THE /AODSRJS BUP^ETTE A JKetch of i:l\eLife i^iiclWorR ©[- RJUJiELL H. ConWELW CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BX6495.C76" Ms'"""* '■"'"'^ '*°'1niiiiiiiMlfiililliteiS'ii^ templars: a sketch of olin 3 1924 029 452 897 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029452897 dv liii (rni mi rm\ fi <4i\ LLil (Si i urn ^ o o- Uli V-M\ UJ only a boy, cannot be truly elo- quent without moving himself. And it was never young Conwell's way to stand back and shout " Go on," but rather to go ahead crying " Follow me ! " It was no time for books and college ; it was a fitter time to " — let the hands that ply the pen Quit the light task, and learn to wield The horseman's crooked brand, and rein The charger on the battle-field." 70 "DINNA YE HEAR THE SLOGAN?" 71 Russell and his brother Charles decided to enlist under the first call for troops, and Russell had gone to the front as a private in the 27th Massachusetts Infantry, but for the stern veto of Martin Conwell, which interposed itself between the recruit and the mustering officer, and marched the young warrior to the "right about" and back to the jabbing plow handles on the barren fields of " Eagle's Nest." But ringing bugle and the red-breathed cannon called again, and more loudly, more earnestly, for the nation's life was in peril, and in 1862 Conwell enlisted in the Massachusetts 46th, Colonel Bowler command- ing. The youth was better prepared for military service than most lads of his age. When "a small boy" he was so deeply impressed with a Fourth of July parade he saw in Springfield, that he returned home and organized his play-fellows into a military company. A boy's military company lasts until some other boy wants to be captain, when there ensues rotation in office and demoralization. There are absolutely no exceptions to- this rule. But as often as one of young Conwell's commands became demoralized, he organized another. This gave him practice as an organizer and disciplinarian. " There was one company," says Mr. Higgins, " bearing the strange name of 'Silence,' which he organized and decorated with badges. Mr. Austin Hancock, of Huntington, one of our best-loved comrades, still recalls the contract for the badges." 72 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. " It now seems strange," continues the same chronicler, " that men of mature years should be willing to be led into battle under command of such a boy. It was his fascinating eloquence which won our hearts. I well remember, when our regiment was or- ganizing, how absurd it seemed to us older men, to think of his appointment as a line officer, until we heard him speak. He was in demand in several towns, because he had familiarized himself with the tactics and understood the school of the soldier, the company, and the battalion. "Without expecting a commission, he studied movements and commands just for the sake of knowing. When the urgent call came from President Lincoln for ' one hundred thousand more ' he could drill a company or regiment. I remember how the first time we assembled as a company, we were all completely astonished to find that boy perfectly at home in military tactics. We were proud of him. We wanted him for our captain. There was no rival. No one thought of canvassing for the ofiice against him. He was elected by a unanimous vote. A com- mittee was appointed to wait on Governor Andrew, to persuade him to commission Russell, and overcome the objection on account of his youth. Russell has always loved these moun- tains, but no better than we mountaineers have loved him. The company of which he was chosen captain was composed of men from Worthington, Plainfield, Chesterfield, Huntington, Chester, Middlefield, Russell, and Blandford ; those towns being the most rugged and mountainous in this part of the state. The com- pany was naturally called 'The Mountain Boys,' and went by that title ever afterwards. 'The Boy Captain of the Mountain- Boys' was often pointed out as a curiosity in the valley villages, after he had donned his first uniform. The rendezvous of the company was at Huntington, Massachusetts. There a grand ban- quet was given to the soldiers before their depai-ture for the war. At the table Russell made one of his enthusiastic and patriotic addresses, and so many men endeavored to enlist in the company after the limit was reached, that even Russell's own brother had to go with the overflow into another company." — Scaling- the Eagle's Nest. "DINNA YE HEAR THE SLOGAN?" 73 Mr. William H. Fay tells us somewhat concerning a sword presentation in Camp Banks, near Spring- field, where the 46th rendezvoused. The weapon was a gift from Captain Conwell's men, and bore the inscription : — "Presented to Captain Russell H. Conwell by the soldiers of Company F, 46th Mass. Vol. Militia, known as ' The Mountain Boys.' Vera AmicUia est sempiterna. [True friendship is eternal.]" It was a beautiful blade, its scabbard and hilt em- bossed in gold, but all its splendor was outshone by the " young Captain's brilliant words," says Comrade Higgins, who also "thinks that Colonel ShurtlefE made the speech of presentation." Conwell received the sword in silence. Drawing the glittering steel from its sheath of gold, he held it aloft in his out- stretched hand, the sunlight kissing the naked blade into flashes of fire. His eyes were fixed upon the steel, as a rapt seer might look, beholding in that " lovely messenger of death," as in a mirror, terrible pictures of grand and thrilling meaning. Breath- less silence fell upon the listening soldiers. Thus for a little space he stood, impressive, mysterious, statuesque. His lips parted and he spoke to The Sword. He called up the shade of the sword of that mighty war- rior Joshua, which purified a polluted land with liba- tions of blood, and made it fit for the heritage of 74 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. God's people ; the sword of David, that established the kingdom of Israel ; the sword of that resistless conqueror, Alexander, that pierced the heart of the Orient ; the Roman short sword, the terrible gladius, that carved out for the Cassars the sovereignty of the world ; the sword of Charlemagne, writing its master's glorious deeds in mingling chapters of fable and his- tory; the sword of Gustavus Adolphus, smiting the battalions of the puissant Wallenstein with defeat and overthrow, even when its master lay dead on the field of Lutzen ; the sword of Washington, drawn for human freedom, and sheathed in peace, honor, and victory ; then he bade the sword remember all it had done in shaping the destinies of men and nations ; how it had written on the tablets of history in let- ters red and lurid, the drama of the ages ; closing, he called upon it now, in the battle for the Union, to strike hard and strike home for freedom, for justice, in the name of God and the Right ; to fail not in the work to which it was called until every shackle in the land was broken, every bondman free, and every foul stain of dishonor cleaned from the flag. The regiment went to Boston, and there waiting for transportation to the front, was quartered in Faneuil Hall, fit cradle for the children of the Repub- lic. The next rocking they got was in the cradle of the deep. They embarked on the fifth of November — Guy Fawkes day — and put to sea in the face of a "DINNA YE HEAR THE SLOGAN?" 75 fierce gale. Long before the shore line faded from their view nearly " — all the precious crew, Unaccustomed to the blue, Invalided when the ships began to roll." It was a time that tried more than the souls of men ; the gale increased in severity until at length the steamer was forced to put back ; the regiment, fairly beaten in its first encounter with old Neptune, landed and corrected its alignment for another as- sault. The gallant 46th never again recoiled before an enemy, and even in this engagement the soldiers, who had not enlisted for the navy, sailed as well as some other distinguished landsmen have done. Napoleon Bonaparte, conqueror of Europe, was as helpless at sea as was the mighty Csesar when he did buffet the troubled Tiber in his great swimming- match with Cassius ; even Admiral Nelson, the mon- arch of the seas, sometimes in "dirty weather" paid a land-lubber's tribute to wide-ruling Poseidon. Steaming out again, when the storm had some- what abated, the transport headed away for New- bern. North Carolina. The voyage was a rough one, and on the trip Captain Conwell's nerve, courage, and sympathetic nature were equally tried. " For- getful of himself," says one of his comrades, "he must have given away the greater part of his salary in sutler stores for the sick, making the soldiers' 76 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. quarters more comfortable and their fare more palat- able." Sailing up the Neuse River, the steamer landed its troops at Newbern. Years afterward the Captain of "F" Company revisited the place where his regiment first set foot on the sacred soil of the rebellious states, and while he is writing his impres- sions, old and new, the reader is privileged to look over his shoulder. He is now correspondent of the Boston Traveller, and his letter will be in print any how — what harm if you do get a glimpse at the advance sheets ? " Newbern in war surrounded by tented camps, long lines of earthworks and forts, with a fleet of gun-boats, floating in the Neuse River, was a far different city from the Newbern of to-day. It seems to have become reduced in size, until it is but a miniature of the city we knew five years ago. Then there was a constant tramp of soldiers along the sidewalks, sentries on every corner, and jolly crowds in every tradesman's door. Now business is dull and the streets seem almost deserted, while on the corners, in place of the sentries that used then to come to a ' shoulder,' now lie lazy, ragged negroes, who have just life enough to say as you pass, 'Please mister, give me a cent.' The wharves that once creaked under the loads of ordnance and quartermasters' stores, where happy-faced sutlers and town merchants received their goods, and soldiers their boxes from home, are now occu- pied by colored dealers in fish and oysters. The substantial army wagons and ambulances, that were constantly moving through the streets, are replaced by a few two-wheeled carts, drawn by lame mules or 'dwarfed cows,' appearing as little like the noble beasts we formerly saw here as their drivers do like healthy or prosperous men. The sight of the traveler is refreshed, however, at long intervals, by the appearance of a horse and buggy belonging to some aristocratic North Carolinian " DINNA YE HEAR THE SLOGAN?" 77 or enterprising Yankee. The hospital buildings, so sadly famil- iar to many of our soldiers, have lost that appearance of quiet and gloom they had during the war, and now, as schoolhouses or dwellings, look cheerful and inviting. Whole blocks of build- ings have been destroyed by fire, and in many places new structures, of a different style, have taken the places of old ones. Without the city the change is greater than within. The broad fields, once so white with tents, and the parade grounds, once covered with drilling battalions, are now cultivated by the plow or are left to grow to brush or barren weeds. On the spot where were encamped the 46th and 8th Massachusetts in '63 the national cemetery now stands, a sad memento of battles and disease. Fort Totten, considered in the confident days of '64 to be one of the strongest fortifications on the coast, has crumbled away, and the huge piles of sand which remain of the lofty traverse remind us forcibly of some ruined feudal castle, which has been crumbling for five hundred years. The line of earthworks reaching from Fort Totten to the river on either hand, has in many places entirely disappeared, while in other localities portions of it remain entire. The hand of nature and of man is fast destroying the landmarks of the war, and in a few years not a mound or ditch wiU be left to tell of the exhausting toil and weary sieges endured by the soldiers of New England. Yet, with all the change, there are many familiar localities and buildings in the city which recall the experiences of camp life ; the large white house in which General Foster had his head- quarters ; the long flag staff on an adjacent corner ; the medical dispensary ; the old railroad depot ; the now dilapidated and dangerous bridge across the Trent ; the low house occupied by Chaplain J. James and his corps of teachers ; the numerous negro huts beside the Trent where were encamped for a long time the 27th, 23d, and 21st Massachusetts, and the 9th New Jersey ; the remnants of barracks near the Neuse once occupied by the 23d, 42d, 17th, 43d, and 44th Massachusetts; steamer Ellen S. Terry on which usually came those welcome letters from home, and which still plies between this port and New York ; the old post office building on the corner, still used for 78 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. that purpose ; together with the many offices, guard quarters, and storehouses, tend, in a measure, to bring again a realizing sense of army life. But the cemetery with its array of white head-boards, bearing the names of many an old friend and fel- low laborer, is the surest and saddest prompter of the memory which the place affords. Drummer boys who beat the reveille in time of quiet, and the long roll in the hour of danger, and who went safely through the Virginia campaigns, were con- quered by the yellow fever here. A sergeant, honored for his integrity and praised for his bravery at Plymouth and Roanoke, lies here almost forgotten. Private soldiers, — our school-mates and old acquaintances, — fallen into battle or sickness, are placed here, as their head-boards tell us, until the Resurrection Day. At one end of the row are two graves, of which uncommon care has been taken, and to which our attention was called by the keeper. They bear the following touching inscriptions : — No. 1744. 2 1 St MASSACHUSETTS. BETROTHED TO C. E. C. (The name is not given on the board, but we learned that it was a member of Company E, of this regiment.) " The other reads as follows : — MISS CARRIE E. CUTTER, BETROTHED TO NO. 1 744. BURIED AT HIS SIDE AT HER OVTO REQUEST. "Probably many of the old 21st will know the circumstances and can tell the story of these two lovers ; but the inscription on the head-boards is all we know of their lives of love and devotion — ' lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their death they were not divided.' " CHAPTER IX. "ARMS ON ARMOR CLASHING." Sweet little Major, he climbs my knee. And the tender blue eyes look at me — " Say, tell me, Popsie, just once more. What did you do, when you went to war? " And I tell again, of the autumn day When the Forty-Seventh marched away; How Cromwell died at Jackson town. And Miles on Corinth field went down. — Chronicles of the Forty- Seventh. During the campaigns of that winter (1862) the regiment composed a part of the force that operated against the enemy in the " Goldsboro expedition." They met the Confederates at Kingston, North Car- olina, where "they looked one another in the face." This was the first smell of powder for the 46th ; the " men of the mountains " were victorious ; they smote the enemy until he fled from before them. Here was a foe they could grapple, as they could not the law- less waves and the mocking winds. Natheless, he was no easy enemy to down. He had a way of shoot- ing back that was unpleasant. The shrill whistle of an angry minie ball, even a little one, caliber thirty- 79 80 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. six, has a lurking devil in its sneer that melts the heart more quickly than the wild howl of the un- bridled wind shrieking through rent sail and strain- ing rigging. There is a spiteful viciousness in a bullet that is more disconcerting thrice told, than is apparent in the thundering explosion of a big shell, on mischief bent. The impact of shell or solid shot strikes the soldier as a sort of an accident, which might have been avoided — if it leaves enough of him to recognize his own impression. But a minie ball does it on purpose ; it intended to hit you ; and the sibilant whistle you hear when it flies past you is the angry hiss of disappointment. A shell hits what happens to come in its way, but " every bullet has its billet." Listen, while you talk of war, to James Whit- comb Riley's Song of the Bullet from " Poems Here at Home": — " It whizzed and whistled along the blurred And red-blent ranks, and it nicked the star Of an epaulette as it snarled the word — War! " On it sped — and the lifted wrist Of the ensign bearer stung, and straight Dropped at his side as the word was hissed — Hate! "On went the missile — smoothed the blue Of a jaunty cap and the curls thereof, Cooing, soft as a dove might do — Love ! "ARMS ON ARMOR CLASHING." 