Acres of Diamonds

R >> Russell H. Conwell >> Acres of Diamonds

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He is a sensitive man beneath his composure;
he has suffered, and keenly, when he has been
unjustly attacked; he feels pain of that sort for
a long time, too, for even the passing of years
does not entirely deaden it.

``When I have been hurt, or when I have talked
with annoying cranks, I have tried to let Patience
have her perfect work, for those very people, if
you have patience with them, may afterward be
of help.''

And he went on to talk a little of his early
years in Philadelphia, and he said, with sadness,
that it had pained him to meet with opposition,
and that it had even come from ministers of his
own denomination, for he had been so misunder-
stood and misjudged; but, he added, the momentary
somberness lifting, even his bitter enemies
had been won over with patience.

I could understand a good deal of what he
meant, for one of the Baptist ministers of
Philadelphia had said to me, with some shame, that
at first it used actually to be the case that when
Dr. Conwell would enter one of the regular ministers'
meetings, all would hold aloof, not a single
one stepping forward to meet or greet him.

``And it was all through our jealousy of his
success,'' said the minister, vehemently. ``He
came to this city a stranger, and he won instant
popularity, and we couldn't stand it, and so we
pounced upon things that he did that were altogether
unimportant. The rest of us were so jealous
of his winning throngs that we couldn't see
the good in him. And it hurt Dr. Conwell so
much that for ten years he did not come to our
conferences. But all this was changed long ago.
Now no minister is so welcomed as he is, and I
don't believe that there ever has been a single
time since he started coming again that he hasn't
been asked to say something to us. We got over
our jealousy long ago and we all love him.''

Nor is it only that the clergymen of his own
denomination admire him, for not long ago,
such having been Dr. Conwell's triumph in the
city of his adoption, the rector of the most powerful
and aristocratic church in Philadelphia voluntarily
paid lofty tribute to his aims and ability,
his work and his personal worth. ``He is an
inspiration to his brothers in the ministry of Jesus
Christ,'' so this Episcopalian rector wrote. ``He
is a friend to all that is good, a foe to all that is
evil, a strength to the weak, a comforter to the
sorrowing, a man of God. These words come from
the heart of one who loves, honors, and reverences
him for his character and his deeds.''

Dr. Conwell did some beautiful and unusual
things in his church, instituted some beautiful and
unusual customs, and one can see how narrow and
hasty criticisms charged him, long ago, with
sensationalism--charges long since forgotten except
through the hurt still felt by Dr. Conwell himself.
``They used to charge me with making a circus
of the church--as if it were possible for me to
make a circus of the church!'' And his tone was
one of grieved amazement after all these years.

But he was original and he was popular, and
therefore there were misunderstanding and jealousy.
His Easter services, for example, years
ago, became widely talked of and eagerly
anticipated because each sermon would be wrought
around some fine symbol; and he would hold in
his hand, in the pulpit, the blue robin's egg, or
the white dove, or the stem of lilies, or whatever
he had chosen as the particular symbol for the
particular sermon, and that symbol would give
him the central thought for his discourse, accented
as it would be by the actual symbol itself in view
of the congregation. The cross lighted by elec-
tricity, to shine down over the baptismal pool, the
little stream of water cascading gently down the
steps of the pool during the baptismal rite, the
roses floating in the pool and his gift of one of them
to each of the baptized as he or she left the water--
all such things did seem, long ago, so unconventional.
Yet his own people recognized the beauty
and poetry of them, and thousands of Bibles in
Philadelphia have a baptismal rose from Dr.
Conwell pressed within the pages.

His constant individuality of mind, his constant
freshness, alertness, brilliancy, warmth, sympathy,
endear him to his congregation, and when he
returns from an absence they bubble and effervesce
over him as if he were some brilliant new preacher
just come to them. He is always new to them.
Were it not that he possesses some remarkable
quality of charm he would long ago have become,
so to speak, an old story, but instead of that he
is to them an always new story, an always entertaining
and delightful story, after all these years.

It is not only that they still throng to hear
him either preach or lecture, though that itself
would be noticeable, but it is the delightful and
delighted spirit with which they do it. Just the
other evening I heard him lecture in his own
church, just after his return from an absence,
and every face beamed happily up at him to welcome
him back, and every one listened as intently
to his every word as if he had never been heard
there before; and when the lecture was over a
huge bouquet of flowers was handed up to him, and
some one embarrassedly said a few words about
its being because he was home again. It was
all as if he had just returned from an absence of
months--and he had been away just five and a
half days!

