Russell H. Conwell | Page 7

with such sure sympathy into the plain, simple lives of

the humblest people he met. He had lived that same life, he knew the
family affection that grows with such strength around simple firesides,
and those of like circumstances felt this knowledge and opened their
hearts to him.
That Miranda Conwell was an unusual woman for those times and
circumstances is shown in those readings to her children. Not only did
she read and explain to them the beautiful stories of the Bible,
implanting its truths in their impressionable natures to blossom forth
later in beautiful deeds; but she read them the best literature of the
ancient days as well as current literature. Into this poor New England
home came the "New York Tribune" and the "National Era." The letters
of foreign correspondents opened to their childish eyes another world
and roused ambitions to see it. Henry Ward Beecher's sermons, and
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," when it came out as a serial, all such good and
helpful literature, she poured into the eager childish ears. These
readings went on, all through the happy days of childhood.
Interesting things were happening in the world then; things that were to
mould the future of one of the boys at her knee in a way she little
dreamed. A war was being waged in Mexico to train soldiers for a
greater war coming. Out in Illinois, a plain rail-splitter, farmer and
lawyer was beginning to be heard in the cause of freedom and justice
for all men, black or white. These rumors and discussions drifted into
the little home and arguments rose high around the crackling woodfire
as neighbors dropped in. Martin Conwell was not a man to watch
passively the trend of events. He took sides openly, vigorously, and
though the small, blue-eyed boy listening so attentively did not
comprehend all that it was about, Martin Conwell's views later took
shape in action that had a marked bearing on Russell's later life.
But the mother's reading bore more immediate, if less useful, fruit.
Hearing rather unusual sounds from the back yard one day, she went to
the door to listen. The evening before she had been reading the children
one of the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher and telling them something
of this great man and his work. Mounted upon one of the largest gray
rocks in the yard, stood Russell, solemnly preaching to a collection of

wondering, round-eyed chickens. It was a serious, impressive discourse
he gave them, much of it, no doubt, a transcript of Henry Ward
Beecher's. What led his boyish fancy to do it, no one knew, though
many another child has done the same, as children dramatize in play the
things they have heard or read. But a chance remark stamped that
childish action upon the boyish imagination, making it the corner stone
of many a childish castle in Spain. Telling her husband of it in the
evening, Miranda Conwell said, half jokingly, "our boy will some day
be a great preacher." It was a fertile seed dropped in a fertile mind,
tilled assiduously for a brief space by vivid childish imagination; but
not ripened till sad experiences of later years brought it to a glorious
fruition.
Another result of the fireside readings might have been serious. A short
distance from the house a mountain stream leaps and foams over the
stones, seeming to choose, as Ruskin says, "the steepest places to come
down for the sake of the leaps, scattering its handfuls of crystal this
way and that as the wind takes them." The walls of the gorge rise sheer
and steep; the path of the stream is strewn with huge boulders, over
which it foams snow white, pausing in quiet little pools for breath
before the next leap and scramble. Here and there at the sides, stray tiny
little waterfalls, very Thoreaus of streamlets, content to wander off by
themselves, away from the noisy rush of the others, making little
silvery rills of beauty in unobtrusive ways. Over this gorge was a fallen
log. Russell determined to enact the part of Eliza in "Uncle Tom's
Cabin," fleeing over the ice. It was a feat to make a mother's heart stand
still. Three separate times she whipped him severely and forbade him to
do it. He took the punishment cheerfully, and went back to the log. He
never gave up until he had crossed it.
The vein of perseverance in his character was already setting into firm,
unyielding mould--the one trait to which Russell H. Conwell, the
preacher, the lecturer, writer, founder of college and hospital, may
attribute the success he has gained. This childish escapade was the first
to strike fire from its flint.
CHAPTER III

DAYS OF STUDY, WORK AND PLAY
The Schoolhouse in the Woods. Maple Sugar-making.