81 " Sang ! — sang on ! — sang hate — sang war — Sang love, in sooth, till it needs must cease, Hushed in the heart it was questing for — Peace ! " Captain Conwell, a good soldier and brave, did not' lose the heart of the man in the work of the soldier. At the close of one of the battles during the campaign along the line of the Weldon railroad, it was noticed, when the regiment was called on .to give three cheers, that the Captain of " F " Company remained silent. " Why do you not cheer 1 " asked Colonel Walkley. "Too many hearts made sad to-day," was the reply. After all, the sword, with all the poetry that shines about like a halo of fire, is a terrible arbiter. " Noth- ing, except a battle lost," said the Duke of Welling- ton, "can be half so melancholy as a battle won." " One to destroy, is murder by the law, And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe ; To murder thousands takes a specious name. War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame." Much buffeting and many hard knocks given and taken, enough powder burning to furnish forth the Fourth of July for many years to come, followed by a little spell of monotonous garrison duty, the laziest life in the world, with the possible exception of cut- ting ice on the Panama canal — and then the regiment was ordered into Virginia, to cooperate with -the army confronting Lee in his ill-fated invasion of Pennsyl- vania. " Before the expiration of the regiment's term 82 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. of service," says Comrade Higgins, the soldier-biog- rapher, " General Foster sent for Captain Conwell, and offered to recommend him for promotion to the colonelcy in command of a regiment if he would enter at once upon recruiting service among the men whose term was about to expire. Captain Conwell accepted the offer, but so many of his own company decided to re-enlist with him, and such jealous objections were raised about Bis youth, that he decided to ac- cept a captain's commission." About this time he was prostrated with an attack of fever which came very near terminating his career on this planet. By the time he had sufficiently recovered to be able to report for duty, the regiment had been reorganized, and he had been assigned to the command of another company, with the understanding that his old com- rades in F should be transferred to his new command, — " D " Company, 2d Massachusetts Volunteers. This was found to be impracticable, however, the men of the Second making strong objection to an arrangement which would place them elsewhere, being most excellently satisfied with their captain. The transfers were never made, and the exceptional in- stance of two companies clamoring for* one captain went on record. A war usually develops a great plethora of commissions. "Why didn't you get be- hind a tree "i " asked a sympathetic lady, her blood curdling as the war-'worn soldier related his romance of "hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly w w <: s z D h O Z I H O =S I H D O W Z o o "ARMS ON ARMOR CLASHING." 83 breach." " Tree ? " replied the veteran, with infi- nite pity for his Hstener's ignorance, " Tree ! Bless your simple soul, marm, there wa'n't enough trees for the officers ! " While in command of Newport Barracks, a small fort ten miles below Newbern, Captain Conwell, at- tended by a single orderly, Daniel E. Spencer, was making the grand rounds. The night was intensely dark, the forest dense, and losing their way the soldiers got outside the lines. A movement in the woods attracted their attention. The captain chal- lenged : — " Who goes there >. " "There was no reply. Directing Spencer to stand quiet, he passed through the wood to reconnoitre. Suddenly he found himself directly among a number of men creeping along the ground in a stealthy manner. Again he called, ' Who goes there?' He was answered by a volley. The flash revealed a company of Confederates, but in the confusion neither party could estimate the strength of the other. Sergeant Spencer leaped bravely forward to liis captain's aid. The enemies scat- tered in a panic. Mr. Conwell says he owes his life to Mr. Spencer's bravery that night. On reaching the picket post Cap- tain Conwell found that one shot had pierced his uniform, and a bullet had struck his watch directly over his heart, and shat- tered the works and case. It was a narrow escape. One small shot from a revolver or shotgun hit his right shoulder, but so slight appeared the wound that he did not at the time beUeve the missile entered the flesh. But long afterward, when a run- ning sore and blood-spitting called attention to the spot, a sur- geon (Dr. Clarke of New York) traced the shot, and it was extracted at the Belleview Hospital in time to save his life. " — Scaling the EagWs Nest. 84 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. Newport Barracks, North Carolina, was a small post, somewhat isolated, and, was ignored by that very important non-combatant who stiffens the sinews of war even in the most Christian nations, the Pay- master. Captain Conwell sent severaj urgent com- munications to headquarters at Newbern, which were answered by the profound silence inculcated in that axiom of the great Napoleon, " All letters answer themselves in thirty days." Captain Conwell had great respect for Napoleonic tactics in the art of war, but regarded him as a poor guide in business correspondence. He rode over to Newbern, attended by an orderly, and " wanted to know, you know." He was promptly ordered to -return to his command. The ride from Newport Barracks had been long and dangerous. During the night he had suddenly run into an enemy's picket, and the two soldiers barely escaped, swimming their horses through a deep creek while the rifle balls spattered about them in the water. Greater peril awaited them on their return. When they rode up to the Newbern videttes the Captain was dismayed to learn that the enemy had made a sudden movement, cut the telegraph wires, and had probably attacked his post, as there had been fighting between Newport Barracks and Newbern. The attempt to make his way back through the enemy's lines was unsuccessful ; it was impossible. Desperate efforts to ride around the lines were un- availing ; a forlorn hope of descending the river by "ARMS ON ARMOR CLASHING." 85 boat was frustrated — the enemy had captured the entire line of posts. Still, having left an efficient officer in command, the Captain felt no uneasiness concerning his little force, until a Federal soldier who had escaped from the Confederates told him that the assault upon his fort had been sudden, and made in overwhelming force ; many of his men were shot down or bayoneted at their guns, and the rem- nant driven out of the works ; the whole ground was in the hands of the enemy. The news of the dis- aster fell upon the young commander with appalling effect. Although his presence in all probability could not have changed the result, yet he stung him- self with the self-repi^aches of a sensitive man, a soldier's disappointment and chagrin at being absent from his command during a battle. The hard riding, the intense strain upon heart and mind and body, told on the soldier's frame, and in the brain fever which prostrated him, his body was wasted and his mind tortured by the delirium which still com- pelled him to urge his reeling steed through forests, endless in their gloomy, pathless tangles, and across dark streams, shoreless and deep. The battle in which his men were driven from the fort lasted a short hour ; the scattering skirmish shots driving in the surprised pickets ; the shrill rebel yell, its high- keyed falsetto heralding the fierce charge that swept up to the works, a torrent irresistible ; the mad hand- to-hand struggle at the guns, the gray battalions 86 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. swarming through the embrasures, the cheer of vic- tory, the irregular firing that covered and marked the retreat of the defeated, and the battle was lost and won. But the young Captain fought against outnumbering foes through all the weary weeks of the fever fhat maddened and wasted him ; holding him always a prisoner, but resisting ; conquered, yet struggling. Death, when he goes to a war, — which is indeed his usual custom, save in Brazil and on the occasion of Parisian duels, — fights less with the saber and musket than he does with the surer weapons of disease, hunger, cold, and weariness. The Grand Army had trampled the Russian battalions to powder, but for their invincible ally, the Frost — that mighty power whose throne in the Arctic Circle has not been shaken by the efforts of tireless Science and genera- tions of ambitious men. " But how many rebels, tell me true, Did you kill then, and the whole war through? " So I tell him how, near the set of sun, The charge was made, the victory won. How over our heads the battle broke With screaming shell and saber stroke ; But he wanted to know, the little elf — " How many men did you kill yourself? " " Say, tell me, Popsie, say you will — How many rebels did you kill ? " So I tell him the truth, near as can be — " As many of them as they did of me." — Chronicles of the Forty-Seventh. CHAPTER X. THE ARMOR-BEARER. " Only an Armor-bearer, now in the field. Guarding a shining helmet, sword and shield. Waiting to hear the thrilling battle-cry, Ready then to answer, ' Master, here am I ! '" — P. P. Buss. When the garrison at Newport Barracks was beaten out of the little fort by the force that swarmed up against them, the only line of retreat lay across the long railway bridge that spanned the river. Many of the soldiers made good their escape by this inconvenient highway, and when the last retreating infantryman turned to fire his Parthian shot at the shouting enemy, the Federals fired the bridge to pre- vent further pursuit. As the flames began to bite into tie and stringer, a lad named John H. Ring, Captain Conwell's personal orderly, bethought him of that gold-sheathed sword, presented in the camp at Springfield. On duty, the Captain, as required by Army Regulations, wore "the sword of the pattern adopted by the War Department." The presentation sword, in all its bravery of steel and gold and Latin motto, was at that moment hanging in the Captain's 87 88 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. tent. Just now, the foe, flushed with triumph, was eagerly seeking a way whereby he might continue the pursuit and complete his victory. In a few mo- ments the looting of the camp would begin, and the sword, among other spoil, would fall into the hands of the Philistines. It was more than the loyal young armor-bearer could endure. He was a boy who had learned his estimate of duty from an old Book that never yet, since the world was, taught a man or boy a wrong thing ; a Book that he carried in his pocket ; a Book that he read daily, until it got into his thoughts, his actions, his life, and made of the boy a man to whom the Colonel might have touched his cap in the most angular and respectful military salute in which the " school of the soldier " embodies the profoundest esteem. The Captain, moved by that unaccountable evil impulse that urges men, tortured by a troubled conscience, to say and do hateful things, wicked things, from sheer desperation ; leads a man to stand by, glaring upon the mangled face of the tortured mar- tyr, while the witnesses, with bloody hands, lay down their clothes at his feet ; angered by the boy's unfal- tering fidelity to the Book, a constant reproach to his unbelieving self ; the Captain forbade him, first, to read the Book in his presence ; forbade him, then, to read it in the Captain's tent at any time ; forbade him, at last, to read it at all, anywhere. But the armor- bearer, a loyal and obedient soldier, held the Book far above a Captain's bars, a Colonel's eagles, or the stars THE ARMOR-BEARER. 89 of the General ; held it far above that august ritual and book of military doctrine, " The Revised Regula- tions for the Army of the United States," and the Authority of the War Department. In open defiance of the Captain's orders, then, he still read the Book, as he would have read it had Secretary Stanton tinkled that terrible "little bell," and ordered the boy to take his choice between the Book and Fort La- fayette, the Dry Tortugas, or even a drum-head court- martial, with a sergeant and a firing party in the awful background. A brave, loyal-hearted boy ; true to God, he was true to the better part of himself — the God in him ; and so it followed, as the night the day, he could not then be false to any man. The Captain away beyond the lines, in the tangled swamps of North Carolina, striving with all the ear- nestness of desperation to get back to his beleaguered men, separated from them by outnumbering and vigi- lant foes ; the Captain's sword hanging there in the deserted tent as though it were a thing so used to the touch of a soldier's hand, it could not leave its post with an enemy in sight ; waiting there, to be seized amid sarcastic and triumphant jeerings and laughter; to be jauntily worn by some gray-jacketed trooper, who, having no respect for the United States Army Regulations, would turn its glittering blade against the flag and the cause it had been so eloquently ad- jured to defend. The boy's thoughts were swift preludes to prompt 90 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. action. Into the smoke and flame glooming and crackling about the long bridge he rushed, regardless of horrified and angry voices that sternly ordered him to return. Unarmed, he passed swiftly through the lines of the victorious Confederates, now scattering in the disorganization of rapid pursuit. He reaches the tent; the sword is still there — his heart leaps with joy, he is in time, then ! Out again, and a breathless race for the bridge. The ties are under his feet, but this brings him out of the lines and groups into plain view ; something brighter than the flash of the rifle's breath gleams in the sunlight ; the sword, with all the glittering splendor of its burnished scabbard, is laughing defiance back at its foes, throw- ing the light into the eyes of the shouting rebels like the swift flashes of a signaling heliograph ; a flying Yankee with a saber in his hand. " Wing him ! " "Bring him down!" "Halt! Halt!" A dozen rifles echo the command in sharp staccato voices ; the bullets whistle viciously about his head ; they splinter the sleepers under his feet ; the boy never turns — never pauses in his leaping flight — risk his life to get the sword, then bring it out and surrender it to them now 1 One wonders what might have been the result of the fight at Newport Barracks, had all the men of the garrison been like the Captain's armor- bearer. The boy reaches a new enemy ; the Con- federate riflemen are behind, painting the air around him with leaden streaks of invisible blue ; here, before THE ARMOR-BEARER. 