Acres of Diamonds
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Russell H. Conwell >> Acres of Diamonds
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I remember another illustration. I would leave
it out but for the fact that when you go to the
library to read this lecture, you will find this has
been printed in it for twenty-five years. I shut
my eyes--shut them close--and lo! I see the faces
of my youth. Yes, they sometimes say to me,
``Your hair is not white; you are working night
and day without seeming ever to stop; you can't
be old.'' But when I shut my eyes, like any other
man of my years, oh, then come trooping back
the faces of the loved and lost of long ago, and
I know, whatever men may say, it is evening-time.
I shut my eyes now and look back to my native
town in Massachusetts, and I see the cattle-show
ground on the mountain-top; I can see the horse-
sheds there. I can see the Congregational church;
see the town hall and mountaineers' cottages;
see a great assembly of people turning out, dressed
resplendently, and I can see flags flying and
handkerchiefs waving and hear bands playing. I can
see that company of soldiers that had re-enlisted
marching up on that cattle-show ground. I was
but a boy, but I was captain of that company
and puffed out with pride. A cambric needle
would have burst me all to pieces. Then I thought
it was the greatest event that ever came to man
on earth. If you have ever thought you would
like to be a king or queen, you go and be received
by the mayor.
The bands played, and all the people turned
out to receive us. I marched up that Common
so proud at the head of my troops, and we turned
down into the town hall. Then they seated my
soldiers down the center aisle and I sat down on
the front seat. A great assembly of people a
hundred or two--came in to fill the town hall,
so that they stood up all around. Then the town
officers came in and formed a half-circle. The
mayor of the town sat in the middle of the
platform. He was a man who had never held office
before; but he was a good man, and his friends
have told me that I might use this without giving
them offense. He was a good man, but he thought
an office made a man great. He came up and took
his seat, adjusted his powerful spectacles, and
looked around, when he suddenly spied me sitting
there on the front seat. He came right forward
on the platform and invited me up to sit with the
town officers. No town officer ever took any
notice of me before I went to war, except to advise
the teacher to thrash me, and now I was invited
up on the stand with the town officers. Oh my!
the town mayor was then the emperor, the king
of our day and our time. As I came up on the
platform they gave me a chair about this far, I
would say, from the front.
When I had got seated, the chairman of
the Selectmen arose and came forward to the
table, and we all supposed he would introduce
the Congregational minister, who was the only
orator in town, and that he would give the oration
to the returning soldiers. But, friends, you should
have seen the surprise which ran over the audience
when they discovered that the old fellow
was going to deliver that speech himself. He had
never made a speech in his life, but he fell into
the same error that hundreds of other men have
fallen into. It seems so strange that a man won't
learn he must speak his piece as a boy if he in-
tends to be an orator when he is grown, but he
seems to think all he has to do is to hold an office
to be a great orator.
So he came up to the front, and brought with
him a speech which he had learned by heart
walking up and down the pasture, where he had
frightened the cattle. He brought the manuscript
with him and spread it out on the table so as to
be sure he might see it. He adjusted his spectacles
and leaned over it for a moment and marched
back on that platform, and then came forward
like this--tramp, tramp, tramp. He must have
studied the subject a great deal, when you come
to think of it, because he assumed an ``elocutionary''
attitude. He rested heavily upon his
left heel, threw back his shoulders, slightly
advanced the right foot, opened the organs of speech,
and advanced his right foot at an angle of forty-
five. As he stood in that elocutionary attitude,
friends, this is just the way that speech went.
Some people say to me, ``Don't you exaggerate?''
That would be impossible. But I am here for
the lesson and not for the story, and this is the
way it went:
``Fellow-citizens--'' As soon as he heard his
voice his fingers began to go like that, his knees
began to shake, and then he trembled all over.
He choked and swallowed and came around to
the table to look at the manuscript. Then he
gathered himself up with clenched fists and came
back: ``Fellow-citizens, we are Fellow-citizens,
we are--we are--we are--we are--we are--we are
very happy--we are very happy--we are very
happy. We are very happy to welcome back to
their native town these soldiers who have fought
and bled--and come back again to their native
town. We are especially--we are especially--we
are especially. We are especially pleased to see
with us to-day this young hero'' (that meant
me)--``this young hero who in imagination''
(friends, remember he said that; if he had not
said ``in imagination'' I would not be egotistic
enough to refer to it at all)--``this young hero
who in imagination we have seen leading--we
have seen leading--leading. We have seen leading
his troops on to the deadly breach. We have
seen his shining--we have seen his shining--his
shining--his shining sword--flashing. Flashing in
the sunlight, as he shouted to his troops, `Come
on'!''