VI

MILLIONS OF HEARERS

THAT Conwell is not primarily a minister--
that he is a minister because he is a sincere
Christian, but that he is first of all an Abou Ben
Adhem, a man who loves his fellow-men, becomes
more and more apparent as the scope of his life-
work is recognized. One almost comes to think
that his pastorate of a great church is even a
minor matter beside the combined importance of
his educational work, his lecture work, his hospital
work, his work in general as a helper to those who
need help.

For my own part, I should say that he is like
some of the old-time prophets, the strong ones
who found a great deal to attend to in addition
to matters of religion. The power, the ruggedness,
the physical and mental strength, the positive
grandeur of the man--all these are like the general
conceptions of the big Old Testament prophets.
The suggestion is given only because it has
often recurred, and therefore with the feeling that
there is something more than fanciful in the com-
parison; and yet, after all, the comparison fails
in one important particular, for none of the
prophets seems to have had a sense of humor!

It is perhaps better and more accurate to
describe him as the last of the old school of American
philosophers, the last of those sturdy-bodied, high-
thinking, achieving men who, in the old days,
did their best to set American humanity in the
right path--such men as Emerson, Alcott, Gough,
Wendell Phillips, Garrison, Bayard Taylor,
Beecher; men whom Conwell knew and admired
in the long ago, and all of whom have long since
passed away.

And Conwell, in his going up and down the
country, inspiring his thousands and thousands,
is the survivor of that old-time group who used
to travel about, dispensing wit and wisdom and
philosophy and courage to the crowded benches
of country lyceums, and the chairs of school-houses
and town halls, or the larger and more pretentious
gathering-places of the cities.

Conwell himself is amused to remember that
he wanted to talk in public from his boyhood,
and that very early he began to yield to the
inborn impulse. He laughs as he remembers the
variety of country fairs and school commencements
and anniversaries and even sewing-circles
where he tried his youthful powers, and all for
experience alone, in the first few years, except
possibly for such a thing as a ham or a jack-knife!
The first money that he ever received for speaking
was, so he remembers with glee, seventy-five cents;
and even that was not for his talk, but for horse
hire! But at the same time there is more than
amusement in recalling these experiences, for he
knows that they were invaluable to him as training.
And for over half a century he has affectionately
remembered John B. Gough, who, in the
height of his own power and success, saw resolution
and possibilities in the ardent young hill-man,
and actually did him the kindness and the honor
of introducing him to an audience in one of the
Massachusetts towns; and it was really a great
kindness and a great honor, from a man who had
won his fame to a young man just beginning an
oratorical career.

Conwell's lecturing has been, considering
everything, the most important work of his life, for by
it he has come into close touch with so many
millions--literally millions!--of people.

I asked him once if he had any idea how
many he had talked to in the course of his career,
and he tried to estimate how many thousands
of times he had lectured, and the average attendance
for each, but desisted when he saw that it
ran into millions of hearers. What a marvel is
such a fact as that! Millions of hearers!

I asked the same question of his private secretary,
and found that no one had ever kept any sort
of record; but as careful an estimate as could be
made gave a conservative result of fully eight
million hearers for his lectures; and adding the
number to whom he has preached, who have been
over five million, there is a total of well over
thirteen million who have listened to Russell
Conwell's voice! And this staggering total is, if
anything, an underestimate. The figuring was done
cautiously and was based upon such facts as that
he now addresses an average of over forty-five
hundred at his Sunday services (an average that
would be higher were it not that his sermons in
vacation time are usually delivered in little
churches; when at home, at the Temple, he
addresses three meetings every Sunday), and that
he lectures throughout the entire course of each
year, including six nights a week of lecturing during
vacation-time. What a power is wielded by
a man who has held over thirteen million people
under the spell of his voice! Probably no other
man who ever lived had such a total of hearers.
And the total is steadily mounting, for he is a man
who has never known the meaning of rest.

