“I went to Wilbraham, and, in 1861, entered Yale College, taking
up law, but the breaking out of the war interrupted my studies. I
enlisted, but, being only eighteen years of age, my father made me
‘right about face’, and come home. If I could not fight, I could speak,
and I delivered orations all over my native state, and was in some
demand in Boston. Finally, in 1862, I could stand the strain no longer,
and my father, already greatly interested in the war, permitted me to
go to the field.
“I returned a colonel, suffering from a wound, campaigns and
imprisonment, and entered the law school of the Albany University, from
which I was graduated in 1865.
“I married and moved to the great far west, to the then small town
of Minneapolis. There I suffered the usual uphill experiences and
privations of a young lawyer trying to make his way single-handed. I
opened a law office in a two-story stone building on Bridge square. My
clients did not come, and poverty stared my wife and me in the face. I
became an agent for Thompson Brothers, of St. Paul, in the sale of land
warrants.
“Fortune favored me in business, and I also became the Minneapolis
correspondent of the St. Paul ‘Press.’ I acquired some real estate, and
took part in politics. Having once dipped into journalism, I started a
paper of my own called ‘Conwell’s Star of the North.’ Then the sheriff
made his appearance, and turned the concern over to a man with more
capital. Next, I brought the Minneapolis daily ‘Chronicle’ to life. It
united with the ‘Atlas,’ and the combined papers formed the foundation
for the great journal of Minneapolis, the ‘Tribune.’”