WRITING HIS WAY AROUND THE WORLD
Days of Poverty in Boston. Sent to Southern Battlefields. Around the
World for New York and Boston Papers. In a Gambling Den In Hong Kong,
China. Cholera and Shipwreck.
Abject poverty awaited him on his return to Boston. The fire in St.
Paul had left them but little property, while their enforced hurried
departure compelled that little to be sold at a loss. This money
was now entirely gone, and once more he faced the world in absolute
poverty. He rented a single room in the East district of Boston and
furnished it with the barest necessities. Colonel Conwell secured a
position on "The Evening Traveller" at five dollars a week, and Mrs.
Conwell cheerily took in sewing. Thus they made their first brave
stand against the gaunt wolf at the door. Here their first child was
born, a daughter, Nima, now Mrs. E.G. Tuttle, of Philadelphia. These
were dark days for the little household. Night after night the father
came home to see the one he loved best in all the world, suffering
for the barest necessities of life, yet cheerful, buoyant, never
complaining. So sensitive to the sufferings of others that he must do
all in his power to relieve even his comrades in the war when, injured
or ill, what mental anguish must he have endured when his dearly loved
wife was in want and he so powerless to relieve it. She read his heart
with the sure sympathy of love, knew his bitter anguish of spirit, and
suffered the more because he suffered. But bravely she cheered him,
encouraged him, and spent all her own spare minutes doing what she
could to add to the family income.
Thus they pluckily-worked, never repining nor complaining at fate,
though knowing in its bitterest sense what it is to be desperately
poor, to suffer for adequate food and clothing. Colonel Conwell
learned in that hard experience what it is to want for a crust of
bread. No man can come to Dr. Conwell to this day with a tale of
poverty, suffering, sickness, but what the minister's eyes turn
backward to that one little room with its pitiful makeshifts of
furniture, its brave, pale wife, the wee girl baby; and his hand goes
out to help with an earnest and heartfelt sympathy surprising to the
recipient.
But the tide turned ere long. Colonel Conwell's work on the paper soon
began to tell. His salary was raised and raised, until comfort once
more with smiling face took up her abode with them. They moved into a
pretty home in Somerville. Colonel Conwell resumed his law practice
and began, as in the West, to deal in real estate. He also continued
his lecturing.
Busy days these were, but his life had already taught him much of the
art of filling each minute to an exact nicety in order to get the most
out of it. His paper sent him as a special correspondent to write up
the battlefields of the South, and his letters were so graphic and
entertaining as to become a widely known and much discussed feature
of the paper. Soldiers everywhere read them with eager delight and
through them revisited the scenes of the terrible conflict in which
each had played some part. While on this assignment, he invaded a
gambling den in New Orleans, and interfering to save a colored man
from the drunken frenzy of a bully, came near being killed himself.
Coming to the aid of a porter on a Mississippi steamboat, he again
narrowly escaped being shot, striking a revolver from the hand of a
ruffian just as his finger dropped on the trigger. He mixed with all
classes and conditions of men and saw life in its roughest,
most primal aspect But all these experiences helped him to that
appreciation of human nature that has been of such, value and help to
him since.
These letters aroused such widespread and favorable comment that the
"New York Tribune" and "Boston Traveller" arranged to send him on a
tour of the world. When the offer came to him, his mind leaped the
years to that poorly furnished room in the little farmhouse, where he
had leaned on his mother's knee and listened with rapt attention while
she read him the letters of foreign correspondents in that very "New
York Tribune." The letter he wrote his mother telling her of the
appointment was full of loving gratitude for the careful way she
had trained his tastes in those days when he was too young and
inexperienced to choose for himself.
It was a wrench for the young wife to let him go so far away, but she
bravely, cheerfully made the sacrifice. She was proud of his work and
his ability, and she loved him too truly to stand in the way of his
progress.
This journey took him to Scotland, England, Sweden, Denmark, France,
Italy, Germany, Russia, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt and Northern Africa.
He interviewed Emperor William I, Bismarck, Victor Emanuel, the then
Prince of Wales, now Edward VII of England. He frequently met Henry
M. Stanley, then correspondent for the London papers, who wrote from
Paris of Colonel Conwell, "Send that double-sighted Yankee and he will
see at a glance all there is and all there ever was."
He also made the acquaintance of Garibaldi, whom he visited in his
island home and with whom he kept up a correspondence after he
returned. Garibaldi it was who called Colonel Conwell's attention to
the heroic deeds of that admirer of America, the great and patriotic
Venetian, Daniel Manin. In the busy years that followed on this trip
Colonel Conwell spent a long time gathering materials for a biography
of Daniel Manin, and just before it was ready for the press the
manuscript was destroyed by fire in the destruction of his home
at Newton Centre, Massachusetts, in 1880. One of his most popular
lectures, "The Heroism of a Private Life," took its inception from the
life of this Venetian statesman.
He also gave a series of lectures at Cambridge, England, on Italian
history that attracted much favorable comment.