91 him, singeing his hair and blistering his face with its hot breath, is the ally of his friends, now faithlessly gone over to the enemy. Dash through that sea of flame and smoke alive, he cannot. It is a tomb of fire. Hurriedly belting the sword to his waist, he quickly drops himself, underneath the stringers of the bridge, and hanging below the flames slowly works his way along, hand over hand. A Confederate field- officer appears at the river-side where his men are still firing at the daring boy. A quick command falls from his lips ; the firing ceases. The lad's gallantry has won him respect and respite from the magnani- mous enemy ; but the flames are pitiless and relent- less'; blazing brands fall upon him ; he is blinded by the smoke ; his eyes are useless and smarting with pain ; he feels his way along the crumbling line ; the fierce heat blisters his hands ^ what if his strength should fail .' — if, reaching his hand out in that blind way for its next hold, he should grasp a terrible bolt or brace of red-hot iron — if the blistering heat should crisp his weakening hands — if the red tongue of flame should sweep down into his face and kiss him to his death — if the bridge should fall — He hears the encouraging shouts of his comrades ; he must be nearing the shore then ; " A little farther ! " " Keep straight on ! " " You're all right now ! " " Come on ! Come on ! " They are like the voices of angels ; but his strength is going ; the heat grows more intense ; the roar of flames and the crackling 92 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. of timbers confuse him ; the smoke is strangling him — he can go no farther — it is all in vain — all useless, after all — A mighty shout rings in his dizzy brain, echoed from the other shore by the applauding cheers of the Confederates, who are not soldiers, just now, but men, brave-hearted and warm-hearted ; fathers themselves, some of them, of brave boys who are wearing the gray in other regiments — the boy, dropping from the blazing bridge reels into the strong arms stretched out to catch him, and his fainting head rests on an epauletted shoulder; a crash, a roar, a confusion of hissing, drifting clouds of steam and smoke ; the bridge is down ; the boy is over ; the Captain's s^ord is saved. Rough hands tenderly laid the little armor-bearer on a gun carriage — fitting chariot for a hero. They carried him to Beaufort, and there, in the hospital, the armor-bearer met and bravely faced the Last Enemy. A little while, quivering with agony, he struggled in the relentless grasp of the conquered conqueror ; he turned his face to the soldier-nurse, standing in blue uniform at the side of his cot : — " Give the Captain his sword," he said, simply and quietly. And then, having fought a good fight, having kept the faith, having "endured hardness as a good sol- dier," having stood his guard at a post where Danger and Honor met Pain and Death, he passed the coun- tersign to the Relief and went Off Duty. THE ARMOR-BEARER. 93 The Captain received his sword, and hot teardrops, plashing upon it, tarnished the golden scabbard, and made it so much the brighter. Something else he received from the faithful young armor-bearer ; some- thing " more precious than gold which perisheth,. though it be tried with fire " ; an inspiration, that, never leaving him, would by and by lead him into that same beautiful path of duty which led the boy to lose his life on the fair mountain heights of fidelity, to find it broader, deeper, purer, eternal, on the still loftier heights beyond the stars. "Hear ye the battle cry! 'Forward,' the call! See! see the fait 'ring ones — backward they fall! Surely the Captain may depend on me, Though but an Armor-bearer I may be!" CHAPTER XI. THE DAWN OF PEACE. Come home ; for the casque and the helmet are broken ; Home — for the war-cry is hushed in the land ; Home — the decree of the sword hath been spoken — The Union we cherish forever shall stand. O'er the grim, black-lipped cannon in beauty will climb The red and white roses of Peace, in her time. — The Recall. Returning to duty once more, as a prisoner paroled by an enemy stronger and more relentless than shell or bayonet, Captain Conwell learned that he had been recommended by General Foster for promotion to a Colonelcy in a regiment of colored troops. This was declined, as was also the tender of a Majority in a loyal North Carolina regiment, white. Commended by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for faithful and patriotic services in the campaigns of 1862-63, he was ordered to report to Washington. Here he was assigned to duty by the President and instructed to report to General MacPherson, then commanding the Department of the Tennessee. Hastening west, Lieu- tenant-Colonel Conwell reached Nashville in June, 1864, then pushing on to the front, reported in person 94 THE DAWN OF PEACE. 95 to General MacPherson in time to take part in the movements against Atlanta. Sherman was "pushing things " and the young staff-officer found. " beautiful fighting all along the line," in quantities to satisfy the greediest warrior that ever wore a uniform. From early in May, Sherman had been crowding Johnston " off the reservation " step by step; flanked him out of Dalton, where he had believed himself strongly posted and able to permanently check the Federal advance ; worried him out of Resaca after some hard fighting, reaching around him with an arm of cavalry that threatened to break him in two ; chasing him into Kingston, and straightway elbowing him out of it ; building railroads aj;id bridges almost as fast as the retreating rebels could destroy them. Sherman relates in his Memoirs, "the rebel cavalry lurking in his rear to burn bridges and obstruct communications, had become so disgusted at hearing trains go whistling by within a few hours after a bridge had been burned, that when it was proposed to blow up a few tunnels, a disgusted trooper said, ' No use, boys ; old Sherman carries duplicate tunnels with him and will replace them as fast as you can blow them up. Better save' your powder.' " Hard fighting at New Hope Church, that long, "nervy " arm of blue still working farther around the lines of gray, an^ Johnston moved back and left AUatoona to Sherman, while he retired into strong intrenchments at Ke'hesaw Mountain and Marietta. 96 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. Here at Kenesaw, on the morning of June 22d, General Hood led his division against the Union lines in a desperate effort to break the iron grip of steel that was slowly tightening about the throat of rebellion. Terrific fighting followed the fierce as- sault and with heavy losses of men, and large rein- forcements to his experience, Hood was driven back into his intrenchments. During these movements Colonel Conwell was in Hood's front. This was his first introduction to that Confederate fighter. After the war, he met him in New Orleans, and wrote : — "We found him in a one-horse commission store on the second floor of a stone building on a side street. He was very sociable and talked freely about tSe war and said he regretted nothing he had done, and would do the same fighting over again if he had a chance. He said when he succeeded General John- ston in command of the Western Confederate army, he knew the game was up. He was only fighting to save his honor. The ' revolution ' was crushed when Vicksburg fell, and he said so at that time. He said it was painful for him to talk about the lost cause, and he did not like to recall the war. We came near sug- gesting that if he could get into the custom-house it might cure his squeamishness on the subject of the late unpleasantness, but as he said he should never make any political speeches we con- cluded he was too far gone for a custom-house cure. He arose on his crutches as we left, bidding us good-by with an emphasis which indicated that he would like to have us call again ; so we have kept a good opinion of General Hood." — Letters from the Battle-fields. A few days after Hood's repulse Sherman in his turn assaulted the rebel works. A good thick bank THE DAWN OF PEACE. 97 of clay in front of a private soldier makes a sergeant of him with a file of men on each flank, and after getting up very close to the enemy's works, the boys in blue performed a most excellent imitation of Hood's retrograde movement on the 22d of June, and got back into their own intrenchments with a feeling that they would like to live forever if it was all the same to the gentlemen in gray. But while the Union lines in Johnston's front were repulsed. General Schofield was gaining ground to the left, and the Union cavalry was working around still more to the rear of John- ston's position ; within six days the Confederates evac- uated Kenesaw and Marietta, falling back to a new starting-point. During this fighting in the latter part of June (22d- 27th), Colonel Conwell, while directing the fire of two batteries on the field, was struck by a shell, which, bursting before him, shattered his arm and shoulder, hurled him from his horse, leaving him unconscious on the ground. He was left on the battle-field all night, the searching parties collecting the wounded supposing him to be dead. An Iowa soldier, John M. Crooks, of Dubuque, vyho lay beside him, also severely wounded, says that in changing his own position dur- ing the night, he laid his hand over on the head of the staff-officer, lying there so motionless, and "thought the boy was dead." The next day he was brought inside the lines by some of the ambulance corps ; the Federal troops occupied Marietta, and he was taken 98 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. there, to remain in hospital until he was able to be moved. Slowly healed the wound which the rebel shell had torn so roughly in the soldier's body. But while pain and weakness, two grim and pitiless guards, held him a prisoner in the military hospital at Marietta, they were — as so often in those days of war and these times of peace, they were and are — assigned to spe- cial duty in the chaplain's department ; they became missionaries as well as guards. The soldier had time to think ; there were long hours of wakefulness in the quiet nights in the dim-lighted wards where death and pain and patience kept their watch ; there were long hours in the monotonous days of hospital routine. There were deeper hurts than the lunge of the bayo- net or buffet of shell ever made, and for these the soldier now sought healing. The early teaching of the praying mother and the God-fearing^iather came back totEe~~toi ielj;, suffe ring, hom&3onging youth ; the picture of Johnny Ring's fidelity and sacrifice ; his own wanderings from the beautiful Christian faith that had been the very heart of his home in his childhood ; God's merciful hand that had been held over him like a protecting shield in so many dangers. He was fighting to conquer, to destroy a rebellion against his country — no rebel in all the armies of the Confederacy so defiant, so ungrateful, so deserving of judgment and punishment as himself ; all these things came to his heart and thoughts as he THE DAWN OF PEACE. 99 lay there, no longer rebellious, but ready to yield him- self in "unconditional surrender"; asking, not a crown, but grace. " A bowing, burdened head That only asks to rest Unquestioning upon A loving breast. " My good right hand forgets Its cunning now ; To march the weary march I know not how. " I am not eager, bold. Nor strong — all that is past ; I am ready not to do, At last, at last." So, before he could again sit in the saddle and swing a saber for the government, the hand of the Healing One was laid upon the helpless penitent, and he was made whole ; the Book the little Armor- bearer loved became a dear Book to the Colonel. He found peace to his soul, and made a public pro- fession of his faith in Christ before he left the hos- pital. The blind, foolish days of unbelief were gone forever. In his right mind, he wondered that ever he could have believed, or rather disbelieved, as he had even boasted that he did. And indeed, it is more than probable that he did not, at any time, entirely lose his hold upon the Bible, its truth and its power ; he could not forget entirely the religious teaching of his early days. From this time he was a 100 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. Christian, outspoken and earnest, and not long after the war he was baptized in St. Paul, Minnesota, and became a member of the First Baptist Church. Some blessed days there were, then, in this hos- pital. About him, the tramp of contending hosts and the thunder of cannon shook the earth and awakened echoes in the mountains and clouds ; the war cries of Union squadron and Secession battalion thrilled the air. But in the midst of it all, the wounded Colonel found Peace ; Peace which pass- eth understanding; Peace, that gently pushed the watcher, Pain, from the side of his hospital cot, and took her own place there, to "fill him with all joy in believing." By the time he could sit a horse again. General MacPherson had been instantly killed (July 22d), while passing from one column to another in the fighting before Atlanta, and " in his death," says General Grant, "the army lost one of its ablest, purest, and best generals." Colonel Conwell, still suffering from his wounds and unable to assume active duty in the field, was sent to Nashville for further rest and treatment. Here he reported to General Thomas and was instructed to'proceed to Washington, with a dispatch for General Logan. General Logan was, even then, on his way to Nash- ville with an order from the commanding general. Grant, to supersede Thomas ; hearing, when he reached Louisville of Thomas' splendid success in THE DAWN OP PEACE. 