he has a knack of never scratching his face or his fingers when doing
so. And he finds blackberrying, whether he goes alone or with friends,
an extraordinarily good time for planning something he wishes to do or
working out the thought of a sermon. And fishing is even better, for in
fishing he finds immense recreation and restfulness and at the same time
a further opportunity to think and plan.
As a small boy he wished that he could throw a dam across the
trout-brook that runs near the little Conwell home, and--as he never
gives up--he finally realized the ambition, although it was after half a
century! And now he has a big pond, three-quarters of a mile long by
half a mile wide, lying in front of the house, down a slope from it--a
pond stocked with splendid pickerel. He likes to float about restfully
on this pond, thinking or fishing, or both. And on that pond he showed
me how to catch pickerel even under a blaze of sunlight!
He is a trout-fisher, too, for it is a trout stream that feeds this pond
and goes dashing away from it through the wilderness; and for miles
adjoining his place a fishing club of wealthy men bought up the rights
in this trout stream, and they approached him with a liberal offer. But
he declined it. "I remembered what good times I had when I was a boy,
fishing up and down that stream, and I couldn't think of keeping the
boys of the present day from such a pleasure. So they may still come and
fish for trout here."
As we walked one day beside this brook, he suddenly said: "Did you ever
notice that every brook has its own song? I should know the song of this
brook anywhere."
It would seem as if he loved his rugged native country because it is
rugged even more than because it is native! Himself so rugged, so hardy,
so enduring--the strength of the hills is his also.
Always, in his very appearance, you see something of this ruggedness of
the hills; a ruggedness, a sincerity, a plainness, that mark alike his
character and his looks. And always one realizes the strength of the
man, even when his voice, as it usually is, is low. And one increasingly
realizes the strength when, on the lecture platform or in the pulpit or
in conversation, he flashes vividly into fire.
A big-boned man he is, sturdy-framed, a tall man, with broad shoulders
and strong hands. His hair is a deep chestnut-brown that at first sight
seems black. In his early manhood he was superb in looks, as his
pictures show, but anxiety and work and the constant flight of years,
with physical pain, have settled his face into lines of sadness and
almost of severity, which instantly vanish when he speaks. And his face
is illumined by marvelous eyes.
He is a lonely man. The wife of his early years died long, long ago,
before success had come, and she was deeply mourned, for she had loyally
helped him through a time that held much of struggle and hardship. He
married again; and this wife was his loyal helpmate for many years. In a
time of special stress, when a defalcation of sixty-five thousand
dollars threatened to crush Temple College just when it was getting on
its feet, for both Temple Church and Temple College had in those early
days buoyantly assumed heavy indebtedness, he raised every dollar he
could by selling or mortgaging his own possessions, and in this his
wife, as he lovingly remembers, most cordially stood beside him,
although she knew that if anything should happen to him the financial
sacrifice would leave her penniless. She died after years of
companionship; his children married and made homes of their own; he is a
lonely man. Yet he is not unhappy, for the tremendous demands of his
tremendous work leave him little time for sadness or retrospect. At
times the realization comes that he is getting old, that friends and
comrades have been passing away, leaving him an old man with younger
friends and helpers. But such realization only makes him work with an
earnestness still more intense, knowing that the night cometh when no
man shall work.
Deeply religious though he is, he does not force religion into
conversation on ordinary subjects or upon people who may not be
interested in it. With him, it is action and good works, with faith and
belief, that count, except when talk is the natural, the fitting, the
necessary thing; when addressing either one individual or thousands, he
talks with superb effectiveness.
His sermons are, it may almost literally be said, parable after parable;
although he himself would be the last man to say this, for it would
sound as if he claimed to model after the greatest of all examples. His
own way of putting it is that he uses stories frequently because people
are more impressed by illustrations than by argument.
Always, whether in the pulpit or out of it, he is simple and homelike,
human and unaffected. If he happens to see some one in the congregation
to whom he wishes to speak, he may just leave his pulpit and walk down
the aisle, while the choir is singing, and quietly say a few words and
return.
