have thought that the woes of life are more equally divided than we sometimes think.

“We boys were expected to do the chores at the barn; to bring in the wash water and the drinking water from a distant spring in the pasture; to help cut the wood in the forest; to chop it at the back door; to pile it carefully in the woodshed; and bring in regularly a supply every night for the fire the next morning. We were also expected to perform all kinds of household duties, such as washing the dishes and sometimes cooking the buckwheat cakes for meals; and we became very skilful in taking the vegetables and bread from the fireplace when the baking and boiling were done. We sometimes assisted in rough sewing, and always filled the straw beds in the fall with fresh straw from the fields.

“No intoxicating liquors were allowed in our house except on the doctor’s prescription in time of illness; and the evils of intemperance were often called to our attention by the example of some intemperate neighbors. We were taken to church with our parents every Sunday, and were early placed in the little Sunday-school which followed the morning service. My father was sometimes very severe with his boys but altogether indulgent toward my sister. She was an anchor which we kept ever at the windward; and I fear that when we so often divided our little store of candy—or gave her the largest half of an apple —it was done for the very selfish motive of winning her friendship that she might stand between us and our father when punishment was near for having whittled the pew in church or eaten an apple when the congregation was at prayer. She was our House of Refuge when we had been fishing instead of hoeing the corn and, if it had not been for her wholesome fear of her mother, I do not think our father would have ever punished us for anything when our sister was near to take our part. I recall that he often went into the edge of the woods to cut a very supple stick with which to punish me severely for some disobedience; and when his stern face appeared, with stick in hand, I knew there was only one way out of the trouble which was beyond all human language to describe, for he had a strong hand and a determined disposition to make his children do right. But, suddenly, my sister would appear from some corner, when she heard my outcry, and would rush up and catch father’s arm. He would look at her an instant, then indignantly throw the stick on the ground, and turn, muttering, to his work.

“The memory of that sister—her love and self-sacrifice, and the complete control she had of father— is one of the most beautiful things in all of life’s memories. Wherever my brother and I went we always corresponded very frequently with our sister and gave her all the details of our various experiences. She always read her letters to father and mother and wrote for them when she was at home. She was an untiring nurse, a thorough school teacher, and patient to an unusual degree. God bless the sisters!

“My brother was a mechanical genius and became a civil engineer after his term of service in the Civil War. He died from consumption contracted while in the service. He was at the time of his death on the staff of General Warren, surveying the Mississippi River for the Government. |

‘A flock of sheep on the hillside were but so many white spots to me in my boyhood; but that one pet lamb and its tragic death, when we needed something to eat, is a fearful chapter in life’s history. That one faithful dog who loved us more because we were poor; that one old cow who warmed places for our bare feet when she arose on a frosty morning; that one old mare who was so wise that she could let down the pasture bars with her teeth; that one squirrel in the old box with slats nailed across the top; that one tame crow and the short-lived woodchuck who made up in a kind of affection, for the kicks of the cow, the horns of the bull and the bite of the blacksnake, are intense facts coming down through life with a gleam of their own.

“So, probably, we boys were better off with one book, with one hard bed in an old attic, with no theater, with no seashore excursions, than if we had been let loose to tear up a great library and throw spitballs at antique paintings. There was one tiger lily which grew out by the old rock in our little vegetable garden which I have kept alive through years, and over which I now sometimes weep as I think of the generations who have looked carelessly upon it and have wondered why it was allowed to grow in the lawn amid the moderm improvements which surround the rebuilt old homestead. if have seen the time since those days, when I spent my last penny for a loaf of bread, and when a hard floor in the city of Boston was the only bed that my wife and I could afford. But that bitter experience has made bread as sweet as cake and shelter a blessing ever since.

‘‘He was divinely wise who said, ‘It was well for me that I bore the burden in my Oh We were kept busy on the farm; in fact, I think the best and greatest university of life is attended by the country boy on the hillside farm far away from the railway station, where he is shut in by the storms of fall and spring and especially imprisoned in the hard, long winter. We had to make our own implements and do everything connected with every trade which touched our lives. We tanned woodchuck skins and prepared the pelts of foxes and muskrats. We stuffed birds, prepared sauces, canned vegetables, dried apples, built sheds and lean-tos, and used the plane and saw to make stanchions for the cattle. We made wagons, sleds, desks, bedsteads, hoes, plows and harness. We manufactured water pipe, Jocks, kitchen utensils, blank school books, pens, pencils, sugar-buckets, traps and maple sugar.