101 driving Hood out of his intrenchments and the state, Logan never presented the order, and returned to Washington. Colonel Conwell started to Washing- ton ; suffering from half-healed wounds, aggravated by the rough ways of travel which were the best those stormy times afforded, he broke down com- pletely at Harper's Ferry. Too weak longer to re- sist, he yielded to the earnest entreaties of his friends, and the arguments of pain and weakness, sent his resignation to the commanding general, and returned home for rest and nursing, sorely needed. Before he fully recovered, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee had shaken hands in the residence of Mr. McLean, at Appomattox Court-House, where was never an apple tree ; the United States was a Nation, a free Nation, in the singular number with a capital N, and the war was over, save for a few people who still go out, in their warlike minds, and whip six — never less than six — of the enemy at once, without the slightest inconvenience to the all-unconscious enemy. On the snowy field of Tablecloth, he traces the battle-plan — The frowning fort of Finger bowl, where the figured river ran ; The Butter pat on the Shamrock leaf, is the old abandoned mill, The Salt is a six-gun battery, on the crest of Saucer hill ,- The Fork is the gallant Forty-sixth ; the Celery, blanched with fear. Is the enemy's line a-breaking when our charging shout they hear ; And see, — this Spoon is the cavalry, by Colonel Raisin led. That swept the Toothpicks out of the woods behind this crust of bread. — Battle of the Dessert. CHAPTER XII. LAUNCHING THE SHIP. " When I am a man — " Well, Downy-lip, then — ? " When I am a man — " But you're talking to men ! " When I am a man — " Why, that is to-day — " When I am a man — " But your hair's turning gray ; " When I am a man — " There, cover his face; This boy was a man when he entered the race. — Alpha and Omtga. It is not good for man to be alone ; a fact of which man is himself thoroughly cognizant ; that is one thing he does not have to go to a lawyer or a dictionary to find out. When, during his college days, Peda- gogue Conwell taught school in West Granville, Massa- chusetts, Elizur B. Hayden was one of the patrons of the school. His daughter, Miss Jennie P. Hayden, was a pupil ; later, she was a proficient student of music under the instruction of this same Pedagogue who not only taught school, but taught music, and could even read at sight the " buckwheat notes " — strange and indecipherable hieroglyphics to youthful eyes of to-day, but dear to the musical hearts of our grandsires. Miss Hayden's brothers, Sydney and William, were in Captain Conwell's command during 102 --_ LAUNCHING THE SHIP. 103 the war, brave soldiers and loyal friends to their commander. In the schoolroom, Conwell had been a good teacher ; strict in discipline ; enforcing order and attention ; rigidly just with delinquents and trifllers. One of his pupils eventually became his teacher in an elective course which has been pursued, without any perceptible change or improvement in the methods of study or the results arrived at, in all languages, kindreds, tribes, peoples, and tongues for some six or seven thousand years. As the story was lithographed, stereotyped, engraved, "boiler-plated" with mortices for the insertion of names, so many thousand years ago, it is not necessary to repeat what is the common lot of uncommon men. In this case as in millions of others, while " Full solemn was ye pedagogue Among ye noisy churls, Yet other while he had a smile To give ye handsome girls. " And one, ye fayrest mayde of all, To cheer his wayning life, Shall be, when spryng ye flowers shall bringe. Ye pedagogue his wyfe." Russell Conwell and Miss Hayden were married in 1865, at Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, after he had been graduated in law at the Albany University. Their wedding journey took them to. a new home away up in the Northwest. A few months in St. Paul, while 104 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. they viewed the land, then they made their home in the rival city by the Falls of St. Anthony. It was a big land, full of promise. " L'Etoile du Nord " had been a state but seven years ; Minneapolis was a city of less than about fifteen thousand people ; nearly one- third of the inhabitants were foreigners, and the young people certainly had a clean balance sheet and a large wide country in which to begin their life account. Conwell opened a law office in a two-story stone build- ing on Bridge Square. As the landlord would not wait for his rent, the young lawyer could not wait for his clients, a corollary that did not disturb the clients nearly so much as the attorney. "I do not know what Conwell is at," Dr. Raymond might have re- peated at this time, "but one thing I do know — he is not idle." If men would not go to law and come to him, he could go to men with something else. He became an agent for the Thompson Brothers of St. Paul, who were his intimate friends, for the sale of land warrants, so it is safe to say that he " did a land- office business," and everybody knows what kind of business that is. He had the pen of a ready writer, and was the Minneapolis correspondent of the St. Paul Press. Such a man could not keep out of poli- tics if he were shut up in a monastery ; consequently we find him on the "stump," saving the country for the Republican and the Temperance parties. Truly an ungrateful and a Sisyphean task; he saved it several times in Minneapolis, and afterward once or LAUNCHING THE SHIP. lOS twice in Boston, and here it is ready — and needing — to be saved again. His political work brought him into contact with the leading men of the growing Northwest, and some of the friendships made at this time were most useful to himself and his friends later on. He took a deep and active interest in popular education and was a frequent and helpful visitor to the public schools. He went into journalism, and established a paper " to fill a long-felt want " — Con- well's Star of the North. Just what it wanted, does not appear in the chronicles, but whatever it was, it filled it, and passed into the hands of another ambi- tious editor with more money and less confidence. It would not be at all unlikely, judging merely from the unbroken history of other new-born newspapers for the past five hundred years, that the sheriff was a profoundly interested party to the transfer. After- ward the daily Minneapolis Chronicle was born of the brain, money, and pen of Conwell ; it presently "hyphenated" with the Atlas, and the twain, being thus made one flesh, furnished forth a slight repast — equivalent, say, to a single oyster — for the great jour- nal of Minneapolis — the Tribune. But these details of any man's early journalistic career are less unin- teresting to the great public than they are harrowing to the man with ink on his thumb. At a later day, Conwell's newspaper work broadened, and gave him a high place among the corps of " special correspond- ents," who are ever " on the spot," invariably and 106 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. perpetually as Mr. Chevy Slyme was always "round the corner." He had his first law case in Minneapolis. His first client came to him, unsought and unwelcome. His boyish love for athletics and out-of-door sports clung to him, and made him very popular among the young people. He was president of a skating park associa- tion, the members of which kept a great stretch of the mighty Mississippi clear of snow, and skated under the limitless canopy of the heavens, in just and harmonious proportion to the size of all things in the Northwestern empire. Preparatory to a grand mid- Tvinter carnival which was to be more brilliant than the Aurora Borealis and wide as the Mississippi, the president made a contract with a professional ice- worker to clear off a few acres above the Falls of St. Anthony. The compeller of snow, however, went off and had a premature carnival of his own, with one John Barleycorn. He downed the Enemy, or rather, the Enemy downed him — in fact they downed .each other, and the contractor did not get around to his work until after the carnival, having postponed its festal slide three days, had swept the ice, skated itself off its feet, and gone home. Finding that some one else had scraped the snow, and feeling a little poor after his riotous living, the contractor demanded pay- ment, on the ground that he would have done the work sometime, if somebody else hadn't. President Con- well refused to accede to this most reasonable demand, LAUNCHING THE SHIP. 107 and the horny-handed and down-trodden broHght suit against him. Conwell promptly appeared for the de- fense, insisting that the other members of the club, numbering one hundred, should be joined in the suit as defendants. He won the case. Times were look- ing better, and things appeared to be coming his way. But he could not keep getting himself sued in order to practice law. Other and more profitable , clients came to him, by and by. Though the prayer of Agur was being answered to him, and he was receiving neither poverty nor riches, yet he had a large stock of poverty on hand to begin with, which he was very slowly working off at bargain-counter rates. The little home — in the back room adjoining the office — was really the most commodious and adjustable little room imaginable ; it was sitting- room, dining-room, parlor, and kitchen, so that when the king was counting out his money and the queen, as is the custom of queens, was eating bread and honey, the monarchs were within easy conversational range. But his majesty's health broke down just as things began to brighten a bit. In spite of his buoyant and hopeful nature, there were many dark, days, and long cheerless nights. His newspaper ventures prospered greatly until his health failed, but naught is left of them now, save perhaps the honest old office towel, which, well-nigh indestructible as a Washington hand-press, may at this day be rattling hoarsely against the frescoed wall of some " nonpareil 108 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. paper ii> a Long Primer town," while the unappre- ciated editor cries loudly for cord wood and garden stuff to offset unpaid subscriptions of year before last and the preceding year. Unable to remain in the Northwestern climate, the shot wound in his side having re-opened after overexertion and excitement at the burning of his house in Minneapolis, and hoping for the best results from a tour abroad. Colonel Conwell accepted from Governor Marshall the appointment of Emigration Commissioner for the state of Minnesota. He left Minneapolis to return there no more, save on flying visits. All his business, sold out under the compulsion of shattered health, went, of course, at a ruinous sacrifice. Even after his arrival in Europe, disappointment awaited him. His health still growing worse, he was unable to do any work and so resigned from the mission which had sent him abroad. Awhile he rested, then for several months attended lectures at the University of Leipsic. One of the permanent institutions of the great city of Minneapolis which flourishes in good deeds is the Young Men's Christian Association, which had its origin in a noonday prayer meeting held for a year in Mr. Conwell's law office on Bridge Square. For three months only three persons attended these meetings; but the "perseverance of the saints" did lead to reaping in due time, and the little meeting started by Mr. Conwell grew out into one of the noblest institutions in the nation. CHAPTER XIII. " A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH." " I cannot rest from travel ; I will drink Life to the lees : all times have I enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone ; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vexed the dim sea : I am become a name ; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known ; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments." — Tennyson. This pilgrimage through Europe was but the pre- lude to other and longer journeys. A dozen times he crossed the Atlantic ; once he has made a circuit of the globe. His first tour included visits to Ireland, Scotland, England, France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Jerusalem, Turkey, Austria, and Germany. His second journey took him to France, Italy, Northern Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Babylon, Nineveh, Turkey, Russia, Denmark, Sweden, and Scotland. His third tour included a lecture trip in the western territories and California, at which time the Mormon Tabernacle was crowded successive nights by an audience admitted only by purchase tickets to hear 109 110 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. the distinguished orator. He then went on to the Sandwich Islands, through Japan into the interior of China, and to Pekin, visited Sumatra, Siam, Bur- mah, Madras, journeyed to the Himalaya Mountains, through India, pierced Arabia to Mecca, went to the Upper Nile, and came home by the way of Greece, Italy, and France. In the third trip to America from France, the steamer lona was wrecked at sea in a fearful storm, and for twenty-one days floated help- lessly in mid-ocean. In 1878 he "personally conducted" a party of tourists over Europe ; among his itinerant " learning- knights" was Miss Sophia Packard, late principal of Spellman Seminary, Atlanta, Georgia, who, afterward speaking of the tour and its distinguished leader, said, " Mr Conwell's way of leading the tourists up to an interesting locality and his graphic introduction, made this journey a panorama of exciting views." The London Times spoke of him as " a writer of singu- lar brilliancy and power"; "one of the most note- worthy men of New England." He avoided the beaten paths of the "globe-trotter," and was drawn to strange and out-of-the-way places. All the time, his pen was busy, and material for lectures, sermons, books, was piling itself up in the storehouse of mem- ory and observation. In 1870 he made a tour of the world as special correspondent for the New York Tribune and the Boston Traveller. His Hong-Kong letter to the Tribune, exposing the iniquities of the "A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH." Ill labor-contract system in Chinese emigration, kindled more than a little fire in popular thought and diplo- matic circles, a blaze upon which he cast some very inflammable oil, on his return to the United States, by the publication of his book, " Why and How the Chinese Emigrate." The book made what Horace Greeley would have called "mighty interesting read- ing." It might be profitably followed by a sequel, " How They are Treated when They Get Here," with explanatory foot-notes by Chinese editors. The two books would show between what upper and nether millstones Wun Lung is ground ; how he fares at the taper nails of his fellow heathen, and the white — comparatively speaking — hands of his Christian neighbors. John of the slanting eyes can appreciate the perplexity of a brother of somewhat darker hue, shortly after the war, unable to read or write, puzzling over the " Account " of the planter, which brought him out with no crop and deeply in debt after a year's work on "shares" ; "Naught's a naught, an' a figger's a figger — All fer de white man, nuffin fer de nigger." It was during Colonel Conwell's "Wanderjahr" that he met Bayard Taylor, and there grew up be- tween these travelers an intimate friendship that was a bond between them until Taylor made his last journey. He died in December, 1878, while residing in Berlin, United States Minister to Germany. Colo- 112 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. nel Conwell presided at the memorial service held in Tremont Temple, Boston. In a sermon preached in his own Temple in Philadelphia (A Holy Day, pub- lished in "Gleams of Grace") Colonel Conwell thus refers to the occasion : — "When Bayard Taylor, the traveler and poet, died, great sor- row was felt and exhibited by the people of this nation. I re- member well the sadness which was noticed in the city of Boston. The spontaneous desire to give some expression to the respect in which Mr. Taylor's name was held, pressed the literary people of Boston, both writers and readers, forward to a public memo- rial in the great hall of Tremont Temple. As a friend of Mr. Taylor, I was called upon to preside at that memorial gathering. That audience of the scholarly classes was a wonderful tribute to a remarkable man, and one for which I feel still a keen sense of gratitude. I remember asking Mr. Longfellow to write a poem, and to read it, and standing on the broad step at his front door, in Cambridge, he replied to my suggestion with the sweet expression : ' The universal sorrow is almost too sacred to touch •with a pen.'' " But when the evening came, although Professor Longfellow was too ill to be present, his poem was there. The