WESTWARD
Resignation from Army. Admission to Bar. Marriage. Removal to
Minnesota. Founding of Minneapolis Y.M.C.A. and of the Present
"Minneapolis Tribune." Burning of Home. Breaking Out of Wound.
Appointed Emigration Agent to Germany by Governor of Minnesota. Joins
Surveying Party to Palestine. Near to Death in Paris Hospital. Journey
to New York for Operation in Bellevue Hospital. Return to Boston.
When Colonel Conwell was able to leave the hospital, he was still
unable to assume active duty in the field, and he was sent to
Nashville for further rest and treatment. Here he reported to General
Thomas and was instructed to proceed to Washington with a despatch for
General Logan. Colonel Conwell started, but the rough traveling of
those days opened his wounds afresh and he completely broke down
at Harper's Ferry. Too weak longer to resist, he yielded to the
entreaties of his friends, sent in his resignation and returned home
for rest and nursing. Before he fully recovered, peace was declared.
Free to resume his studies, he entered the law office of Judge W.S.
Shurtleff, of Springfield, Massachusetts, his former Colonel, read law
there for a short time, then entered the Albany University, where he
graduated.
Shortly after passing his examination at the bar and receiving his
degree, he was married at Chicopee Falls, March 8, 1865, to Miss
Jennie P. Hayden, one of his pupils in the district school at West
Granville, Massachusetts, and later one of his most proficient music
scholars. Her brothers were in his company, and when Company F was in
camp at Springfield after the first enlistment, she was studying at
Wilbraham and there often saw her soldier lover. Anxious days and
years they were for her that followed, as they were for every other
woman with father, husband, brother or sweetheart in the terrible
conflict that raged so long. But she endured them with that silent
bravery that is ever the woman's part, that strong, steady courage
that can sit at home passive, patient, never knowing but that
life-long sorrow and heartache are already at the threshold.
Immediately after their marriage, they went West and finally settled
in Minneapolis. Colonel Conwell opened a law office, and while waiting
for clients acted as agent for a real estate firm in the sale of land
warrants. He also began to negotiate for the sale of town lots. This
not being enough for a man who utilized every minute, he became local
correspondent for the "St. Paul Press." Nor did he stop here, though
most men would have thought their hands by this time about full. He
took an active part in local politics and canvassed the settlement and
towns for the Republican and temperance tickets. He also was actively
interested in the schools, and not only advocated public schools and
plenty of them, but was a frequent visitor to the city and district
schools, talking to the children in that interesting, entertaining
way that always clothes some helpful lesson in a form long to be
remembered.
True to the faith he had found in the little Southern hospital, he
joined the First Baptist Church of Saint Paul. But mere joining was
not sufficient. He must work for the cause, and he opened a business
men's noon prayer-meeting in his law office at Minneapolis, rather a
novel undertaking in those days and in the then far West. For three
months, only three men attended. But nothing daunted, he persevered.
That trait in his character always shone out the more brightly,
the darker the outlook. Those three men were helped, and that was
sufficient reason that the prayer-meeting be continued. Eventually it
prospered and resulted finally in a permanent organization from which
grew the Minneapolis Y.M.C.A.
Poor though he was, and he started in the West with nothing, he made
friends everywhere. His speeches soon made him widely known. His
sincerity, his unselfish desire to help others, his earnestness to aid
in all good works brought him, as always, a host of loyal, devoted
followers. A skating club of some hundred members made him their
President, and his first law case in the West came to him through this
position.
A skating carnival was to be given, and the club had engaged an
Irishman to clear a certain part of the frozen Mississippi of snow for
the skating. This he failed to do at the time specified and the club
had it cleaned by some one else. Claiming that he would have done
it, had they waited, the Irishman sued the club. Colonel Conwell, of
course, appeared for the defense. The whole hundred members marched to
the court house, the scene being town talk for some days. Needless to
say he won his suit.
His love for newspaper work led him to start the "Minneapolis
Chronicle" and the "Star of the North," which were afterward merged
into "The Minneapolis Tribune," for which his clever young wife
conducted a woman's column, in a decidedly brilliant, original manner.
Mrs. Conwell wrote from her heart as one woman to other women, and
her articles soon attracted notice and comment for their entertaining
style and their inspiring, helpful ideas.