Oh dear, dear, dear! how little that good man
knew about war. If he had known anything
about war at all he ought to have known what
any of my G. A. R. comrades here to-night will
tell you is true, that it is next to a crime for an
officer of infantry ever in time of danger to go
ahead of his men. ``I, with my shining sword
flashing in the sunlight, shouting to my troops,
`Come on'!'' I never did it. Do you suppose
I would get in front of my men to be shot in front
by the enemy and in the back by my own men?
That is no place for an officer. The place for the
officer in actual battle is behind the line. How
often, as a staff officer, I rode down the line, when
our men were suddenly called to the line of battle,
and the Rebel yells were coming out of the woods,
and shouted: ``Officers to the rear! Officers to
the rear!'' Then every officer gets behind the line
of private soldiers, and the higher the officer's
rank the farther behind he goes. Not because
he is any the less brave, but because the laws of
war require that. And yet he shouted, ``I, with
my shining sword--'' In that house there sat
the company of my soldiers who had carried that
boy across the Carolina rivers that he might not
wet his feet. Some of them had gone far out to
get a pig or a chicken. Some of them had gone
to death under the shell-swept pines in the
mountains of Tennessee, yet in the good man's speech
they were scarcely known. He did refer to them,
but only incidentally. The hero of the hour was
this boy. Did the nation owe him anything?
No, nothing then and nothing now. Why was he
the hero? Simply because that man fell into that
same human error--that this boy was great because
he was an officer and these were only private
soldiers.
Oh, I learned the lesson then that I will never
forget so long as the tongue of the bell of time
continues to swing for me. Greatness consists
not in the holding of some future office, but really
consists in doing great deeds with little means
and the accomplishment of vast purposes from
the private ranks of life. To be great at all one
must be great here, now, in Philadelphia. He
who can give to this city better streets and better
sidewalks, better schools and more colleges, more
happiness and more civilization, more of God, he
will be great anywhere. Let every man or woman
here, if you never hear me again, remember this,
that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin
where you are and what you are, in Philadelphia,
now. He that can give to his city any blessing, he
who can be a good citizen while he lives here, he
that can make better homes, he that can be a
blessing whether he works in the shop or sits
behind the counter or keeps house, whatever be his
life, he who would be great anywhere must first
be great in his own Philadelphia.
HIS LIFE AND ACHIEVEMENTS
BY
ROBERT SHACKLETON
THE STORY OF THE SWORD[2]
[2] _Dr, Conwell was living, and actively at work,
when these pages were written. It is, therefore,
a much truer picture of his personality than
anything written in the past tense_.
I SHALL write of a remarkable man, an interesting
man, a man of power, of initiative, of
will, of persistence; a man who plans vastly and
who realizes his plans; a man who not only does
things himself, but who, even more important than
that, is the constant inspiration of others. I shall
write of Russell H. Conwell.
As a farmer's boy he was the leader of the boys
of the rocky region that was his home; as a school-
teacher he won devotion; as a newspaper correspondent
he gained fame; as a soldier in the Civil
War he rose to important rank; as a lawyer he
developed a large practice; as an author he wrote
books that reached a mighty total of sales. He
left the law for the ministry and is the active head
of a great church that he raised from nothingness.
He is the most popular lecturer in the world and
yearly speaks to many thousands. He is, so to
speak, the discoverer of ``Acres of Diamonds,''
through which thousands of men and women have
achieved success out of failure. He is the head
of two hospitals, one of them founded by himself,
that have cared for a host of patients, both the
poor and the rich, irrespective of race or creed.
He is the founder and head of a university that
has already had tens of thousands of students.
His home is in Philadelphia; but he is known in
every corner of every state in the Union, and
everywhere he has hosts of friends. All of his life
he has helped and inspired others.