great hall was crowded with the most cultivated people of Boston. On the platform sat many of the poets, orators, and philosophers, who have since passed into the Beyond. When, after several speeches had been made, I arose to introduce Dr. Oliver Wen- dell Holmes, the pressure of the crowd was too great for me to reach my chair again, and I took for a time the seat which Dr. Holmes had just left, and next to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Never were words of poet listened to with a silence more re- spectfully profound than were the words of Professor Long- fellow's poem as they were so touchingly and beautifiilly read by Dr. Holmes. " ' Dead he lay among his books, The peace of God was in his looks I w ***** * "A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH." 113 Let the lifeless body rest, He is gone who was its guest, — Gone as travelers haste to leave An inn, nor tarry until eve ! Traveler, in what realms afer. In what planet, in what star. In what vast aerial space, Shines the light upon thy face? In what gardens of delight Rest thy weary feet to-night ? ' Before Dr. Holmes resumed his seat, Mr. Emerson whispered in ray ear, in his epigrammatic style, ' This is holy Sabbath time.' " Shortly afterward, Colonel Conwell wrote "The Life of Bayard Taylor." That volume was followed by an enlarged edition of John S. C. Abbott's " Lives of the Presidents," published by E. C. Allen, of Augusta, Maine. Mr. Conwell was a friend of Mr. Abbott, and a fitting person to bring the history up to the present day. During the political campaign of 1884, the publishers of this same busy author brought out a "Life of James G. Blaine." Other books have followed — "The Life of Spurgeon;" "The Life, Speeches, and Public Services of James A. Garfield ; " " Little Bo ; " " Joshua Gianavello ; " the last a " sketchy biography of that great Walden- sian chieftain, which vividly portrays the manners and heroism of those terrible days of religious per- secution " ; " Acres of Diamonds," known the con- tinent over as the title of his famous lecture, is another of his books lately published, "written on IH TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. the same plan and with the same fundamental ideas as the lecture." Says one of his biographers (A. E. H.) : "In his lecture on ' Lessons of Travel ' Colonel Conwell has given us many hints which we have tried to follow up ; among other things, he says, ' The ability to make the present transparent, so as to see through it into the events of the past seems to be a necessary gift of travel.' This ability made travel, to him, a most delightful thing. So brilliant and clear are his imaginative powers that he seems actually to live, for the time, in the scenes of the past. Of his vivid description of ' the fall of Babylon,' the President of Harvard University wrote, ' It is impossible to forget such gorgeous description. The speaker must revel in a series of grand visions.' ' The Picturesque Orator,' as he has come to be called, originated in this marvelous gift. Any one who listens to his portrayal of the last charge of the Old Guard, which is sometimes given in his lecture, 'Acres of Diamonds,' must be able to see it all vividly as the real scene could disclose itself. Wherever he went, the past returned to him. Egyptian tombs gave up their dead, and the catacombs sent out their inmates to live and act their ancient deeds before him. Every battle was fought over, and every forum awoke again with the voices of the orators of ages gone by. Every palace hall was peopled again with beauty and chivalry. He could see them, hear them, love and hate them. Hear him describe his visit to the garden of Gethsemane : — " ' Last night we sat in the moonlight, under the old olives in Gethsemane. The old monk was full of traditions and specula- tions, but when the shadows of the walls began to creep up the side of Olivet I lost myself in delicious reveries. The monk talked on ; the olive trees rustled and shook in the breeze ; the cry of sentry or shepherd often echoed around the walls. " ' All grew indistinct but real. All changed about me with transformations like a clear dream. I stood alone in old Geth- semane. No wall of masonry about it ; no picket and inclosures within. The olives were larger, the hedge deeper, and Kedron "A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH:' 115 rippled by. Palestine had been hot and disagreeable, but the beds of earth and stone, the poor food, the beggars, the lepers, the guides, the quarreling Arabs, the weeping Jews of the pres- ent, with all their disagreeable associations of the past, were gone. I stepped back eighteen hundred years and more. It was dark. Lights flashed from the dark outline of the walls. Suddenly the moon looked down through a rift of deep clouds. " ' Then it was dark again. The distant mountains beyond the city, and Olivet behind me were strangely outlined against the murky sky. I could hear the voices of pilgrim parties murmur- ing in their little camps, and the distant chatter of passing trav- elers going up the steep ascent to the city. . . . " ' I saw the shadowy forms of men crossing the little bridge, and saw them indistinctly as they paused at the gateway of the garden. I saw the four come into the garden, and heard their voices. Distinctly one said, as he left the others, under the largest olive " Tai-ry thou here, while I go yonder to pray.'' He paused near me. His white robe brushed the vines along the path. Under the next olive he knelt down. The moon came out again and sprinkled his robe with light through the leaves. His head was uncovered. His hands were stretched upward. How pleading his tones in, " Let this cup pass from me." What a view of him I had. I aied. Tears came down. I held my breath as the noble man walked back, and woke the sleepers. Then again he glided by. Again he prayed. Once more the moon showed him clearly kneeling there. Oh, what a sight ! He was moaning, and had fallen prostrate on the ground. Sud- denly a soft glow, as of a crimson dawn, grew brighter about the place. It grew speedily into light which encircled the pray- ing one. Then softly outlined at first, but quickly defined, a bright form appeared bending over the weeping worshipper. An angel ! Oh, such divinity of beauty. Such delicacy of man- ner. Such grace of motion. Such compassionate love. I knelt before the vision. I put my head to the ground. My soul was filled with an ineffable thrill of heavenly joy. That was worship indeed. . . . "Kommen sie mit mir, Mein Herr?" " You must be dreaming, and very tired," kindly commanded the monk, and the delicious vision was dissipated.' 116 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. " From the Dead Sea to the Sea of Galilee, and up the Jor- dan's cliifs, he found a continual feast. From Capernaum to Nazareth and to Damascus, the old associations enriched him. The desert route to Palmyra and the journey to Sinai and Mecca had a fascination for him which a different disposition could not feel. In Sweden and in Russia, as in Greece and Italy, there are scenes which. Bayard Taylor said of him, 'he understood where the unread pilgrim saw nothing but dust. Turk and Austrian, Bulgarian and Caucasian were human friends to him.' Henry M. Stanley of the New York Herald and Edward King of the Boston jfournal, used an almost iden- tical expression in writing about him from Paris. 'Send that double-sighted Yankee, and he will see at a glance all there is and all there ever was.' " But his descriptions did him injustice, often. He wrote his letters on carts joggling over rough roads, or in some rude cabin. A hut or a palace was all the same to him. He wrote hastily and rudely often. Sometimes he was so independent as to be offensive, and was often too well acquainted with men's ancestry and history, and he was often careless and hasty. There was no other writer like him, and he had a style no one would be inclined, perhaps, to copy, and he saw that the attractiveness of his writings did not lie in their rhetorical merits. He was often urged by friends to publish in a book his celebrated ' Russell's Letters from the Battle-fields,' written for the Boston Traveller. But he would never consent." The treasures which he found in these years of travel enrich his sermons, his lectures, his books. His illustrations are his own, made the more vivid to listener and reader by their reality. The soul that looks through the eyes " Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything." And true it is, that the world needs a preacher "A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH." 117 who can read the trees and the brooks and stones. Not every man who stays away from church to go a-fishing can find these sermons which the exiled Duke, living " exempt from public haunt " and study- ing the " sweet uses of adversity," found so easily. True it is there are not one-half so many books and sermons in the running brooks as there should be. Many a dry, dry sermon has there been, is now, and it is greatly to be feared ever will be preached, that would be all the more palatable, all the more easily masticated at the least, for a long, all-night soaking- in the swift-running brook. And for some books that the world wots of, the fire would be even a better place than the brook. And for the "sermons in stones," one has but to listen to sermons in the worst tones that ever rasped and grated on the quiv- ering ear with nasal dissonance. Well for the lis- tener who cannot find the " sermons in stones " for himself, if he can sit in a church where there is a preacher who can bring the singing brook and whisp- ering woods into the pulpit. Far happier he than the wretched heirer whose pastor drags into the pulpit the "Encyclopedia of Ten Thousand Anec- dotes, Apt Illustrations, and Terse Sayings, weigh- ing Ten Thousand Five Hundred Pounds ; War- ranted to Illustrate Equally Well every Text in the Bible or the Newspapers ; Separately or all Together ; Endorsed by All the Manufactories of Hand-made Lithograph Sermons in the United States." 118 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. " During his journeys Mr. Conwell often visited General Gara- baldi, in Italy, and at his island home. They kept up a corre- spondence on matters of Italian history until the general's death. General Garabaldi called Mr. Conwell's attention to the heroic deeds of that admirer of America, the great and patriotic Vene- tian statesman, Daniel Manin. Mr. Conwell spent a long time gathering materials for a biography of Daniel Manin, and just before it was ready for the press the manuscript was destroyed by fire in the destruction of his home at Newton Centre, Massa- chusetts in 1880. Mr. Conwell's graphic lectures on Italian his- tory will never be forgotten by his hearers." — Scaling the Eagle's Nest. When that sweet-hearted, loving, and most lovable man, Samuel W. Duffield, near the close of his beau- tiful life and its enduring work, was writing his " English Hymns," he wrote to Miss Phoebe Cary, asking for some information as to the origin of her hymn, " One sweetly solemn thought Comes to me o'er and o'er : I'm nearer home to-day Than e'er I've been before." " It is a matter of thankfulness," writes Mr. Duf- field, " that she was aware of the story which we append, and which greatly cheered her." In the last year of her life she wrote to him : — " I inclose the hymn and the story for you, not because I am vain of the notice, but because I thought you would feel a peculiar interest in them, when you knew the hymn was written eighteen years ago (1852) in your house. I composed it in the little back third-story bedroom, one Sunday morning, after com- ing home from church ; and it makes me happy to think that any word I could say has done a little good in the world." "A GIRDLE ROUND THE EARTH!' 119 " Colonel Russell H. Conwell," continues Mr. Duf- field ("English Hymns," page 448, Boston), "re- ceived a letter after Miss Gary's death from the old man referred to in the story. In it he declares that he has become a ' hard-working Christian,' while ' Harry ' has utterly renounced gambling and kindred vices. The story — for which we are indebted to the personal observation and account of Colonel Conwell — is as follows : — " " In. Macao, China, not far from Hong-Kong, the principal occupation of the inhabitants is gaming. Here, on a certain occasion, a traveler found a company of gamblers in a back room on the upper floor of a hotel. At the table nearest him was an American, about twenty-five years old, playing with an old man. They had been betting and drinking. While the gray-haired man was shuffling the cards for a ' new deal ' the young man, in a .swaggering, careless way, sang, to a very pathetic tune, a verse of Phcebe Gary's beautiful hymn, ' One Sweetly Solemn Thought.' Hearing the singing, several gamblers looked up in surprise. The old man who was dealing the cards put on a look of melan- choly, stopped for a moment, gazed steadfastly at his partner in the game, and dashed the pack upon the floor under the table. Then said he, ' Where did you learn that tune ? ' The young man pretended that lie did not know he had been singing. ' Well, no matter,' said the old man, ' I've played my last game, and that's the end of it. The cards may lie there till doomsday, and I will never pick them up.' The old man having won money from the young man — about one hundred dollars — took it out of his pocket, and handing it to the latter, said : ' Here, Harry, is your money ; take it and do good with it ; I shall with mine.' As the traveler followed them downstairs, he saw them conversing by the doorway, and overheard enough to know that the older man was saying something about the song which the young man had sung. It had, perhaps, been learned at a 120 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. mother's knee, or in a Sunday-school, and may have been (in- deed it was), the means of saving these gamblers, and of aiding others through their influence toward that nobler life which alone is worth the living." Phoebe Cary died, July 31st, 1871, in Newport, Rhode Island. "There," says her biographer, "with- out an instant's warning, her death throe came. She knew it. Throwing up her arms in instinctive fright, this loving, believing, timid soul, who had never stood alone in all her mortal life, as she felt herself drifting out into the unknown, the eternal, — starting on the awful passage from which there is no return, — cried, in a low and piercing voice ; ' O God, have mercy on my soul !' and died." "Nearer my Father's house, Where many mansions be ; Nearer the great White Throne, Nearer the jasper sea. " For even now my feet May stand upon its brink ; I may be nearer home. Nearer than now I think." CHAPTER XIV. " THE BREATH OF AN UNFEe'd LAWYER. " "There's lots of men in Beaver Crick Thet's limberer in the jaw, But they hain't no man kin rassel me down When it comes to p'ints of law. An' ther's others besides me says it, An' ther's ben a heap of talk — Thet my opinions would git to ride When the Squire's 'ud hev to walk." — The Widder Plunkeit's Kittle. After the chaos of war, the order of law ; after the stern arbitration of the sword, from which there could be no appeal ; the sword, in its own august person, prosecuting witness, states attorney, judge, jury, and sheriff ; the sword, which first executed the accused and then subpoenaed the witnesses — the sol- dier turned to civil law, and sought to explore the mysteries of that profession which thirty years after the last shot was fired, is still trying causes growing out of a