OUT OF THE HOME NEST
School Days at Wilbraham Academy. The First School Oration and Its
Humiliating End. The Hour of Prayer in the Conwell Home at the Time of
John Brown's Execution.
The carefree days of boyhood rapidly drew to a close. The serious work
of life was beginning. The bitter struggle for an education was at
hand. And because one boy did so struggle, thousands of boys now are
being given the broadest education, practically free.
Russell had gone as far in his studies as the country school could
take him. Should he stop there as his companions were doing and settle
down to the work of the farm? The outlook for anything else was almost
hopeless. He had absolutely no money, nor could his father spare him
any. He knew no other work than farming. It was a prospect to daunt
even the most determined, yet Russell Conwell is not the only farmer's
boy who has looked such a situation in the face and succeeded in spite
of it. Nor were helping hands stretched out in those days to aid
ambitious boys, as they are in these.
Asa Niles, matching Russell's progress with loving interest, told
Martin Conwell the boy ought to go to Wilbraham Academy. His own son
William was going, and he strongly urged that Charles and Russell
Conwell enter at the same time. It was no light decision for the
father to make. He needed the boys in the work on the farm. Not only
was he unable to help them, but it was a decided loss to let them go.
Long and earnest were the consultations the father and mother held.
The mother, willing to sacrifice herself to the utmost, said, of
course, "let them go," deciding she could earn something to help them
along by taking in more sewing. So it was decided, and in the fall
of 1858, Russell and his brother entered the Academy of Wilbraham, a
small town about twelve miles east from Springfield.
It was bitter, uphill work. All the money the two boys had, both to
pay their tuition and their board, they earned. They worked for the
near-by farmers. They spent long days gathering chestnuts and walnuts
at a few cents a quart. They split wood, they did anything they could
find to do. In fact, they worked as hard and as long as though no
studies were awaiting to be eagerly attacked when the exhausting
labor was finished. Such tasks interfered with their studies, so that
Russell never stood very high in his Academy classes. Part of the time
they lived in a small room on the outskirts of the village, barren of
all furniture save the absolutely necessary, and for six weeks at a
stretch, lived on nothing but mush and milk. Their clothes were of
the cheapest kind, countrified in cut and make, a decided contrast
to those of their fellow students, who came from homes of wealth and
refinement It is very easy for outsiders and older heads to talk
philosophically of being above such things, but young, sensitive boys
feel such a position keenly and none but those who have actually
endured such a martyrdom of pride know what they suffer. It takes the
grittiest kind of perseverance to face such slights, to seem not to
see the amused glance, not to hear the sneering comment, not to notice
the contemptuous shrug.
Such slights Russell endured daily from certain of his classmates,
and though he realized fully that the opinion of these was of little
value, nevertheless they hurt. But to the world he stood his ground
unflinchingly, even if there were secret heartaches. He studied
hard, and what he studied he learned. He had his own peculiar way
of studying. Once he was missing from his classes several days. The
teachers reported it to the principal, Dr. Raymond, who investigated.
He found Russell completely absorbed in history and mastering it at a
mile-a-minute gait. Dr. Raymond was wise in the management of boys,
especially such a boy as Russell, and he reported to the teachers,
"Let him alone. Conwell is working out his own education, and it isn't
worth while to disturb him."
His passion for debate and oratory found full scope in the debating
societies of the Academy. These welcomed him with open arms. He was
so quick with his witty repartee, could so readily turn an opponent's
arguments against him, that the nights it was known he would speak,
found the "Old Club" hall always crowded to hear "that boy from the
country."
Thus working as hard as though he were doing nothing else, and
studying as hard as though he were not working, Russell made his way
through two terms of the academic year. Nobody knows or ever will
know, all he suffered. Often almost on the point of starvation, yet
too proud and sensitive to ask for help, he toiled on, working by day
and studying by night. He never thought of giving up the fight and
going back to the farm. But funds completely ran out for the spring
term and he yielded the struggle for a brief while, returning to help
his father, or to earn what he could teaching school, or working on
neighboring farms, saving every cent like a very miser for the coming
year's tuition. In addition, he kept up with his studies, so that when
he returned the next fall, he went on with his class the same as if he
had attended for the entire year.
