Russell H. Conwell | Page 3

college practically free for busy men and women, and a hospital for the sick poor, he has organized twenty or more societies for religions and benevolent purposes including the Philadelphia Orphan's Home Society.
His pioneer work is not all. As a lecturer Dr. Conwell is known from the Atlantic to the Pacific, having been on the lecture platform for forty-three years, speaking from one hundred to two hundred and twenty-five nights each year.
As an author he has written books that have run into editions of hundreds of thousands, his "Life of Spurgeon" selling one hundred and twenty-five thousand copies in four months. He has been around the globe many times, counted among his intimate friends Garibaldi, Bayard Taylor, Stanley, Longfellow, Blaine, Henry Ward Beecher, John G. Whittier, President Garfield, Horace Greeley, Alexander Stevens, John Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John B. Gough and General Sherman.
He fought in the war of the Rebellion, was left for dead on the battlefield of Kenesaw mountain--in fact, he has had a career as picturesque and thrilling as a Scott or Dumas could picture.
Yet the man whose energy has reared enduring monuments of stone, and more lasting ones in the hearts of thousands whose lives he has made happier and brighter, fought his way upward alone and single-handed from a childhood of poverty. He rose by his own efforts, in the face of great and seemingly insurmountable obstacles and discouragements. The path he took from that little humble farmhouse to the big church, the wide-reaching college, the kindly hospital, the head of the Lecture Platform, it is the purpose of this book to picture, in the hope that it may be helpful to others, either young or old, who desire to better their condition, or to do some work of which the inner voice tells them the world is in need.
Dr. Conwell believes, with George Macdonald, that "The one secret of life and development is not to devise or plan, but to fall in with the forces at work--to do every moment's duty aright--that being the part in the process allotted to us; and let come ... what the Eternal Thought wills for each of us, has intended in each of us from the first."
Or in the words of the greatest of Books, "See that thou make it according to the pattern that was shewed thee in the mount."
Every one at some time in his life has been "in the mount." To follow and obey the Heavenly Vision means a life of usefulness and happiness. That obstacles and discouragements can be surmounted, the life of Russell Conwell shows. For this purpose it is written, that others who have heard the Voice may go forward with faith and perseverance to work of which the world stands in need.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
In the preparation of this book, the three excellent biographies already written, "Scaling the Eagle's Nest," by Wm. C. Higgins, "The Modern Temple and Templars," by Robert J. Burdette, and "The Life of Russell H. Conwell," by Albert Hatcher Smith, have been of the utmost help. The writer wishes to acknowledge her great indebtedness to all for much of the information in the present work. These writers have with the utmost care gathered the facts concerning Dr. Conwell's early life, and the writer most gratefully owns her deep obligation to them.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I.
--Ancestry. John Conwell, the English Ancestor who fought for the Preservation of the English Language. Martin Conwell of Maryland. A Runaway Marriage. The Parents of Russell H. Conwell.
Chapter II.
--Early Environment. The Family Circle. An Unusual Mother. What She Read Her Children. A Preacher at Three Years of Age.
Chapter III.
--Days of Study, Work and Play. The Schoolhouse in the Woods. Maple Sugar-making. The Orator of the Dawn. A Boyish Prank. Capturing the Eagle's Nest.
Chapter IV.
--Two Men and Their Influence. John Brown. Fireside Discussions. Runaway Slaves. Fred Douglas. Rev. Asa Niles. A Runaway Trip to Boston.
Chapter V
--Trying His Wings. Boyhood Days. Russell's First Case at Law. A Cure for Stage Fever. Studying Music. A Runaway Trip to Europe.
Chapter VI
--Out of the Home Nest. School Days at Wilbraham Academy. The First School Oration and Its Humiliating End. The Hour of Prayer in the Conwell Home at the Time of John Brown's Execution.
Chapter VII.
--War's Alarms. College Days at Yale. The Outbreak of the Civil War. Patriotic Speechmaking. New York and Henry Ward Beecher.
Chapter VIII.
--While the Conflict Raged. Lincoln's Call for One Hundred Thousand Men. Enlistment. Captain Conwell. In Camp at Springfield, Mass. The Famous Gold-sheathed Sword.
Chapter IX.
--In the Thick of the Fight. Company F at Newberne, N.C. The Fight at Batchelor's Creek. The Goldsboro Expedition. The Battle of Kingston. The Gum Swamp Expedition.
Chapter X.
--The Sword and the School Book. Scouting at Bogue Sound. Captain Conwell Wounded. The Second Enlistment. Jealousy and Misunderstanding. Building of the First Free School for Colored Children. Attack