WAR'S ALARMS
College Days at Yale. The Outbreak of the Civil War. Patriotic
Speechmaking. New York and Henry Ward Beecher.
School days at Wilbraham ended, Russell determined to climb higher. As
yet, he scarcely knew the purpose of his studying. Ambitions seethed
in him to know, to be able to do. He only realized that he must have
the tools ready when the work came. Not daunted, therefore, by the
bitter experiences at Wilbraham, Russell determined to go to Yale.
This meant a stern fight indeed, one that would call out all his
reserves of determination, perseverance and indifference to the jeers
and jibes of unthinking and unfeeling classmates. But he did not
flinch at the prospect. His brother Charles went with him, and in
the fall of '60 they entered Yale College. If poverty was bitter at
Wilbraham, it was bitterer here. They were utter strangers among
hundreds of boys from all parts of the country, the majority of them
coming from homes of luxury and with money for all their needs. At
Wilbraham, there had been a certain number of boys from their own
section, many of them poor, though few so poor as themselves. They had
not felt so altogether alone as they did at Yale. It is perhaps for
this reason that so little is known of Russell Conwell's career at
Yale. He was as unobtrusive as possible. "Silent as the Sphinx," some
describe him. His sensitive nature withdrew into itself, and since he
could not mingle with his classmates on a ground of equality, he kept
to himself, alone, silent, studying, working, but telling no one how
keenly he felt the difference between his own position and that of his
fellow students. He worked for the nearby farmers as at Wilbraham and
did anything that he could to earn money. But his clothes were poor,
his manner of living the cheapest, and except in classes, his fellow
students met him little.
He took the law course and followed fully the classical course at the
same time--a feat no student at that time had ever done and few, if
any, since. How he managed it, working as hard as he did at the
same time, to earn money, seems impossible to comprehend. His iron
constitution, for one thing, that seemed capable of standing any
strain, helped him. And his remarkable ability to photograph whole
pages of his text books on his memory was another powerful ally. He
could reel off page after page of Virgil, Homer, Blackstone--anything
he "memorized" in this unusual fashion. Well for him that he grasped
the opportunity to learn this method presented him as a child. But
it has always been one of the traits of his character to see
opportunities where others walk right over them, and to seize and make
use of them.
He did not register in the classical course as he was too poor to pay
the tuition fee, nor did he join any of the clubs, as he could not
afford it. He seldom appeared in debates or the moot courts, for
he was so shabbily dressed he felt he would not be welcome. It was
undoubtedly these humiliating experiences, combined with certain of
his studies and reading, that caused him to drift into an atheistic
train of thought. Working hard, living poor, desiring so much, yet
on all sides he saw boys with all the opportunities he longed
for, utterly indifferent to them. He saw boys spending in riotous
dissipation the money that would have meant so much to him. He saw
them recklessly squandering health, time, priceless educational
opportunities, for the veriest froth of pleasure. He saw them sowing
the wind, yet to his inexperienced eyes not reaping the whirlwind, but
faring far more prosperously than he who worked and studied hard and
yet had not what they threw so lightly away. It was all at variance
with his mother's teaching, with such of the preaching at the little
white church as he had heard. Bible promises, as he interpreted them,
were not fulfilled. So he scoffed, cynically, bitterly, and said, as
many another has done before he has learned the lessons of the world's
hard school, "There is no God." And having said it, he took rather a
pride in it and said it openly, boastingly.
As at Wilbraham, funds ran out before the school year was completed
and he left Yale and taught district school during the day and vocal
and instrumental music in the evenings.
But into this eager, undaunted struggle for an education came the
trumpet call to arms. With the memory of John Brown like a living coal
in his heart, with the pictures of the cowering, runaway slaves ever
before his eyes, he flung away his books and was one of the first to
enlist. But his father interfered. Russell was only eighteen. Martin
Conwell went to the recruiting officer and had his name taken from the
rolls. It was a bitter disappointment. But since he might not help
with his hands, he spoke with his tongue. All his pent-up enthusiasm
flowed out in impassioned speeches that brought men by the hundreds to
the recruiting offices. His fame spread up and down the Connecticut
valley and wherever troops were to be raised, "the boy" was in demand.
"His youthful oratory," says the author of "Scaling the Eagle's Nest,"
"was a wonderful thing which drew crowds of excited listeners wherever
he went. Towns sent for him to help raise their quotas of soldiers,
and ranks speedily filled before his inspiring and patriotic
speeches. In 1862 I remember a scene at Whitman Hall in Westfield,
Massachusetts, which none who were there can forget. Russell had
delivered two addresses there before. On that night there were two
addresses before his by prominent lawyers, but there was evident
impatience to hear 'The boy.' When he came forward there was the most
deafening applause. He really seemed inspired by miraculous powers.
Every auditor was fascinated and held closely bound. There was for a
time breathless suspense, and then at some telling sentence the whole
building shook with wild applause. At its close a shower of bouquets
from hundreds of ladies carpeted the stage in a moment, and men from
all parts of the hall rushed forward to enlist."
The adulation and flattery showered upon him were enough to turn any
other's head. But it made no impression upon him. Heart, mind and soul
he was wrapped up in the cause. He was burning with zeal to help the
oppressed and suffering. His words poured from a heart overflowing
with pity, love, and indignation. Never once did he think of himself,
only of those in bonds crying, "Come over and help us."
When Lincoln made his great address in Cooper Institute in 1860,
Russell was there. It was a longer journey from New England to New
York in those days than it is now, and longer yet for a boy who had so
little money, but he let no obstacle keep him away.
He utilized his visit also to hear Beecher, the man who had taken so
powerful a hold of his childish fancy. Ever since those boyish days
when his mother read Beecher's sermons to him, and standing on the big
gray rock he had imagined himself another Beecher, he had longed to
hear this great man. It was only this childish desire holding fast to
him through the year that took him now, for church-going itself had no
attraction for him.
He sat on the steps of the gallery and heard this wonderful man preach
a sermon in which he illustrated an auctioneer selling a negro girl at
the block. He sat as one entranced. So did the immense audience, held
spellbound by the scene so graphically pictured. It was the first
interesting sermon he had ever heard. It made a tremendous impression
on him, not only in itself, but as a vivid contrast between the
formal, rattling-of-dry-bones sermon and the live, vital discourse
that takes hold of a man's mind and heart and compels him to go out
in the world and do things for the good of his fellow men. Long it
remained in his memory, but the greatest inspiration from it did not
come till later years, when suddenly it stood forth as if illumined,
to throw a brilliant radiance on a path he had decided to tread.