The second year was a repetition of the first, work and study,
grinding poverty, glorious perseverance. Again the spring term found
him out of funds, and this time he replenished by teaching school at
Blandford, Massachusetts. Among his pupils here was a bully of the
worst type, whose conduct had caused most of the former teachers to
resign. In fact, he was quite proud of his ability to give the school
a holiday, and as on former occasions, made his boasts that it
wouldn't be long before the new teacher would take a vacation. The
other pupils watched with eager curiosity for the conflict. In due
course of time it came. Russell at first dealt with him kindly. It
hadn't been so many years since he himself had been the cause of
numerous uproars at school. But this youth was not of the kind to be
impressed by good treatment. He simply took it as a showing of the
white feather on the part of the new teacher and became bolder in his
misconduct. On a day, when he was unruly beyond all pardon, Russell
took down the birch and invited him up before the school to receive
the usual punishment. The great occasion had come. The children waited
with bated breath. The boy refused openly, sneeringly. The next
moment, he thought lightning had struck him. He was grabbed by the
neck, held with a grip of iron despite all his struggles, whipped
before the gaping school, taken to the door and kicked out in the
snow. Then the school lessons proceeded. It made a sensation, of
course. Some of the parents wanted to request the new teacher to
resign. But others rallied to his support and protested to the school
board that the right man had been found at last. And so Russell held
the post until the school term was over. Thirty-five years after,
Russell Conwell, pastor of the Baptist Temple, was asked to head a
petition to get this same evil doer out of Sing Sing prison.
But despite his hard work and hard study at Wilbraham, the spirit of
fun cropped out as persistently as in his younger days at the country
school. A chance to play a good joke was not to be missed. At one of
the school entertainments, a student whom few liked was to take part.
Relatives of his had given a large sum of money to the Academy, and
on this account he somewhat lorded it over the other boys. He was, in
addition, foppish in his dress, and on account of his money, position,
and tailor, felt the country boys of the class a decided drawback to
his social status. So the country boys decided to "get even," and they
needed no other leader while Russell Conwell was about. Finally it
came the dandy's turn to go on the platform to deliver a recitation.
Just as he stepped out of the little anteroom before the audience,
Russell, with deft fingers, fastened a paper jumping-jack to the tail
of his coat, where it dangled back of his legs in plain view of the
audience but unobserved by himself. With every gesture the figure
jumped, climbed, contorted, and went through all manner of gymnastics.
The more enthusiastic became the young orator, the more active the
tiny figure in his rear. The audience went into convulsions. Utterly
unable to tell what was the matter, he finally retired, red and
confused, and the audience wiped away the tears of laughter.
It was at one of these entertainments that Russell himself met with a
bitter defeat. A public debate was announced in which he was to take
part. His classmates had spread abroad the story of his eloquence and
the hall was packed to hear him. Knowing that it would be a great
occasion and conscious of his poor clothes, he determined to make an
impression by his speech. He prepared it with the utmost care, and
to "make assurance doubly sure," committed it to memory, a thing he
rarely did. His turn came. There was an expectant rustle through the
audience, some almost audible comments on his clothes, his height, his
thinness. He cleared his voice. He started to say the first word. It
was gone. Frantically he searched his memory for that speech. His mind
was a blank. Again he cleared his voice and wrestled fiercely with his
inner consciousness. Only one phrase could he remember, and shouting
in his thunderous tones, "Give me liberty or give me death," sat down,
"not caring much which he got," as Burdette says, "so it came quickly
and plenty of it."
It was while at Wilbraham that he laid down text books and stepped
aside for a brief space to pay honor to a hero. Sorrow hung like a
pall over the little home at South Worthington. In far-off Virginia,
a brave, true-hearted man had raised a weak arm against the hosts of
slavery, raised it and been stricken down. John Brown had been tried,
convicted and sentenced to be hanged. The day of his execution was a
day of mourning in the Conwell home. As the hour for the deed drew
near, the father called the family into the little living room where
Brown had so often sat among them. And during the hour while the
tragedy was enacted in Virginia, the family sat silent with bowed
heads doing reverence to the memory of this man who with single-minded
earnestness went forward so fearlessly when others held back, to
strike the shackles from those in chains.
It was a solemn hour, an hour in which worldly ambitions faded before
the sublime spectacle of a man freely, calmly giving his very life
because he had dared to live out his honest belief that all men should
be free. Like a kaleidoscope, Brown's history passed through Russell's
mind as he sat there. He saw the brutal whipping of the little slave
boy which had so aroused Brown's anger when, a small boy himself, he
led cattle through the western forests. Russell's hands clenched as
he pictured it and he felt willing to fight as Brown had done,
single-handed and alone if need be, to right so horrible a wrong.
He could see how the idea had grown with John Brown's growth and
strengthened with his strength until he came to manhood with a single
purpose dominating his life, and a will to do it that could neither be
broken nor bent. He pictured him in Kansas when son after son was laid
on the altar of liberty as unflinchingly as Abraham held the knife at
his own son's breast at God's behest. Then the first "blow at Harper's
Ferry in the cause of liberty for all men--the capture of the town
of three thousand by twenty-two men, and now this--the public
execution--the fearless spirit that looked only to God for guidance,
that feared neither man nor man's laws, stopped on the very threshold
of the supreme effort for which he had planned his life. Stopped? It
was the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry that was the first to
sing on its way South, that song, afterward sung by the armies of a
nation to the steady tramp of feet,
"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on."