In the early days of his ministry, if he heard of a poor family in
immediate need of food he would be quite likely to gather a basket of
provisions and go personally, and offer this assistance and such other
as he might find necessary when he reached the place. As he became known
he ceased from this direct and open method of charity, for he knew that
impulsiveness would be taken for intentional display. But he has never
ceased to be ready to help on the instant that he knows help is needed.
Delay and lengthy investigation are avoided by him when he can be
certain that something immediate is required. And the extent of his
quiet charity is amazing. With no family for which to save money, and
with no care to put away money for himself, he thinks only of money as
an instrument for helpfulness. I never heard a friend criticize him
except for too great open-handedness.
I was strongly impressed, after coming to know him, that he possessed
many of the qualities that made for the success of the old-time district
leaders of New York City, and I mentioned this to him, and he at once
responded that he had himself met "Big Tim," the long-time leader of the
Sullivans, and had had him at his house, Big Tim having gone to
Philadelphia to aid some henchman in trouble, and having promptly sought
the aid of Dr. Conwell. And it was characteristic of Conwell that he
saw, what so many never saw, the most striking characteristic of that
Tammany leader. For, "Big Tim Sullivan was so kind-hearted!" Conwell
appreciated the man's political unscrupulousness as well as did his
enemies, but he saw also what made his underlying power--his
kind-heartedness. Except that Sullivan could be supremely unscrupulous,
and that Conwell is supremely scrupulous, there were marked similarities
in these masters over men; and Conwell possesses, as Sullivan possessed,
a wonderful memory for faces and names.
Naturally, Russell Conwell stands steadily and strongly for good
citizenship. But he never talks boastful Americanism. He seldom speaks
in so many words of either Americanism or good citizenship, but he
constantly and silently keeps the American flag, as the symbol of good
citizenship, before his people. An American flag is prominent in his
church; an American flag is seen in his home; a beautiful American flag
is up at his Berkshire place and surmounts a lofty tower where, when he
was a boy, there stood a mighty tree at the top of which was an eagle's
nest, which has given him a name for his home, for he terms it "The
Eagle's Nest."
Remembering a long story that I had read of his climbing to the top of
that tree, though it was a well-nigh impossible feat, and securing the
nest by great perseverance and daring, I asked him if the story were a
true one. "Oh, I've heard something about it; somebody said that
somebody watched me, or something of the kind. But I don't remember
anything about it myself."
Any friend of his is sure to say something, after a while, about his
determination, his insistence on going ahead with anything on which he
has really set his heart. One of the very important things on which he
insisted, in spite of very great opposition, and especially an
opposition from the other churches of his denomination (for this was a
good many years ago, when there was much more narrowness in churches and
sects than there is at present), was with regard to doing away with
close communion. He determined on an open communion; and his way of
putting it, once decided upon, was: "My friends, it is not for me to
invite you to the table of the Lord. The table of the Lord is open. If
you feel that you can come to the table, it is open to you." And this is
the form which he still uses.
He not only never gives up, but, so his friends say, he never forgets a
thing upon which he has once decided, and at times, long after they
supposed the matter has been entirely forgotten, they suddenly find Dr.
Conwell bringing his original purpose to pass. When I was told of this I
remembered that pickerel-pond in the Berkshires!
If he is really set upon doing anything, little or big, adverse
criticism does not disturb his serenity. Some years ago he began wearing
a huge diamond, whose size attracted much criticism and caustic comment.
He never said a word in defense; he just kept on wearing the diamond.
One day, however, after some years, he took it off, and people said,
"He has listened to the criticism at last!" He smiled reminiscently as
he told me about this, and said: "A dear old deacon of my congregation
gave me that diamond and I did not like to hurt his feelings by refusing
it. It really bothered me to wear such a glaring big thing, but because
I didn't want to hurt the old deacon's feelings I kept on wearing it
until he was dead. Then I stopped wearing it."