war that lasted but four years ; yea, which is not yet quite through with the War of 1812 ; which may, for aught a layman can know, have on a hand a few good suits growing out of the separation of the 122 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. colonies from the mother country ; nay, which has in its trustworthy hands, to the firm belief of credulous Americans, estates devised to them by corkscrewing ways of intricate instruments, in the time of William the Conqueror. Now that there are railways in Palestine and property is becoming sufficiently val- uable to make it worth fighting for, who knows but the Lost Tribes may find themselves able to prove their birth and lineage, and lay violent hands upon the new station, the elevator and the cornsheller which indicate the germ of an Oriental Chicago. It is said of Colonel Conwell, that from childhood he was an arbitrator; in the childish troubles and disputes that are ever-recurring features of school life, when the juvenile litigants did not appeal to clenched fists and grappling fingers, Russell would be appointed referee. This was before the cultured and polished days of baseball civilization, when an umpire is merely considered a target for the scorn and the bitter invectives of the defeated. Russell's first appearance in a real court of justice occurred in his boyhood, antedating therefore, by a number of years, his first successful case in Minneapolis. It was in the court of a justice of the peace. Court in the good old days of primitive practice, when the at- torney's office was his hat, which was high, bell- crowned and built to contain writs, leases, warranty deeds, mortgages, transcripts, processes, documents, papers, and all the legal blanks necessary to the com- " THE BREA TH OF AN UNFEE 'D LA WYEH." 123 plete outfitting of a well-conducted and flourishing law office. Court was in session upon this occasion, in the " Store " at South Worthington. Court had come over from Northampton to hear the cause ; it was sitting, enthroned in the awful majesty of the law, upon a flour-barrel ; the attorneys sat on a milk- ing-stool and a soap-box ; the parties to the suit perched on the cracker-box and a nail-keg ; the wit- nesses leaned up against things, and the audience stood around. The boy Conwell, naturally, had the best place in the Temple of Justice. He sprawled out at full length on the counter, oblivious to the convenience of occasional customers, timid women, who nervously broke in upon the decorum of the court for mackerel or molasses. Russell planted his elbows on the counter, made a comfortable resting- notch for his chin with his socketed hands, and waved above his recumbent figure two bare feet, much cal- loused as to the soles, knotty and knobbed with a schoolboy's display of stone bruises, and possibly, although the records here are indecipherable, some- what travel-stained. The cause .was one which had awakened wide- spread interest. The property in dispute was "a calf with a white face and a broken horn," says the record, indicating a calf of somewhat mature years — old enough at least to have horns long enough to break. It may have been a calf, but it was no chicken. The plaintiff had lost a calf with a " white 124 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. face and a broken horn." While passing through the land on his search for lost stock, like the son of Kish, he found the missing sweet-breads with all the appurtenances thereunto appertaining, white face, hoofs, broken horn and all, in the barn of the defend- ant. He sent an officer of the law to seize the wan- dering property ; whereat and whom-at the owner of the barn came out, and strong in conscious inno- cence, resisted the majesty of the law. He came into court and swore, flatly contradicting the evi- dence of the plaintiff, that the veal with the broken horn and pallid countenance aforesaid, was the calf of his heart ; he had reared it from the earliest days of its first tremulous "blatting" (a very common term, not found in the Century Dictionary) and it had never for a single hour been off its native farm. But against this declaration the plaintiff brought witnesses who, so to speak, put the defendant in a hole. They swore they saw the defendant driving " a calf with a white face and a broken horn " up the mountain-side one night, just after the plaintiff had lost just such a calf with just such a combination of fractured horn and ghostly face. Ej^her somebody was lying, or else calves with white faces and broken horns in Hampshire county beat the record for seven- year old horses, which is impossible. The lawyers manfully strove to disentangle the snarl of conflicting testimony ; like the attorneys in " Widder Plunkett's Kittle," as they warmed to the work in hand, they'd ■-««•> - / 0* — ,, -^V-' ,__ ;:i, '^ . - V, THE OLD FIREPLACE. "THE BREATH OF AN UNFEE'D LAWYER." 125 " — sweat and holler and rastle, An' rastle and sweat an' strain, Till thare galluses showed through thare weskits Like ef they'd ben in a rain." The defendant became excited. He broke in on the " proceedings " ; " he swore to his deposition," says the chronicler, "swore at the prosecuting at- torney," and wound up, Hke " a colt that wouldn't curry ner skeer," by " swearing at the justice." This was terrible. At this critical juncture Blucher came in sight, and the day was saved for the hard-pressed defense. Russell suddenly sprang to his feet, jumped off the counter, and rushed out regardless of the shouts from both sides and the bench of "order in court !" For, however the court may be disposed to overlook the choleric utterance of a reasonably excited defend- ant with a whole vote and some " in-floo-ence," it is justly and loftily severe upon any violation of the pro- prieties by a ten-year-old boy. In a moment the boy reappeared at the court-room door, pushing and shov- ing with great vigor and much shouting encour- agement, a most important witness for the defense. Another Richmond in the field ! A Calf with a White Face and a Broken Horn ! It roared its disapproval of the proceedings, and gave its bovine testimony re- luctantly but with gyrating tail and telling effect. It looked the crestfallen plaintiff in the face as a Calf of Ephesus which should say "Methinks thou art my glass, and not my brother ! " Russell told 126 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. how the calf now personally appearing before the court, had strayed to the " Eagle's Nest farm," and he had put it up and kept it, waiting for a claimant. The plaintiff apologized humbly, and paid the costs ; the defendant apologized, with an air of triumphant " I-told-you-so " contrition, to the court and all other persons at whom he had volleyed his objurgations ; white-winged peace brooded softly over the mack- erel kits, ropes of onions, axe helves, and other paraphernalia of the court-room ; Russell Conwell, unlicensed and unretained, had won his first case at law. Returning from the war, he entered the law office of Judge W. S. Shurtleff, of Springfield, Massachu- setts, his former colonel, and read there until he went to the University of Albany, New York. Here he was graduated in law, and received the degree of LL.B. The reader has already followed him from the law school to the matrimonial altar, and has jour- neyed with the Colonel and his bride to Minneapolis. The practice of law was interrupted, as has been seen in its very beginning, by broken health, and the years of foreign travel. The home in the Northwest is given up ; and once again the law claims the trav- eler. Eastward the course of Conwell took its way ; the vast, illimitable Northwest was now sufficiently advanced to stand alone. The Colonel decided to build a new home in an old country which had grown up, and settled down, and had something to go to "THE BREATH OF AN UNFEE'D LAWYER:' 127 law about, more lucrative than line fences which were worth more at that time than the farms they divided. He began practice and patience once more in Boston and its environs. It was a beginning, too. You may sit in the beautiful auditorium of the Temple, with some three thousand other people on the night of the Jubilee, and listen to the ex-lawyer say something about it himself, in another chapter (xxxix.). It is not always the poor client who has the hard times all to himself. Some years there are when the blue and gold on the office sign is new and deep and bright, that the learned counsel dines with Hope and sups with Disappointment, the supper being, even on ordinary occasions, far more elaborate in the formal arrangement of its courses than the dinner. Weary work this, waiting for clients who will not come, for patients who maintain an obstinate condition of rugged health, for readers who are yet learning to spell in words of no syllable. My dreams, like ships that went to sea, And got becalmed in sunnier climes, No more returned, are lost to me. Like promises of hopeful times ; And I have learned, with doubt oppressed, There are no birds in next year's nest. — Next Summer. CHAPTER XV. "THE NICE, SHARP QUILLETS OF THE LAW." " It pleases time and fortune, to lie heavy Upon a friend of mine, who in hot blood. Hath stepped into the law; which is past depth To those that without heed, plunge into 't." — Timon of Athens. While waiting for clients the Colonel's pen was kept busy with those sore plagues of literary life, the " pot-boilers," with which men waste in half an hour that which they would fain keep for the care- ful and thoughtful seasoning of years. In those days he was reduced to utter poverty. But by and by the sun began to burn through the fog. Edi- torials, political leaders, sketches of travel, now and again a hastily written book growing out of the crowded hours, and now and then a client. It did not exactly rain money, but there was a cheering in- crease in the number of people who had all manner of wrongs to be righted at once and at any cost to the other fellow. As his means permitted, with better times, he went into real estate speculation, and dur- ing the panic of 1874 was able to look down into an exceeding dark and bottomless hole, in which he had 128 "THE NICE, SHARP QUILLETS OF THE LAW." 129 placed about fifty thousand dollars' worth of invest- ment, waiting for a "rise." But as the world turned over, the rise came out at the other end of the hole, where the other man was waiting. The Colonel also had the weakness of a good-natured man, and a man who has seen "hard lines " ; his heart readily warmed with sympathy to a friend in a strait place ; his " friends " soon discovered that it was much easier to borrow Russell Conwell's prosperous name for. ninety days than it was to earn the money by working three long months. The result was, that in the course of time he embellished quite a number of commercial albums with his esteemed autograph, and afterward paid for the illustration and binding himself, in- cluding the customary protest fees. One of these "friends" having secured a ten thousand dollar auto- graph from the lawyer — for a three hundred dollar album — took up a revised Boston lexicon, and dis- covered therein, high up in the F column, the word " Fail," which had been omitted, by some careless oversight, from Cardinal Richelieu's edition of that valuable work, the "Bright Lexicon of Youth." The friend speedily made an active transitive verb of it, first person, singular number. Straightway trouble knocked at the Colonel's door once more, and — as trouble usually does — found him at home. Trouble has a neighborly, informal way of dispensing with the cold and hollow conventionalities of artificial society ; a friendly back-door way of coming right 130 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. in without regard to "reception days," "at homes," or " back in fifteen minutes " placards. It has been known to walk right into an elegant office with ground-glass doors, whereon letters of gold haughtily and forbiddingly announce " Private ; positively no admittance." It has no respect for man or his ordi- nances, nor yet for his social position. It has been known to call a floor-walker "Johnny," and earthly assurance can go no farther. " My son, if thou become surety for thy neighbor, If thou hast stricken thy hand with a stranger, Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, Thou art taken with the words of thy mouth. Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself. Seeing thou art come into the hand of thy neighbor ; Go bestir thyself, and importune thy neighbor ; Give not sleep to thine eyes. Nor slumber to thine eyelids. Deliver thyself as a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, And as a bird from the hand of the fowler.'' — Proverbs, vi. 1-5. Naturally enough, doing business in this way, deal- ing more with his heart than with his head, he failed. Went to the wall for about fifty thousand dollars as aforesaid, and suddenly found himself so poor that a walk to a free picture-gallery was an extravagance not to be thought of. But it is a blessed compensa- tion that night, which brings out the mosquitoes, also brings out the stars. Trouble brought a friend to Conwell's side ; a true friend ; one of the rare, " THE NICE, SHARP QUILLETS OF THE ZAtV." 131 rare kind — the kind that God makes, whp come un- invited as trouble itself ; who come without waiting to be asked. There are " friends " — every man has had experience of them — who, seeing a man run over by a trolley car, will ask, " Did it hurt ? " before offer- ing to help the sufferer to his feet ; friends who, see- ing a man shoot through a hole in the ice, wait a few moments, and if he does not reappear, skate cau- tiously to the edge of the opening, politely inquiring, " Do you wish any assistance ? " and feel that they have done their whole duty, in proffering their aid. John H. Sanborn was not one of these men. When he knew his friend was in trouble, he did not wait to hear him cry out. He was at Conwell's side almost as soon as Trouble got there. He was there with his cheery words of encouragement, to tell the man who had gone down in the crash of the panic, that help was close at hand, coming right along ; he was there with the sound counsel of a cool, clear-headed business man, and the ready purse that backs the counsel of a friend. As the years brightened. Colonel Conwell was able to repay all this, so far as dollars can repay a debt. But the ready help, the generous unquestion- ing friendship, worth more than all the money in the world — that is a debt forever. That is something that can never be repaid. The more grateful and loving the debtor, the greater appears the ever-growing debt. It would seem, however, that he had not a sufficient number of needy friends who were on calling terms 132 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. with him, tQ satisfy his desire to help somebody else. Poverty and its pitiful struggles certainly had not made him bitter. All these years of trial broadened the man ; made his heart tender and sympathetic. As God prospered him, he divided his prosperity. People who read the Boston papers about those times were surprised to see in the advertising columns, the following very unprofessional card of a professional man, Lawyer Russell H. Conwell : — " Legal Advice for the Poor. " Any deserving poor person desiring legal advice or assist- ance will be given the same free of any charge, any evening ex- cept Sunday, at No. 12 Rialto Building, Devonshire St. None of these cases will be taken into court for pay." " I have written to Mr. Conwell," pathetically writes the author of "Scaling the Eagle's Nest," "to ask him