Quite by chance, and only yesterday, literally
yesterday and by chance, and with no thought at
the moment of Conwell although he had been
much in my mind for some time past, I picked up
a thin little book of description by William Dean
Howells, and, turning the pages of a chapter on
Lexington, old Lexington of the Revolution,
written, so Howells had set down, in 1882, I
noticed, after he had written of the town itself,
and of the long-past fight there, and of the present-
day aspect, that he mentioned the church life
of the place and remarked on the striking
advances made by the Baptists, who had lately, as
he expressed it, been reconstituted out of very
perishing fragments and made strong and flourishing,
under the ministrations of a lay preacher,
formerly a colonel in the Union army. And it
was only a few days before I chanced upon this
description that Dr. Conwell, the former colonel
and former lay preacher, had told me of his
experiences in that little old Revolutionary town.
Howells went on to say that, so he was told,
the colonel's success was principally due to his
making the church attractive to young people.
Howells says no more of him; apparently he did
not go to hear him; and one wonders if he has
ever associated that lay preacher of Lexington
with the famous Russell H. Conwell of these recent
years!
``Attractive to young people.'' Yes, one can
recognize that to-day, just as it was recognized
in Lexington. And it may be added that he at
the same time attracts older people, too! In this,
indeed, lies his power. He makes his church
interesting, his sermons interesting, his lectures
interesting. He is himself interesting! Because of
his being interesting, he gains attention. The
attention gained, he inspires.
Biography is more than dates. Dates, after all,
are but mile-stones along the road of life. And
the most important fact of Conwell's life is that
he lived to be eighty-two, working sixteen hours
every day for the good of his fellow-men. He was
born on February 15, 1843--born of poor parents,
in a low-roofed cottage in the eastern Berkshires,
in Massachusetts.
``I was born in this room,'' he said to me,
simply, as we sat together recently[3] in front of the
old fireplace in the principal room of the little
cottage; for he has bought back the rocky farm
of his father, and has retained and restored the
little old home. ``I was born in this room. It
was bedroom and kitchen. It was poverty.'' And
his voice sank with a kind of grimness into silence.
[3] _This interview took place at the old Conwell farm in the
summer of 1915_.
Then he spoke a little of the struggles of those
long-past years; and we went out on the porch,
as the evening shadows fell, and looked out over
the valley and stream and hills of his youth, and
he told of his grandmother, and of a young
Marylander who had come to the region on a visit;
it was a tale of the impetuous love of those two,
of rash marriage, of the interference of parents,
of the fierce rivalry of another suitor, of an attack
on the Marylander's life, of passionate hastiness,
of unforgivable words, of separation, of lifelong
sorrow. ``Why does grandmother cry so often?''
he remembers asking when he was a little boy.
And he was told that it was for the husband of
her youth.
We went back into the little house, and he
showed me the room in which he first saw John
Brown. ``I came down early one morning, and
saw a huge, hairy man sprawled upon the bed
there--and I was frightened,'' he says.
But John Brown did not long frighten him!
For he was much at their house after that, and was
so friendly with Russell and his brother that there
was no chance for awe; and it gives a curious side-
light on the character of the stern abolitionist
that he actually, with infinite patience, taught the
old horse of the Conwells to go home alone with
the wagon after leaving the boys at school, a mile
or more away, and at school-closing time to trot
gently off for them without a driver when merely
faced in that direction and told to go! Conwell
remembers how John Brown, in training it, used
patiently to walk beside the horse, and control
its going and its turnings, until it was quite ready
to go and turn entirely by itself.
The Conwell house was a station on the
Underground Railway, and Russell Conwell remembers,
when a lad, seeing the escaping slaves that
his father had driven across country and temporarily
hidden. ``Those were heroic days,'' he says,
quietly. ``And once in a while my father let me
go with him. They were wonderful night drives--
the cowering slaves, the darkness of the road,
the caution and the silence and dread of it all.''
This underground route, he remembers, was from
Philadelphia to New Haven, thence to Springfield,
where Conwell's father would take his charge,
and onward to Bellows Falls and Canada.
Conwell tells, too, of meeting Frederick
Douglass, the colored orator, in that little cottage in
the hills. `` `I never saw my father,' Douglass said
one day--his father was a white man--`and I
remember little of my mother except that once
she tried to keep an overseer from whipping me,
and the lash cut across her own face, and her
blood fell over me.'