At this time they were living in two rooms back of his office, for
they were making financial headway as yet but slowly. But times
brightened and Colonel Conwell was soon able to purchase a handsome
home and furnish it comfortably, taking particular pride in the
gathering of a large law library.
It seemed now as if life were to move forward prosperously. But
greater work was needed from Russell Conwell than the comfortable
practice of law. One evening while the family were from home, fire
broke out and the house and all they owned was destroyed. Running
to the fire from a G.A.R. meeting, a mile and a half away, Colonel
Conwell was attacked with a hemorrhage of the lungs. It came from
his old army wounds and the doctor ordered him immediately from that
climate, and told him he must take a complete rest. Here was disaster
indeed. Every cent they had saved was gone. And with it the strength
to begin again the battle for a living. It was a hard, bitter blow for
a young, ambitious man, right at the start of his career; a stroke of
fate to make any man bitter and cynical. But his was not a nature to
permit misfortune to narrow him or make him repine. He rose above it.
It did not lesson his ambitions. It broadened, humanized them. It made
him enter with still truer sympathy into other people's misfortune.
And his trust in God was so strong, his faith so unshaken, he knew
that in all these bitter experiences of life's school was a lesson. He
learned it and used it to get a broader outlook.
His friends rallied to his aid. Prominent as an editor, lawyer, leader
of the Y.M.C.A., it was not difficult to get him an appointment from
the Governor, already a warm friend. He secured the position of
emigration agent to Europe, and he turned his face Eastward. Mrs.
Conwell was left in Minneapolis, and he sailed abroad in the hope that
the sea trip and change of climate would heal the weakened tissue of
his lung and fully restore him to health. But it was a vain hope. His
strength would not permit him to fulfill the duty expected of him as
emigration agent and he was compelled to resign. For several months
he wandered about Europe trying one place, then another in the vain
search for health. He joined a surveying party and went to Palestine,
for even in those days that inner voice could not he altogether
stilled that was calling him to follow in the footsteps of the Savior
and preach and teach and heal the sick. The land where the Savior
ministered had a strong fascination for him, and he gladly seized the
opportunity to become a member of this surveying party and walk over
the ground where the Savior had gone up and down doing good.
But the trip was of no benefit to his health. Instead of gaining he
failed. He grew weaker and weaker. The hemorrhages became more and
more frequent. Finally he came to Paris and lying, a stranger and
poor, in Necker Hospital was told he could live but a few days. Face
to face again with that grim, bitter enemy of the battlefield, what
thoughts came crowding thick and fast--thoughts of his young wife in
far-away America, of father and mother, memories of the beautiful
woods, the singing streams of the mountain home, as the noise and
clamor of Paris streets drifted into the long hospital ward.
Then came a famous Berlin doctor to the dying American. He studied the
case attentively, for it was strange enough to arouse and enlist all
a doctor's keen scientific interest. When analyzed, copper had been
found in the hemorrhage, with no apparent reason for it, and the Paris
doctors were puzzling over the cause. "Were you in the war?" asked the
great man. "Were you shot?"
"Yes."
"Shot in the shoulder?"
Then came back to Colonel Conwell, the recollection of the duel with
the Confederate around a tree in the North Carolina woods and the shot
that had lodged in his shoulder near his neck and was never removed.
"That is the trouble," said the physician. "The bullet has worked down
into the lung and only the most skillful operation can save you,
and only one man can do it"--and that man was a surgeon in Bellevue
Hospital, New York.
Carefully was the sinking man taken on board a steamer. Only the most
rugged constitution could have stood that trip in the already weakened
condition of his system. But those early childhood days in the
Berkshire Hills had put iron into his blood, the tonic of sunshine and
fresh air into his very bone and muscle. Safely he made the journey,
though no one knew all he suffered in those terrible days of weakness
and pain on the lone, friendless trip across the Atlantic. Safely he
went through the operation. The bullet was removed, and with health
mending, he made his way to Boston where his loving young wife awaited
him.
But out of these experiences, suffering, alone, friendless, poor, in
a strange city, grew after all the Samaritan Hospital of Philadelphia
that opens wide its doors, first and always, to the suffering sick
poor.