Acres of Diamonds

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``This one thing I do,'' is his private maxim of
efficiency, and a literalist might point out that he
does not one thing only, but a thousand things,
not getting Conwell's meaning, which is that
whatever the thing may be which he is doing
he lets himself think of nothing else until it is
done.

Dr. Conwell has a profound love for the country
and particularly for the country of his own youth.
He loves the wind that comes sweeping over the
hills, he loves the wide-stretching views from the
heights and the forest intimacies of the nestled
nooks. He loves the rippling streams, he loves
the wild flowers that nestle in seclusion or that
unexpectedly paint some mountain meadow with
delight. He loves the very touch of the earth,
and he loves the great bare rocks.

He writes verses at times; at least he has written
lines for a few old tunes; and it interested me
greatly to chance upon some lines of his that
picture heaven in terms of the Berkshires:

_ The wide-stretching valleys in colors so fadeless,
Where trees are all deathless and flowers e'er bloom_.

That is heaven in the eyes of a New England
hill-man! Not golden pavement and ivory palaces,
but valleys and trees and flowers and the
wide sweep of the open.

Few things please him more than to go, for
example, blackberrying, and 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.''

IX

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, tool--``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,
navely, 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
there 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 skim-
ming 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.

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