``When John Brown was captured,'' Conwell
went on, ``my father tried to sell this place to
get a little money to send to help his defense.
But he couldn't sell it, and on the day of the execu-
tion we knelt solemnly here, from eleven to twelve,
just praying, praying in silence for the passing
soul of John Brown. And as we prayed we knew
that others were also praying, for a church-bell
tolled during that entire hour, and its awesome
boom went sadly sounding over these hills.''
Conwell believes that his real life dates from a
happening of the time of the Civil War--a happening
that still looms vivid and intense before
him, and which undoubtedly did deepen and
strengthen his strong and deep nature. Yet the
real Conwell was always essentially the same.
Neighborhood tradition still tells of his bravery
as a boy and a youth, of his reckless coasting, his
skill as a swimmer and his saving of lives, his
strength and endurance, his plunging out into the
darkness of a wild winter night to save a neighbor's
cattle. His soldiers came home with tales
of his devotion to them, and of how he shared
his rations and his blankets and bravely risked his
life; of how he crept off into a swamp, at imminent
peril, to rescue one of his men lost or mired
there. The present Conwell was always Conwell;
in fact, he may be traced through his ancestry, too,
for in him are the sturdy virtues, the bravery, the
grim determination, the practicality, of his father;
and romanticism, that comes from his grandmother;
and the dreamy qualities of his mother,
who, practical and hardworking New England
woman that she was, was at the same time influenced
by an almost startling mysticism.
And Conwell himself is a dreamer: first of all
he is a dreamer; it is the most important fact
in regard to him! It is because he is a dreamer
and visualizes his dreams that he can plan the
great things that to other men would seem
impossibilities; and then his intensely practical
side his intense efficiency, his power, his skill,
his patience, his fine earnestness, his mastery
over others, develop his dreams into realities.
He dreams dreams and sees visions--but his
visions are never visionary and his dreams
become facts.
The rocky hills which meant a dogged struggle
for very existence, the fugitive slaves, John Brown
--what a school for youth! And the literal school
was a tiny one-room school-house where young
Conwell came under the care of a teacher who
realized the boy's unusual capabilities and was
able to give him broad and unusual help. Then
a wise country preacher also recognized the
unusual, and urged the parents to give still more
education, whereupon supreme effort was made
and young Russell was sent to Wilbraham Academy.
He likes to tell of his life there, and of the
hardships, of which he makes light; and of the
joy with which week-end pies and cakes were
received from home!
He tells of how he went out on the roads selling
books from house to house, and of how eagerly
he devoured the contents of the sample books that
he carried. ``They were a foundation of learning
for me,'' he says, soberly. ``And they gave me a
broad idea of the world.''
He went to Yale in 1860, but the outbreak of
the war interfered with college, and he enlisted in
1861. But he was only eighteen, and his father
objected, and he went back to Yale. But next
year he again enlisted, and men of his Berkshire
neighborhood, likewise enlisting, insisted that he
be their captain; and Governor Andrews, appealed
to, consented to commission the nineteen-year-
old youth who was so evidently a natural leader;
and the men gave freely of their scant money to
get for him a sword, all gay and splendid with
gilt, and upon the sword was the declaration in
stately Latin that, ``True friendship is eternal.''
And with that sword is associated the most
vivid, the most momentous experience of Russell
Conwell's life.
That sword hangs at the head of Conwell's
bed in his home in Philadelphia. Man of peace
that he is, and minister of peace, that symbol of
war has for over half a century been of infinite
importance to him.
He told me the story as we stood together before
that sword. And as he told the story, speaking
with quiet repression, but seeing it all and living
it all just as vividly as if it had occurred but
yesterday, ``That sword has meant so much to me,''
he murmured; and then he began the tale:
``A boy up there in the Berkshires, a neighbor's
son, was John Ring; I call him a boy, for we all
called him a boy, and we looked upon him as a
boy, for he was under-sized and under-developed--
so much so that he could not enlist.
``But for some reason he was devoted to me,
and he not only wanted to enlist, but he also
wanted to be in the artillery company of which I
was captain; and I could only take him along as
my servant. I didn't want a servant, but it was
the only way to take poor little Johnnie Ring.