The ambition of Russell Conwell is to continue working and working until
the very last moment of his life. In work he forgets his sadness, his
loneliness, his age. And he said to me one day, "I will die in
harness."
IV
THE STORY OF "ACRES OF DIAMONDS"
Considering everything, the most remarkable thing in Russell Conwell's
remarkable life is his lecture, "Acres of Diamonds." That is, the
lecture itself, the number of times he has delivered it, what a source
of inspiration it has been to myriads, the money that he has made and is
making, and, still more, the purpose to which he directs the money. In
the circumstances surrounding "Acres of Diamonds," in its tremendous
success, in the attitude of mind revealed by the lecture itself and by
what Dr. Conwell does with it, it is illuminative of his character, his
aims, his ability.
The lecture is vibrant with his energy. It flashes with his hopefulness.
It is full of his enthusiasm. It is packed full of his intensity. It
stands for the possibilities of success in every one. He has delivered
it over five thousand times. The demand for it never diminishes. The
success grows never less.
There is a time in Russell Conwell's youth of which it is pain for him
to think. He told me of it one evening, and his voice sank lower and
lower as he went far back into the past. It was of his days at Yale that
he spoke, for they were days of suffering. For he had not money for
Yale, and in working for more he endured bitter humiliation. It was not
that the work was hard, for Russell Conwell has always been ready for
hard work. It was not that there were privations and difficulties, for
he has always found difficulties only things to overcome, and endured
privations with cheerful fortitude. But it was the humiliations that he
met--the personal humiliations that after more than half a century make
him suffer in remembering them--yet out of those humiliations came a
marvelous result.
"I determined," he says, "that whatever I could do to make the way
easier at college for other young men working their way I would do."
And so, many years ago, he began to devote every dollar that he made
from "Acres of Diamonds" to this definite purpose. He has what may be
termed a waiting-list. On that list are very few cases he has looked
into personally. Infinitely busy man that he is, he cannot do extensive
personal investigation. A large proportion of his names come to him from
college presidents who know of students in their own colleges in need of
such a helping hand.
"Every night," he said, when I asked him to tell me about it, "when my
lecture is over and the check is in my hand, I sit down in my room in
the hotel"--what a lonely picture, too!--"I sit down in my room in the
hotel and subtract from the total sum received my actual expenses for
that place, and make out a check for the difference and send it to some
young man on my list. And I always send with the check a letter of
advice and helpfulness, expressing my hope that it will be of some
service to him and telling him that he is to feel under no obligation
except to his Lord. I feel strongly, and I try to make every young man
feel, that there must be no sense of obligation to me personally. And I
tell them that I am hoping to leave behind me men who will do more work
than I have done. Don't think that I put in too much advice," he added,
with a smile, "for I only try to let them know that a friend is trying
to help them."
His face lighted as he spoke. "There is such a fascination in it!" he
exclaimed. "It is just like a gamble! And as soon as I have sent the
letter and crossed a name off my list, I am aiming for the next one!"
And after a pause he added: "I do not attempt to send any young man
enough for all his expenses. But I want to save him from bitterness, and
each check will help. And, too," he concluded, naively, in the
vernacular, "I don't want them to lay down on me!"
He told me that he made it clear that he did not wish to get returns or
reports from this branch of his life-work, for it would take a great
deal of time in watching and thinking and in the reading and writing of
letters. "But it is mainly," he went on, "that I do not wish to hold
over their heads the sense of obligation."
When I suggested that this was surely an example of bread cast upon the
waters that could not return, he was silent for a little and then said,
thoughtfully: "As one gets on in years there is satisfaction in doing a
thing for the sake of doing it. The bread returns in the sense of effort
made."
On a recent trip through Minnesota he was positively upset, so his
secretary told me, through being recognized on a train by a young man
who had been helped through "Acres of Diamonds," and who, finding that
this was really Dr. Conwell, eagerly brought his wife to join him in
most fervent thanks for his assistance. Both the husband and his wife
were so emotionally overcome that it quite overcame Dr. Conwell himself.