I think it almost certain that Dr. Conwell has
never spoken to any one of what, to me, is the
finest point of his lecture-work, and that is that
he still goes gladly and for small fees to the small
towns that are never visited by other men of great
reputation. He knows that it is the little places,
the out-of-the-way places, the submerged places,
that most need a pleasure and a stimulus, and he
still goes out, man of well over seventy that he is,
to tiny towns in distant states, heedless of the
discomforts of traveling, of the poor little hotels
that seldom have visitors, of the oftentimes hopeless
cooking and the uncleanliness, of the hardships
and the discomforts, of the unventilated
and overheated or underheated halls. He does
not think of claiming the relaxation earned by a
lifetime of labor, or, if he ever does, the thought
of the sword of John Ring restores instantly his
fervid earnestness.

How he does it, how he can possibly keep it up,
is the greatest marvel of all. I have before me a
list of his engagements for the summer weeks of
this year, 1915, and I shall set it down because
it will specifically show, far more clearly than
general statements, the kind of work he does.
The list is the itinerary of his vacation. Vacation!
Lecturing every evening but Sunday, and on
Sundays preaching in the town where he happens
to be!

June 24 Ackley, Ia. July 11 *Brookings, S. D.
`` 25 Waterloo, Ia. `` 12 Pipestone, Minn.
`` 26 Decorah, Ia. `` 13 Hawarden, Ia.
`` 27 *Waukon, Ia. `` 14 Canton, S. D
`` 28 Red Wing, Minn. `` 15 Cherokee, Ia
`` 29 River Falls, Wis. `` 16 Pocahontas, Ia
`` 30 Northfield, Minn. `` 17 Glidden, Ia.
July 1 Faribault, Minn. `` 18 *Boone, Ia.
`` 2 Spring Valley, Minn. `` 19 Dexter, Ia.
`` 3 Blue Earth, Minn. `` 20 Indianola, Ia
`` 4 *Fairmount, Minn. `` 21 Corydon, Ia
`` 5 Lake Crystal, Minn. `` 22 Essex, Ia.
`` 6 Redwood Falls, `` 23 Sidney, Ia.
Minn. `` 24 Falls City, Nebr.
`` 7 Willmer, Minn. `` 25 *Hiawatha, Kan.
`` 8 Dawson, Minn. `` 26 Frankfort, Kan.
`` 9 Redfield, S. D. `` 27 Greenleaf, Kan.
`` 10 Huron, S. D. `` 28 Osborne, Kan.
July 29 Stockton, Kan. Aug. 14 Honesdale, Pa.
`` 30 Phillipsburg, Kan. `` 15 *Honesdale, Pa.
`` 31 Mankato, Kan. `` 16 Carbondale, Pa.
_En route to next date on_ `` 17 Montrose, Pa.
_circuit_. `` 18 Tunkhannock, Pa.
Aug. 3 Westfield, Pa. `` 19 Nanticoke, Pa.
`` 4 Galston, Pa. `` 20 Stroudsburg, Pa.
`` 5 Port Alleghany, Pa. `` 21 Newton, N. J.
`` 6 Wellsville, N. Y. `` 22 *Newton, N. J.
`` 7 Bath, N. Y. `` 23 Hackettstown, N. J.
`` 8 *Bath, N. Y. `` 24 New Hope, Pa.
`` 9 Penn Yan, N. Y. `` 25 Doylestown, Pa.
`` 10 Athens, N. Y. `` 26 Phnixville, Pa.
`` 11 Owego, N. Y. `` 27 Kennett, Pa.
`` 12 Patchogue, LI.,N.Y. `` 28 Oxford, Pa.
`` 13 Port Jervis, N. Y. `` 29 *Oxford, Pa.
* Preach on Sunday.

And all these hardships, all this traveling and
lecturing, which would test the endurance of the
youngest and strongest, this man of over seventy
assumes without receiving a particle of personal
gain, for every dollar that he makes by it is given
away in helping those who need helping.

That Dr. Conwell is intensely modest is one
of the curious features of his character. He sincerely
believes that to write his life would be,
in the main, just to tell what people have done
for him. He knows and admits that he works
unweariedly, but in profound sincerity he ascribes
the success of his plans to those who have seconded
and assisted him. It is in just this way that he
looks upon every phase of his life. When he is
reminded of the devotion of his old soldiers, he
remembers it only with a sort of pleased wonder
that they gave the devotion to him, and he quite
forgets that they loved him because he was always
ready to sacrifice ease or risk his own life for
them.