``Johnnie was deeply religious, and would read
the Bible every evening before turning in. In
those days I was an atheist, or at least thought I
was, and I used to laugh at Ring, and after a while
he took to reading the Bible outside the tent on
account of my laughing at him! But he did not
stop reading it, and his faithfulness to me remained
unchanged.
``The scabbard of the sword was too glittering
for the regulations''--the ghost of a smile hovered
on Conwell's lips--``and I could not wear it, and
could only wear a plain one for service and keep
this hanging in my tent on the tent-pole. John
Ring used to handle it adoringly, and kept it
polished to brilliancy.--It's dull enough these
many years,'' he added, somberly. ``To Ring
it represented not only his captain, but the very
glory and pomp of war.
``One day the Confederates suddenly stormed
our position near New Berne and swept through
the camp, driving our entire force before them;
and all, including my company, retreated hurriedly
across the river, setting fire to a long wooden
bridge as we went over. It soon blazed up furiously,
making a barrier that the Confederates
could not pass.
``But, unknown to everybody, and unnoticed,
John Ring had dashed back to my tent. I think
he was able to make his way back because he just
looked like a mere boy; but however that was, he
got past the Confederates into my tent and took
down, from where it was hanging on the tent-
pole, my bright, gold-scabbarded sword.
``John Ring seized the sword that had long been
so precious to him. He dodged here and there,
and actually managed to gain the bridge just as it
was beginning to blaze. He started across. The
flames were every moment getting fiercer, the
smoke denser, and now and then, as he crawled
and staggered on, he leaned for a few seconds far
over the edge of the bridge in an effort to get air.
Both sides saw him; both sides watched his
terrible progress, even while firing was fiercely
kept up from each side of the river. And then
a Confederate officer--he was one of General
Pickett's officers--ran to the water's edge
and waved a white handkerchief and the firing
ceased.
`` `Tell that boy to come back here!' he cried.
`Tell him to come back here and we will let him
go free!'
``He called this out just as Ring was about to
enter upon the worst part of the bridge--the cov-
ered part, where there were top and bottom and
sides of blazing wood. The roar of the flames
was so close to Ring that he could not hear the
calls from either side of the river, and he pushed
desperately on and disappeared in the covered
part.
``There was dead silence except for the crackling
of the fire. Not a man cried out. All waited in
hopeless expectancy. And then came a mighty
yell from Northerner and Southerner alike, for
Johnnie came crawling out of the end of the covered
way--he had actually passed through that
frightful place--and his clothes were ablaze, and
he toppled over and fell into shallow water; and
in a few moments he was dragged out, unconscious,
and hurried to a hospital.
``He lingered for a day or so, still unconscious,
and then came to himself and smiled a little as
he found that the sword for which he had given
his life had been left beside him. He took it in
his arms. He hugged it to his breast. He gave
a few words of final message for me. And that
was all.''
Conwell's voice had gone thrillingly low as he
neared the end, for it was all so very, very vivid to
him, and his eyes had grown tender and his lips
more strong and firm. And he fell silent, thinking
of that long-ago happening, and though he looked
down upon the thronging traffic of Broad Street,
it was clear that he did not see it, and that if
the rumbling hubbub of sound meant anything to
him it was the rumbling of the guns of the distant
past. When he spoke again it was with a still
tenser tone of feeling.
``When I stood beside the body of John Ring
and realized that he had died for love of me, I
made a vow that has formed my life. I vowed
that from that moment I would live not only my
own life, but that I would also live the life of John
Ring. And from that moment I have worked sixteen
hours every day--eight for John Ring's work
and eight hours for my own.''
A curious note had come into his voice, as of
one who had run the race and neared the goal,
fought the good fight and neared the end.
``Every morning when I rise I look at this sword,
or if I am away from home I think of the sword,
and vow anew that another day shall see sixteen
hours of work from me.'' And when one comes
to know Russell Conwell one realizes that never
did a man work more hard and constantly,
``It was through John Ring and his giving his
life through devotion to me that I became a
Christian,'' he went on. ``This did not come
about immediately, but it came before the war
was over, and it came through faithful Johnnie
Ring.''
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