The lecture, to quote the noble words of Dr. Conwell himself, is
designed to help "every person, of either sex, who cherishes the high
resolve of sustaining a career of usefulness and honor." It is a lecture
of helpfulness. And it is a lecture, when given with Conwell's voice and
face and manner, that is full of fascination. And yet it is all so
simple!
It is packed full of inspiration, of suggestion, of aid. He alters it to
meet the local circumstances of the thousands of different places in
which he delivers it. But the base remains the same. And even those to
whom it is an old story will go to hear him time after time. It amuses
him to say that he knows individuals who have listened to it twenty
times.
It begins with a story told to Conwell by an old Arab as the two
journeyed together toward Nineveh, and, as you listen, you hear the
actual voices and you see the sands of the desert and the waving palms.
The lecturer's voice is so easy, so effortless, it seems so ordinary and
matter-of-fact--yet the entire scene is instantly vital and alive!
Instantly the man has his audience under a sort of spell, eager to
listen, ready to be merry or grave. He has the faculty of control, the
vital quality that makes the orator.
The same people will go to hear this lecture over and over, and that is
the kind of tribute that Conwell likes. I recently heard him deliver it
in his own church, where it would naturally be thought to be an old
story, and where, presumably, only a few of the faithful would go; but
it was quite clear that all of his church are the faithful, for it was a
large audience that came to listen to him; hardly a seat in the great
auditorium was vacant. And it should be added that, although it was in
his own church, it was not a free lecture, where a throng might be
expected, but that each one paid a liberal sum for a seat--and the
paying of admission is always a practical test of the sincerity of
desire to hear. And the people were swept along by the current as if
lecturer and lecture were of novel interest. The lecture in itself is
good to read, but it is only when it is illumined by Conwell's vivid
personality that one understands how it influences in the actual
delivery.
On that particular evening he had decided to give the lecture in the
same form as when he first delivered it many years ago, without any of
the alterations that have come with time and changing localities, and as
he went on, with the audience rippling and bubbling with laughter as
usual, he never doubted that he was giving it as he had given it years
before; and yet--so up-to-date and alive must he necessarily be, in
spite of a definitive effort to set himself back--every once in a while
he was coming out with illustrations from such distinctly recent things
as the automobile!
The last time I heard him was the 5,124th time for the lecture. Doesn't
it seem incredible! 5,124 times! I noticed that he was to deliver it at
a little out-of-the-way place, difficult for any considerable number to
get to, and I wondered just how much of an audience would gather and how
they would be impressed. So I went over from where I was, a few miles
away. The road was dark and I pictured a small audience, but when I got
there I found the church building in which he was to deliver the lecture
had a seating capacity of 830 and that precisely 830 people were already
seated there and that a fringe of others were standing behind. Many had
come from miles away. Yet the lecture had scarcely, if at all, been
advertised. But people had said to one another: "Aren't you going to
hear Dr. Conwell?" And the word had thus been passed along.
I remember how fascinating it was to watch that audience, for they
responded so keenly and with such heartfelt pleasure throughout the
entire lecture. And not only were they immensely pleased and amused and
interested--and to achieve that at a crossroads church was in itself a
triumph to be proud of--but I knew that every listener was given an
impulse toward doing something for himself and for others, and that with
at least some of them the impulse would materialize in acts. Over and
over one realizes what a power such a man wields.
And what an unselfishness! For, far on in years as he is, and suffering
pain, he does not chop down his lecture to a definite length; he does
not talk for just an hour or go on grudgingly for an hour and a half. He
sees that the people are fascinated and inspired, and he forgets pain,
ignores time, forgets that the night is late and that he has a long
journey to go to get home, and keeps on generously for two hours! And
every one wishes it were four.