He deprecates praise; if any one likes him, the
liking need not be shown in words, but in helping
along a good work. That his church has succeeded
has been because of the devotion of the people;
that the university has succeeded is because of
the splendid work of the teachers and pupils; that
the hospitals have done so much has been because
of the noble services of physicians and nurses.
To him, as he himself expresses it, realizing that
success has come to his plans, it seems as if the
realities are but dreams. He is astonished by his
own success. He thinks mainly of his own
shortcomings. ``God and man have ever been very
patient with me.'' His depression is at times
profound when he compares the actual results
with what he would like them to be, for always
his hopes have gone soaring far in advance of
achievement. It is the ``Hitch your chariot to
a star'' idea.

His modesty goes hand-in-hand with kindliness,
and I have seen him let himself be introduced in
his own church to his congregation, when he is
going to deliver a lecture there, just because a
former pupil of the university was present who,
Conwell knew, was ambitious to say something
inside of the Temple walls, and this seemed to
be the only opportunity.

I have noticed, when he travels, that the face
of the newsboy brightens as he buys a paper from
him, that the porter is all happiness, that
conductor and brakeman are devotedly anxious to
be of aid. Everywhere the man wins love. He
loves humanity and humanity responds to the love.

He has always won the affection of those who
knew him, and Bayard Taylor was one of the
many; he and Bayard Taylor loved each other for
long acquaintance and fellow experiences as world-
wide travelers, back in the years when comparatively
few Americans visited the Nile and the
Orient, or even Europe.

When Taylor died there was a memorial service
in Boston at which Conwell was asked to preside,
and, as he wished for something more than
addresses, he went to Longfellow and asked him to
write and read a poem for the occasion. Longfellow
had not thought of writing anything, and
he was too ill to be present at the services, but,
there always being something contagiously
inspiring about Russell Conwell when he wishes
something to be done, the poet promised to do
what he could. And he wrote and sent the beautiful
lines beginning:

_Dead he lay among his books,
The peace of God was in his looks_.

Many men of letters, including Ralph Waldo
Emerson, were present at the services, and Dr.
Conwell induced Oliver Wendell Holmes to read
the lines, and they were listened to amid profound
silence, to their fine ending.

Conwell, in spite of his widespread hold on
millions of people, has never won fame, recognition,
general renown, compared with many men
of minor achievements. This seems like an
impossibility. Yet it is not an impossibility, but a
fact. Great numbers of men of education and
culture are entirely ignorant of him and his work
in the world--men, these, who deem themselves
in touch with world-affairs and with the ones who
make and move the world. It is inexplicable, this,
except that never was there a man more devoid
of the faculty of self-exploitation, self-advertising,
than Russell Conwell. Nor, in the mere reading
of them, do his words appeal with anything like
the force of the same words uttered by himself,
for always, with his spoken words, is his personality.
Those who have heard Russell Conwell, or
have known him personally, recognize the charm
of the man and his immense forcefulness; but
there are many, and among them those who control
publicity through books and newspapers,
who, though they ought to be the warmest in their
enthusiasm, have never felt drawn to hear him,
and, if they know of him at all, think of him as
one who pleases in a simple way the commoner
folk, forgetting in their pride that every really
great man pleases the common ones, and that
simplicity and directness are attributes of real
greatness.

But Russell Conwell has always won the admiration
of the really great, as well as of the humbler
millions. It is only a supposedly cultured class
in between that is not thoroughly acquainted with
what he has done.

Perhaps, too, this is owing to his having cast
in his lot with the city, of all cities, which,
consciously or unconsciously, looks most closely to
family and place of residence as criterions of
merit--a city with which it is almost impossible
for a stranger to become affiliated--or aphiladelphiated,
as it might be expressed--and Philadelphia,
in spite of all that Dr. Conwell has
done, has been under the thrall of the fact that
he went north of Market Street--that fatal fact
understood by all who know Philadelphia--and
that he made no effort to make friends in Rittenhouse
Square. Such considerations seem absurd
in this twentieth century, but in Philadelphia
they are still potent. Tens of thousands of
Philadelphians love him, and he is honored by its
greatest men, but there is a class of the pseudo-
cultured who do not know him or appreciate him.
And it needs also to be understood that, outside of
his own beloved Temple, he would prefer to go
to a little church or a little hall and to speak to
the forgotten people, in the hope of encouraging
and inspiring them and filling them with hopeful
glow, rather than to speak to the rich and comfortable.