“We filed saws, hewed lumber, peeled hemlock bark and gathered herbs of all kinds for medicines and antidotes for poison. We cultivated wild roses and hollyhocks. We studied agriculture to send the largest potatoes to the County Fair. We set window glass, made chains for the ‘Old Oaken Bucket,’ hewed stone, made plaster, laid walls, made our own envelopes out of wrapping paper, and used the white birch bark for letter writing. We were compelled by necessity to invent some new thing almost every day, to make some new combination; and the practical teacher in that district school spent at least one-half of her time in answering questions from the inquisitive pupils who were ever asking how to do things.

‘““My father died at the age of sixty and my mother at the age of sixty-three, both of them having been worn out with ceaseless work through so many years of struggle with poverty and care.

“The old farm in the Highlands of Hampshire County, Massachusetts—almost the highest point of land in the state—has been my retreat through these many years when, overworked or in great sorrow, I have desired to escape from the ‘madding crowd.’ Charles Dickens told me at his home in Gad’s Hill, that, he was working with the hope of securing enough money before he died to surround his little estate with a high wall like that which Lord Tennyson had put around his garden. Mr. Dickens had become so weary of the adulation and publicity of his position that he wished to shut himself in completely from the world, and allow nothing to come in the gate but the necessities of life and one or two of his most trusted friends.

‘Often in my experience, which has been far humbler and far more private than that of Dickens, I have gone back to the old home and found solace, strength and hope returning; and I sallied forth, after a few days, fresh for further effort. The possession through life, of that dear old mountain home, has been one of the gifts of God, immeasurable in its comforting associations and constant in its influence for good, from the examples of loved ones of childhood who still seem to people it at every twilight hour.”’

The life of the Conwell family was, therefore, one of hard work, self-denial and poverty. But it was not sordid or unhappy, as is often the case in homes where poverty prevails. Martin and Miranda Conwell did not let themselves become entirely absorbed in the task of making a living. They took a keen and active interest in the affairs of the day, and maintained in the home an atmosphere that lifted it above the deadening routine of constant labor.

Martin Conwell was a tireless reader. The fund of information he thus acquired was always at the service of his neighbors. People came from all parts of the county to consult him, and their inquiries ranged from corn planting and potato raising to the building of houses and the making of roads.

His sympathies were broad and humanitarian. “The only point upon which I ever knew my father and mother to seriously differ,’”’ said Doctor Conwell, in speaking of his father, ‘‘was about his insistence upon always having an extra plate on the table for anyone who might be going by at mealtime, and who asked for food.

“My mother did not fully approve of this practice, but he steadfastly adhered to it. I remember one man who came rather regularly—a fellow by the name of Patch. He was a seedy-looking individual— no doubt a tramp. ‘The fact that he took advantage of our hospitality made no difference to my father. The man was hungry and that was sufficient. That place at our table was rarely vacant; but even when it was, it was significant and had its influence. It was a silent spokesman for true hospitality.”

Martin Conwell showed his love for his fellowmen in other ways, of graver and more serious import to himself and his family. He was one of those who helped fugitive slaves to escape to Canada and, though he was in danger of imprisonment for the assistance he gave, the personal risk never deterred him. The stand he took in this matter showed his fearlessness in the cause of right, and his determination to side with it regardless of the consequences.

“Many of the early years of my life were overshadowed by the fear of "my father’s arrest by the United States marshal,’’ Doctor Conwell has said, in telling of those exciting days when the serenity of that little home was disturbed by the sudden appearance of one of these fugitives.

“The anti-slavery movement had reached a state of such excitement in 1845 that many people of New England thought it to be their sacred duty to disobey the Federal law which required the return of an escaping slave to his master in the South. Among all the recollections of childhood there is none so sombre as the memory of those fearful days when mother and us children were in constant fear that father might be taken away to prison. |