for more particulars concerning this period of his life, and all the satisfaction I received was a friendly letter in which he says he has for- gotten all about it and that ' no one cares about it anyhow.' " The plaint of Comrade Higgins can be echoed by any other chronicler who has sought Mr. Conwell's aid in biographical research. The Conwell ideal of the biography of the Pastor of Grace Church appears to be one in which all mention of one Con- well is carefully eliminated. The historian can glean after him in the fields wherein he has wrought, and find here and there a very little stubble which has "THE NICE, SHARP QUILLETS OF THE LAW." 133 fallen in the way of the toiling bondman who is chained to his pen, but for the most part the serf is compelled to lyake bricks without straw. Haply, Comrade Higgins, who now "rests from his labor while his works do follow him," has gone over this field, and succeeding scribes can do no better than poach on his brick-yard — raid on it — nay, sit down in the trenches and besiege it, capture it bodily, clay- pit, straw-stack, kiln, and all. Therefore, the guerilla who leads the following raid on the pages of " Scal- ing the Eagle's Nest " — so hardened doth necessity make some men — offers no apology for this whole- sale looting of that whereon he bestowed no labor : — " For several years Colonel Con well kept his oiBce open in the evening for the purpose of giving legal advice free of charge to any poor applicant. The students in his office testify that none of these charity cases were ever taken into court for pay, and many a poor widow secured her dower, many a friendless orphan his inheritance, through the disinterested efforts of this generous lawyer. " Much of his time and attention was claimed by applicants for pensions ; soldiers, orphans, and widows of soldiers applied to him in his office, on the trains, wherever they could find him ; they found the busy man a ready and sympathetic listener. He charged no fees for this class of business, although it sometimes laid him under more than a little personal expense, he occasion- ally visiting Washington in behalf of some poor soldier. His law partners say that he never lost a pension case, and never made a cent by all his pension business." It was a rigid rule of the law firm of which he was a member never to take a case into court if their 134 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. client was in the wrong, and never to accept a crim- inal case if the defendant seeking to retain any member of the firm was guilty. Sometimes, how- ever, a criminal would be found who could hoodwink the lawyers even as he defied the law. On one occasion a young man charged with picking pockets, convinced the Colonel that he was a much-injured innocent youth, whose simple life might be blighted by the foul and malicious charge against him. He enlisted the Colonel's sympathies so completely and warmly, that the lawyer triumphantly crushed all the logic and eloquence and evidence of the other side, brought his client out of the trial weeping, but ac- quitted and vindicated. When they reached the attorney's office, Injured Innocence pulled out of his pocket his lawyer's own pocket-book, having " swiped " it with professional dexterity while the champion of honesty was tearing the prosecution to rags in his behalf. " The rest is silence." One of his charity clients, a drunkard whom he had nursed through a perfect " circus " of delirium tremens, and then paid his fine in court, not to be outdone in generosity, wanted to borrow what money the Colonel had left after paying the fine. When this was refused he drew a knife and made a rush at the lawyer. Con- well knocked him down with a notarial seal — which in various ways is frequently used for that purpose, "then sent the man to the hospital and had him tenderly cared for." "THE NICE, SHARP QUILLETS OF THE LAW." 13S " In the personal work of temperance reform he was always active. He never drank intoxicating liquors of any kind him- self, but he had a sympathy with those who did. He often took drunkards to his own beautiful home in Somerville and in Boston, and dosed them all night. He never passed a reeling man on the street without speaking kindly to him. Many of his law cases were in defense of the poor inebriates, or for their widows, orphans, or deserted families. At one time he was the guardian over sixty orphan children. " In these years in Boston, as in Minneapolis, he was actively engaged in politics, and was the especial favorite of the working- men. At one time he was nominated by the Republican party for the State Legislature, but was defeated on the temperance issue. At another time he was persistently urged by the Repub- lican and Workingmen's party, in the Fifth Massachusetts con- gressional district to accept a nomination for Congress, but he refused. General Nathaniel P. Banks was a favorite political friend of Colonel Conwell, who most successfully managed one campaign for him. His name was urged by Senators Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, for the United States Consulship at Naples, but it was without his knowledge ; he enjoyed the activ- ity and excitement of political work, but was averse to holding office. He was considered an expert in contested election cases ; in matters to be heard and decided by the Legislature, he fre- quently appeared before that body as the advocate of cities and towns." In all this political experience he learned the ways of men ; he learned that to " rout the enemy, horse, foot, and dragoons" meant, by free interpretation, that you had pulled through with about seventeen majority in a district that usually gave seven thousand ; he learned how " to keep the camp fires brightly burn- ■ ing," which as a rule consists in writing about five editorials per week, each one good for a libel suit or 136 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. a clubbing, sometimes both ; he learned to " view with alarm," when the enemy has the audacity to have a longer torchlight procession than " we " can string out with all the boys in the township ; to "point with pride" when Vermont goes Republican. At the proper point in the campaign he could say, " Now, by St. George, the fight goes bravely on," and in the stunned silence which follows defeat, he could remark, " Now that the smoke of the conflict has cleared away, let us glance calmly over the field." For of such phrase-making versatility is born the genius of American politics. And possibly because of his active personal participation in politics, because he knows the alphabet thereof, because he knows how fields are lost- and won. Preacher Conwell finds no difficulty at all in preaching clear through a heated Presidential campaign, without once going to the newspapers for a Sunday morning text. The preacher who has mixed a little with practical poli- tics on week days, is very apt to be glad enough to give the subject a profound rest on Sunday. Searching for straw one barren day, with his tale of bricks still incomplete, and a diminutive task- master with an inky face at the door, piping his sulphurous demand for "copy," Comrade Higgins, raiding the rick-yard of the Hartford Courant (Octo- ber 25, 1872) found the following local item, show- ing how the Colonel, in law, in politics, in journaUsm, in any kind of work that came to his hand, always "THE NICE, SHARP QUILLETS OF THE LAW!' 137 knew how to " do the next thing," and to do it in the simplest and quickest way. " While two young ladies by the name of CuUows were driven out by a coachman, Wednesday morning, the horses took fright at an approaching train, and, dashing through the fence, started at a furious speed across a rocky field. The cowardly coachman leaped from the seat and let go the reins, leaving the ladies to their fate. Colonel R. H. Conwell, the orator and writer of Boston, saw the condition of affairs and bravely rushed to the rescue. He overtook the team, after they had broken the shaft and just as they were making a short turn, which must have crushed the ladies with the carriage, had he not seized the horses by the bridles. He is a powerful man, but' so great was their headway that he was carried over rocks and ditches, a distance of more than a hundred yards, and when the exhausted horses were finally stopped, their heads bled profusely where the har- ness straps cut in, and the Colonel was bruised and his clothing torn, and injured internally so severely that a physician was called, who for a while feared a fatal result. The ladies escaped without a scratch, but the carriage was almost a total wreck. The Colonel is doing well at this writing, but could not fill a lecture engagement which he had at Plainville, Wednesday night, as the physician would not let him be removed." Years of varied occupation and experiences these, but they were not wasted years. Just what he was going to do with all the material he was gathering, he probably did not know ; but it was good material. It was " considerably mixed" ; it didn't look any more like a career than a pile of brick and stone and lum- ber in the street resembles the Temple. Neverthe- less, the Temple is there. The Colonel couldn't, or wouldn't, see very far ahead of himself in those days ; 138 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. there was more fog, and mist, and cloud, than sun- shine, but he knew there was going to be a to-mor- row in his life, as surely as on the calendar, and he was looking for it and living toward it. Somewhere, out on the blue seas sailing, Where the winds dance and spin, Beyond the reach of my eager hailing Over the breakers' din — Out where the dark storm-clouds are lifting, Out where the blinding fog is drifting. Out where treacherous sands are shifting — My ship is coming in. — Looking for To-Morrow. CHAPTER XVI. "HEAR ME, FOR I WILL SPEAK." We went to Gladwyne Baptist Church a week ago last night, To hear a feller lecture there, about " A Losin' Fight " ; You see, we ben a havin' a course fer " Bushrod Post," An' it's ben a " losin' fight " fer us, financially, almost. This man 'at lectured — on the bills — was Ginerl Ellsworth Drew, 'Bout nine year old, I reckon, maybe, when the war was through; But he fit the war from eend to eend in couple of hours, about. An' he would of fit another, only all the lamps went out. I've heerd a heap an' read a heap of talk about the war, An' the fellers that wan't in it, seems to know it more an' more; An' the fellers that was in it, an' got whipped in every fight, Is the ones that shows us how the ones that won was never right. — A Privates Reminiscences. In 1864, before the assembled alumnae and students of Mount Holyoke College, Russell H. Conwell de- livered his first lyceum lecture, on some historical subject bearing on the "Benefits to Humanity accru- ing from Previous Wars. " He is quoted as saying that the lecture was a failure, both in matter and delivery. Possibly ; perhaps he did not know ; a man is a very 139 140 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. poor judge of his own best work on the rostrum. And even if it must be set down as a failure, it was just as well, perhaps. Happy is the man who makes all his mistakes in the morning ; he will have the long afternoon in which to correct them ; unless he dies at noon. It is a most unfortunate thing for a man to strike twelve the first time. He has to wait so long before he strikes it again. And even on his way around the dial, he may, as suggested above, run down about 3.30 p.m. and never get any farther. After this lecture at South Hadley, Massachusetts, Colonel Conwell rejoined his regiment in the front, and if the sting of failure still rankled in his breast, the Southrons suffered for that unfortunate lec- ture, even as they have been made to rejoice since then, in delightful evenings with Conwell and " Acres of Diamonds," " A Silver Crown," or any other sub- ject which the orator might choose to make brilliant and instructive and entertaining by his eloquent treatment thereof. His success on the platform began so early, it has grown so steadily, that it is somewhat difficult to realize that its initial was a failure. At any rate, his first failure was the last, up to date. He leaped into almost instant popularity ; politics and the Lyceum claimed him, called for him, and made contracts for him. The Rostrum descended a little from its dignity and divided time with " The Stump." As long ago as 1870 he lectured a few times abroad, and his ap- "HEAR ME, FOR I WILL SPEAK." 141 pearance on the platform in England led the London Telegraph to say : — "The young man is weirdly like his native hills. You can hear the cascades and the trickling streams in his tone of voice. He has a strange and unconscious power of so modulating his voice as to suggest the howl of the tempest in rocky declivities, or the soft echo of music in distant valleys. The breezy fresh- ness and natural suggestiveness of varied nature in its wild state was completely fascinating. He excelled in description, and the auditor could almost hear the Niagara roll as he described it, and listened to catch the sound of sighing pines in his voice as he told of the Carolinas." To repeat a tithe of what people have said and thought of his lectures, would be simply to reprint volumes of press notices and personal encomiums. No man on the lyceum platform to-day stands higher in popular esteem, no lecturer is in greater demand. The regular lyceum courses during the winter are clamorous for him, and the " Summer Assemblies," those children of the lyceum, feel that their lists are sadly incomplete if the name of Russell H. Conwell does not occupy a prominent place. His method of instruction is entertaining, and his entertainment is always instructive. His bright, natural, rippling humor is made the vehicle for some thought that will remain in the mind, blossom and grow to fruition long after the jest has been forgotten. Not the least wearing part of this preacher's life is that devoted to the platform. The lecturer is a cricket who sings merrily during the dark, cold 142 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. winter days, while the ant, virtuous little prig, is gorg- ing itself with the dried flies and grasshopper legs, beetle-wings, and other hard and indigestible articles of commissary stores, amassed by incessant and rather ill-natured toil all summer, and stored away for selfish devouring at a time when the little glutton, who — or which, as you will — is really one of the most unmiti- gated pests in the world of crawling things, fondly hopes the cricket is starving to death and freezing between meals. Blessed be the cricket for its cheery song. If so be that Arctic fates overtake him with the first white frost, he can " hang up de fiddle an' de bow," and curl up under a haystack to die, with the comforting reflection that at least he never made a Sunday-school picnic a place of torment. Read just one page from the lecturer's experience ; he rises at 4 a.m. to take a train which is due at 4.30. Hastily he makes his toilet in the little room fur- nished like the cell of a good county jail, with a bed to sleep in, a chair to sit in, water for the face and hands, a gauzy, semi-transparent towel, well stricken in years, a block of granite soap, hand polished. It is too early for any one to be astir save the night- watchman who called him, and he is no porter. The distinguished orator carries his own valise, which is so constructed that it abrades both legs at every step — this is the triumph of the trunk-maker's ingenuity. He reaches the station still alive, for which he is, or is not, thankful, according to his humor. He has "HEAR ME, FOR T WILL SPEAK." 