His dearest hope, so one of the few who are
close to him told me, is that no one shall come
into his life without being benefited. He does
not say this publicly, nor does he for a moment
believe that such a hope could be fully realized,
but it is very dear to his heart; and no man
spurred by such a hope, and thus bending all
his thoughts toward the poor, the hard-working,
the unsuccessful, is in a way to win honor from
the Scribes; for we have Scribes now quite as
much as when they were classed with Pharisees.
It is not the first time in the world's history that
Scribes have failed to give their recognition to
one whose work was not among the great and
wealthy.

That Conwell himself has seldom taken any
part whatever in politics except as a good citizen
standing for good government; that, as he
expresses it, he never held any political office except
that he was once on a school committee, and also
that he does not identify himself with the so-called
``movements'' that from time to time catch
public attention, but aims only and constantly
at the quiet betterment of mankind, may be
mentioned as additional reasons why his name and
fame have not been steadily blazoned.

He knows and will admit that he works hard
and has all his life worked hard. ``Things keep
turning my way because I'm on the job,'' as he
whimsically expressed it one day; but that is
about all, so it seems to him.

And he sincerely believes that his life has in
itself been without interest; that it has been an
essentially commonplace life with nothing of the
interesting or the eventful to tell. He is frankly
surprised that there has ever been the desire to
write about him. He really has no idea of how
fascinating are the things he has done. His entire
life has been of positive interest from the variety
of things accomplished and the unexpectedness
with which he has accomplished them.

Never, for example, was there such an organizer.
In fact, organization and leadership have
always been as the breath of life to him. As a
youth he organized debating societies and, before
the war, a local military company. While on
garrison duty in the Civil War he organized
what is believed to have been the first free school
for colored children in the South. One day
Minneapolis happened to be spoken of, and Conwell
happened to remember that he organized,
when he was a lawyer in that city, what became
the first Y.M.C.A. branch there. Once he even
started a newspaper. And it was natural that the
organizing instinct, as years advanced, should
lead him to greater and greater things, such as
his church, with the numerous associations formed
within itself through his influence, and the
university--the organizing of the university being
in itself an achievement of positive romance.

``A life without interest!'' Why, when I
happened to ask, one day, how many Presidents he
had known since Lincoln, he replied, quite casually,
that he had ``written the lives of most of them in
their own homes''; and by this he meant either
personally or in collaboration with the American
biographer Abbott.

The many-sidedness of Conwell is one of the
things that is always fascinating. After you have
quite got the feeling that he is peculiarly a man
of to-day, lecturing on to-day's possibilities to the
people of to-day, you happen upon some such
fact as that he attracted the attention of the
London _Times_ through a lecture on Italian history
at Cambridge in England; or that on the
evening of the day on which he was admitted to
practice in the Supreme Court of the United States
he gave a lecture in Washington on ``The Curriculum
of the Prophets in Ancient Israel.'' The
man's life is a succession of delightful surprises.

An odd trait of his character is his love for fire.
He could easily have been a veritable fire-
worshiper instead of an orthodox Christian! He
has always loved a blaze, and he says reminiscently
that for no single thing was he punished
so much when he was a child as for building
bonfires. And after securing possession, as he did in
middle age, of the house where he was born and
of a great acreage around about, he had one of
the most enjoyable times of his life in tearing
down old buildings that needed to be destroyed
and in heaping up fallen trees and rubbish and in
piling great heaps of wood and setting the great
piles ablaze. You see, there is one of the secrets
of his strength--he has never lost the capacity for
fiery enthusiasm!

Always, too, in these later years he is showing his
strength and enthusiasm in a positively noble
way. He has for years been a keen sufferer from
rheumatism and neuritis, but he has never permitted
this to interfere with his work or plans.
He makes little of his sufferings, and when he
slowly makes his way, bent and twisted, downstairs,
he does not want to be noticed. ``I'm all
right,'' he will say if any one offers to help, and at
such a time comes his nearest approach to
impatience. He wants his suffering ignored.
Strength has always been to him so precious a
belonging that he will not relinquish it while he
lives. ``I'm all right!'' And he makes himself
believe that he is all right even though the pain
becomes so severe as to demand massage. And
he will still, even when suffering, talk calmly, or
write his letters, or attend to whatever matters
come before him. It is the Spartan boy hiding
the pain of the gnawing fox. And he never has
let pain interfere with his presence on the pulpit
or the platform. He has once in a while gone to
a meeting on crutches and then, by the force of
will, and inspired by what he is to do, has stood
before his audience or congregation, a man full of
strength and fire and life.

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