Always he talks with ease and sympathy. There are geniality, composure,
humor, simple and homely jests--yet never does the audience forget that
he is every moment in tremendous earnest. They bubble with responsive
laughter or are silent in riveted attention. A stir can be seen to sweep
over an audience, of earnestness or surprise or amusement or resolve.
When he is grave and sober or fervid the people feel that he is himself
a fervidly earnest man, and when he is telling something humorous there
is on his part almost a repressed chuckle, a genial appreciation of the
fun of it, not in the least as if he were laughing at his own humor, but
as if he and his hearers were laughing together at something of which
they were all humorously cognizant.
Myriad successes in life have come through the direct inspiration of
this single lecture. One hears of so many that there must be vastly more
that are never told. A few of the most recent were told me by Dr.
Conwell himself, one being of a farmer boy who walked a long distance to
hear him. On his way home, so the boy, now a man, has written him, he
thought over and over of what he could do to advance himself, and before
he reached home he learned that a teacher was wanted at a certain
country school. He knew he did not know enough to teach, but was sure he
could learn, so he bravely asked for the place. And something in his
earnestness made him win a temporary appointment. Thereupon he worked
and studied so hard and so devotedly, while he daily taught, that within
a few months he was regularly employed there. "And now," says Conwell,
abruptly, with his characteristic skimming over of the intermediate
details between the important beginning of a thing and the satisfactory
end, "and now that young man is one of our college presidents."
And very recently a lady came to Dr. Conwell, the wife of an
exceptionally prominent man who was earning a large salary, and she told
him that her husband was so unselfishly generous with money that often
they were almost in straits. And she said they had bought a little farm
as a country place, paying only a few hundred dollars for it, and that
she had said to herself, laughingly, after hearing the lecture, "There
are no acres of diamonds on this place!" But she also went on to tell
that she had found a spring of exceptionally fine water there, although
in buying they had scarcely known of the spring at all; and she had been
so inspired by Conwell that she had had the water analyzed and, finding
that it was remarkably pure, had begun to have it bottled and sold under
a trade name as special spring water. And she is making money. And she
also sells pure ice from the pool, cut in winter-time--and all because
of "Acres of Diamonds"!
Several millions of dollars, in all, have been received by Russell
Conwell as the proceeds from this single lecture. Such a fact is almost
staggering--and it is more staggering to realize what good is done in
the world by this man, who does not earn for himself, but uses his money
in immediate helpfulness. And one can neither think nor write with
moderation when it is further realized that far more good than can be
done directly with money he does by uplifting and inspiring with this
lecture. Always his heart is with the weary and the heavy-laden. Always
he stands for self-betterment.
Last year, 1914, he and his work were given unique recognition. For it
was known by his friends that this particular lecture was approaching
its five-thousandth delivery, and they planned a celebration of such an
event in the history of the most popular lecture in the world. Dr.
Conwell agreed to deliver it in the Academy of Music, in Philadelphia,
and the building was packed and the streets outside were thronged. The
proceeds from all sources for that five-thousandth lecture were over
nine thousand dollars.
The hold which Russell Conwell has gained on the affections and respect
of his home city was seen not only in the thousands who strove to hear
him, but in the prominent men who served on the local committee in
charge of the celebration. There was a national committee, too, and the
nation-wide love that he has won, the nation-wide appreciation of what
he has done and is still doing, was shown by the fact that among the
names of the notables on this committee were those of nine governors of
states. The Governor of Pennsylvania was himself present to do Russell
Conwell honor, and he gave to him a key emblematic of the Freedom of the
State.
The "Freedom of the State"--yes; this man, well over seventy, has won
it. The Freedom of the State, the Freedom of the Nation--for this man of
helpfulness, this marvelous exponent of the gospel of success, has
worked marvelously for the freedom, the betterment, the liberation, the
advancement, of the individual.
_Conwell's Own Story_
FIFTY YEARS ON THE LECTURE PLATFORM
BY RUSSELL H. CONWELL