Mr. Samuel T. Harris, of New York, correspondent of the "New York
Times" in 1870, in a private letter, says, "Conwell is the funniest
chap I ever fell in with. He sees a thousand things I never thought of
looking after. When his letters come back in print I find lots in them
that seems new to me, although I saw it all at the time. But you don't
see the fun in his letters to the papers. The way he adapts himself to
all circumstances comes from long travel; but it is droll. He makes a
salaam to the defunct kings, a neat bow to the Sudras, and a friendly
wink at the Howadji, in a way that puts him cheek-by-jowl with them
in a jiffy. He beats me all out in his positive sympathy with these
miserable heathen. He has read so much that he knows about everything.
The way the officials, English, too, treat him would make you think he
was the son of a lord. He has a dignified condescension in his manner
that I can't imitate."
Part of the time Bayard Taylor was his traveling companion, and there
grew up between these two kindred spirits an intimate friendship that
lasted until Taylor's death.
All through the trip he carried books with him, and every minute not
occupied in gathering material for his letters was passed in reading
the history of the scenes and the people he was among, in mastering
their language. Such close application added an interesting background
of historical information to his letters, a breadth and culture, that
made them decidedly more valuable and entertaining than if confined
strictly to what he saw and heard. It was on this journey that he
heard the legend from which grew his famous lecture, "Acres of
Diamonds," which has been given already three thousand four hundred
and twenty times. It gave him an almost inexhaustible fund of material
on which he has drawn for his lectures and books since.
During his absence his second child, a son, Leon, was born. He
returned home for the briefest time, and then completed the tour by
way of the West and the Pacific. He lectured through the Western
States and Territories, for already his fame as a lecturer was
spreading. He visited the Sandwich Islands, Japan, China, Sumatra,
Siam, Burmah, the Himalaya Mountains, India, returning home by way of
Europe. His Hong Kong letter to "The Tribune," exposing the iniquities
of the labor-contract system in Chinese emigration, created quite a
stir in political and diplomatic circles. It was while on this trip
he gathered the material for his first book, "Why and How the Chinese
Emigrate." It was reviewed as the best book in the market of its kind.
The "New York Herald" in writing of it said: "There has been little
given to the public which throws more timely and intelligent light
upon the question of coolie emigration than the book written by Col.
Russell H. Conwell, of Boston."
These travels were replete with thrilling adventures and strange
coincidents. When he left Somerville after his brief visit, for his
trip through the Western States, China and Japan, a broken-hearted
mother in Charlestown, Mass., asked him to find her wandering boy,
whom she believed to be "somewhere in China." A big request, but
Colonel Conwell, busy as he was, did not forget it. Searching for him
in such places as he believed the boy would most likely frequent,
Colonel Conwell accidentally entered, one night in Hong Kong, a den of
gamblers. Writing of the event, he says:
"At one table sat an American, about twenty-five years old, playing
with an old man. They had been betting and drinking. While the
gray-haired man was shuffling the cards for a 'new deal' the young
man, in a swaggering, careless way, sang, to a very pathetic tune, a
verse of Phoebe Carey's beautiful hymn,
'One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o'er and o'er:
I'm nearer home to-day
Than e'er I've been before.'
Hearing the singing several gamblers looked up in surprise. The old
man who was dealing the cards grew melancholy, stopped for a moment,
gazed steadfastly at his partner in the game, and dashed the pack upon
the floor under the table. Then said he, 'Where did you learn that
tune?' The young man pretended that he did not know he had been
singing. 'Well, no matter,' said the old man, I've played my last
game, and that's the end of it. The cards may lie there till doomsday,
and I will never pick them up,' The old man having won money from
the other--about one hundred dollars--took it out of his pocket, and
handing it to him said: 'Here, Harry, is your money; take it and
do good with it; I shall with mine.' As the traveler followed them
downstairs, he saw them conversing by the doorway, and overheard
enough to know that the older man was saying something about the song
which the young man had sung. It had, perhaps, been learned at a
mother's knee, or in a Sunday-school, and may have been (indeed it
was), the means of saving these gamblers, and of aiding others through
their influence toward that nobler life which alone is worth the
living."
The old man had come from Westfield, Mass. He died in 1888, at Salem,
Oregon, having spent the last seven years of his life as a Christian
Missionary among the sailors of the Pacific coast. He passed away
rejoicing in the faith that took him
"Nearer the Father's House,
Where many mansions be,
Nearer the great white throne,
Nearer the jasper sea."
The boy, Harry, utterly renounced gambling and kindred vices.
While coming from Bombay to Aden, cholera broke out on the ship and
it was strictly quarantined. It was a ship of grief and terror.
Passengers daily lost loved ones. New victims were stricken every
hour. The slow days dragged away with death unceasingly busy among
them. Burials were constant, and no man knew who would be the next
victim. But Colonel Conwell escaped contagion.
On the trip home, across the Atlantic, the steamer in a fearful gale
was so dismantled as to be helpless. The fires of the engine were out,
and the boat for twenty-six days drifted at the mercy of the waves.
No one, not even the Captain, thought they could escape destruction.
Water-logged and unmanageable, during a second storm it was thought to
be actually sinking. The Captain himself gave up hope, the women grew
hysterical. But in the midst of it all, Colonel Conwell walked the
deck, and to calm the passengers sang "Nearer my God to Thee,"
with such feeling, such calm assurance in a higher power, that the
passengers and Captain once again took courage. But strangest of all,
on this voyage, while sick, he was cared for by the very colored
porter whose life he had saved on the Mississippi steamboat.