143 both gloves, but left one overshoe at the hotel. There is no time to go back for it ; the train is due in eight minutes. Snowbound somewhere, it comes along in an hour and ten minutes. That misses the connection with the Whoa, Haw, and Gee short line for himj he "wires" the committee that he will have to come around by the Tip Up & Turnover and drive over from Waycross. He dines at Hemlock Bridge. An enterprising restaurateur, knowing that trains always stop while the track men brace up the bridge, has established there one of those hopelessly dirty, appetite-destroying, loafer-nurturing places, where " All kinds of Soft Drinks, Tobacco and Se- gars and Sandwiches and Hot Coffee " are sold. A man never eats anything at this sort of place, but the sight and smell of it destroy every last trace and symptom of hunger, so one end of eating is gained very inexpensively. At 7.45 p.m. he alights from the wagon that brought him over from Waycross in the rain. The weather affects the audience, and the lect- urer, feeling that the very best he can do impresses his hearers, not unnaturally, as being a little the worst they ever heard, is buoyed up by the conviction if he talks long enough ten o'clock will come around some time that same night. At last the end is reached ; a faint murmur of condemnatory applause escorts him from the platform. It is Saturday night. The blessed hope of a Sabbath rest on the morrow makes his pil- low soft, for it has been a busy week, every day full of 14+ TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. long, flying journeys, and every night full of lecture. The chairman detains the impatient audience long enough to announce that the Distinguished Speaker of the Evening, having decided to remain in "our city" for his Sabbath rest, has kindly consented to preach in the First Baptist Church at 10.30 to-morrow morning, and will also address the Men's meeting at the Young Men's Christian Association at 4 P.M., and will preach in Zion Methodist Episco- pal Church at 7.30 in the evening. The audience then escapes ; the lecturer, learning there is no place open at that hour where he may get the dinner that he didn't eat and the supper that he missed, placidly smiles and lies, saying he isn't very hungry anyhow. A few friends, remarking that "they don't suppose he can go to sleep right after speaking," attend him to his room at the hotel to keep him from getting lonesome and homesick, which they do by filling the room with cigar smoke of varying qualities of strength and flavor, while they encourage him to tell stories and give recitations until twelve o'clock, when the approach of Sunday morning breaks up the party, The lecturer groans as he gropes his way under the blankets, half hoping that if once he gets to sleep he may never awaken, which impious aspiration is rudely negatived by the youngest man in the party, who comes thundering at his door next morning at seven o'clock, bringing two autograph albums and a cigar six inches long, stronger than the memory of a wasted "HEAR ME, FOR I WILL SPEAK." 145 life ; and what is more, he is a little hurt if the lecturer does not admit him, or declines to sit up in bed and smoke that cigar to the bitter end, which is both ends. He goes through the "stated services" of the " Rest day ; " half a dozen strangers are invited to meet him at dinner; he is taken out to make a couple of calls before going to the Association rooms ; after the evening service he is taken "just for a few minutes " to call upon a " most influential and charm- ing family," not a member of which found time to attend one of his numerous public appearances, and when his friends bid him good night at last, they say, " Well, you have had a good, quiet Sunday rest with us ; you will feel all the better prepared for your week's work.'' And the lecturer, escaping some peo- ple who are waiting for him in the hotel office, by bribing the porter to let him in at the back door, goes to bed, comprehending more clearly than ever before the goodness and wisdom of the Creator in putting the Sundays six days apart. There is a sunny side to lecturing ; the greater part of it is sunny, pleasant, sweet to look back upon and good to remember. But lecturing is a business, like the law and medicine ; it is hard work ; if it wasn't, there would be no money in it. If it was easy, every man would make his own lectures. If everybody could do it, nobody would try to do it. The roar and rattle, clang and rush, dust, smoke, and cinders of railway travel is wearing, irritating, 146 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. well-nigh maddening, continued day after day, months together. The lecturer travels over a wider scope of country than any commercial traveler, is tied more closely to dates and times, makes longer trips than the conductor who starts out with him, and then lectures for two hours after the wearied conductor and tired commercial man have gone to bed. And how this man does this through the week, and hurry- ing home, stands in his pulpit Sunday morning with a new sermon, fresh and bright and inspiring, is a marvel to the men who have tried it. To people who never try it, of course it is the easiest thing in the world. Now Winter comes, I have no care, I ask no ant to give me room, I beg no bee for dainty fare, I sing and laugh at Winter's gloom ; And that the Summer hours I danced away, Bring no regret to me this arctic day. For this is the season, as you may conjecture. That is joy to the Lecturer, Singer, and Printer ; So stick up the posters, announce a -new lecture — I'm one of the crickets that sing in the Winter ! — Plaint of the Cricket. CHAPTER XVII. "HE PREACHED TO ALL MEN EVERYWHERE." "Let lovers tell of love accepted; let soldiers tell of victories vron; let long-imprisoned men tell of release; but ah, when the door of heaven opens to the repentant sinner, the kneeling Christian praying expectant at his side knows a sublimer joy than all the rest combined." — Russell H. Conwell. There was coming just a little gleam of gray light in the east to show that morning was near at hand ; the night of poverty was waning ; the day was climb- ing over the mountain tops — " The de^ morn, With breath all incense and vyith cheek all bloom, Laughing the clouds a^way with playful scorn, And living as if earth contained no tomb " — when the young wife, Jennie Conwell, wearied in the way and died "when yet there was but a little way to come unto Ephrath" and he "buried her there in the way of Ephrath ; the same is Bethle- hem." So near to the " house of bread " ; so near to the resting-place. It was well ; what matter, then ? She rested, quietly, sweetly, as one whose work of patience and service was wholly finished, 147 148 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. made complete when she closed her soft eyes against the dawning light. In the sorrowing heart and the strong arms of her husband she left two children, a son and a daughter. The son, Leon, is a resident of Philadelphia. He has followed his father's foot- steps around the globe ; one is reminded of his father in the vigorous tone of his published letters ; his quickness to see and the vividness with which he can tell what he saw. The daughter, Mrs. Nima H. Tuttle, is the wife of Edgar G. Tuttle of Newark, New Jersey, civil engineer. The Colonel had not been having an easy time with his conscience for years past. Even when he was a boy, the son of a godly father and a praying mother, his mind, with all the multiplied visions and ambitions that make the mind of an active boy a polyglot of purposes and intentions, a changing kaleidoscope of plans and dreams, he had been di- vided, as he neared the time for a final decision, be- tween the law and the ministry. For a boy of his temperament, the law possessed peculiar charms ; when he was a young man, its promises of work and reward, the distinction and applause so dear to the oratorical temperament, were more alluring than ever, and still the restless conscience kept whisper- ing to him, making its still small voice heard in the loudest applause that thundered its delighted appro- bation of his words on rostrum and the political stump, "As ye go. Preach." While he was a student "HE PREACHED TO ALL MEN EVERYWHERE." 149 in the University of Albany, he was reading works on theology, and his bookshelves indicated that a law reader was sharing his room with a theological student. So indeed he was, although but one man occupied the room. He began collecting a theologi- cal library in 1867, "sending to Germany for a number of books which for a time were detained in the Custom House at Boston," a detention which might have inclined this distinguished Pennsylvanian — for Pennsylvania claims him at least as an adopted son — to listen to the heresies of free trade. When he was admitted to the bar, in the Supreme Court of New York in 1865, a graduate of the University, "he is said to have had a Greek Testament in his pocket." "In 1875, he was admitted to practice in the Supreme Court of the United States, and that evening he delivered an address in Washington City, on the ' Curriculum of the School of the Prophets in Ancient Israel.' " " For some years he evinced the deepest interest in Christian antiquities. He gathered from all parts of the Old World photo- graphs of the ancient manuscripts, and of sacred places, and kept up a frequent correspondence with many professors and ex- plorers interested in that subject. He often lectured in schools and colleges on archaeological subjects, with illustrations pre- pared for the calcium light under his own supervision. When his library was destroyed by fire, the greatest loss was in valuable theological works." He knew what he ought to do ; he could not help hearing the voice that, amid all the changes of his 150 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. life, was urging him constantly in one direction. The struggle between inclination and duty, between ambition and service, for years had fretted him ; it had irritated him ; it had divided him against him- self. It was this conflict that had impelled him — he could not himself tell how or why — to jeer at the faithful little Bible reader, Johnny Ring, who was his orderly, commanding him, by his military authority, to close his Bible and never read it again, even while the man's heart was wrung and tormented by the thought of the wickedness he was doing. It was a struggle somewhat similar to one which a distin- guished young lawyer of Tarsus, one " Saul, who is also Paul" passed through, convincing himself that he best served God by persecuting His people, "be- ing exceedingly mad against them ; " verily thinking that he " ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth." Even so, this lawyer of a later day was finding it " hard to kick against the goads." Johnny Ring's fidelity to duty, which alone made him more than faithful to his Captain, was a picture constantly before his mental vision. The soldier was leading the Captain ; the Armor-bearer was commanding the Chieftain ; vainly, in his rest- lessness and irritation while in the army had he sought relief by attempting to persuade himself that the story of the cross was after all but a " cunningly devised fable ; " and now he was a Christian, still learning his duty. He lifted his eyes to the sword "HE PREACHED TO ALL MEN EVERYWHERE." 151 hanging upon the wall above his bed — that was no "air-drawn dagger;" that was real; the hands that had carried it through smoke and fire and ringing rifle shots ; the boy who had gladly and heroically given his brave young life to save this deadly toy of steel and gold, was not a character of fiction ; he was real, and a life like that could not end in the white walls of a hospital — it begun there. Then back of it all, underlying the power of the heroism, inspiring the fidelity ; making the sacrifice of life for duty's sake a most natural part of life ; the soil in which all this fair blossom and perfect fruit of character had seed and root and life and nourishment — the Bible which Johnny read — can "a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit ? " " Do men gather grapes of thorns ? " Men would be glad indeed sometimes to disbelieve this old Book, but at every turn of life, in every act of heroism, in every deed of goodness, in every manly inspiration and every noble act, its Truth confronts them and confounds their scepti- cism. They may deny it, but in the very souls of them they have to believe it. So it was that even at a time when the soldier Conwell was trying to per- suade himself that he did not believe this Book he did believe it, and the knowledge that he did believe it, that he had to believe it whether he would or would not, that he could not look at the sun and say "It is night and darkness," fretted him, and tossed him about in his mind, a rudderless ship, chafing with 1S2 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. the waves, angrily and helplessly contending against hidden currents and adverse winds. In his struggle between inclination and duty, the ambition of the man and the service of the Christian, he was going through much of the old conflict again. Then came Death, — "the black camel that kneels at every man's door." If his heart had held political ambition, if his dreams had been to climb to eminence in his chosen profession of the law — and what young man's life is without ambitions and aspirations of greatness and power } — -he was now awakened from this dreaming ; the visions which had been so bright and alluring faded from his thought. He resisted no longer. "Jesus said unto him, 'Let the dead bury their dead : but go thou and preach the king- dom of God.' " It was a gentle, tender hand that was leading him, but all the might of the soldier and logic of the lawyer was powerless against its quiet influence. He gave himself to Sunday-school work, and his genial, fresh, wholesome heartiness especially adapted him for work among the little people. He knew them, understood them, and had no fear of losing his dignity when he bent his tall figure to stoop to the level of the infant class ; howbeit, most men, going into the primary department are some- what surprised to learn that more than anything else they need a step-ladder. The level of quick-thinking children is not unlike the level of low water at New Orleans — a little higher than the streets of the city "HE PREACHED TO ALL MEN EVERYWHERE!' 153 and the people who walk therein. It is the man who fears he may lose his dignity by descending to the " infant class " who has greatest need of the step- ladder. In the case of some men who occasionally — which is much too often — address the infants as " My gn-dear-er gn-children-er " a fire escape wouldn't be any too elevating. Mr. Conwell at the same time " began to preach at mission stations. He preached to the sailors on the wharves, and to the Sunday loafers he gave sermons from a barrel-head pulpit." Hand in hand, the Colonel, the Lawyer, and the Poli- tician were slowly retiring from the field, and the Preacher, out of the material of the fortress, the jury box, and the stump, was building a pulpit. He had plenty of material, and he had need of it all. The pulpit he was building, like the house you build for yourself, was destined to grow a long ways beyond the original design of the builder. Daily was this work brought to his thought and heart ; it was impressed upon him ; the conviction that it was to be his life work, that it was to claim not a part, but all of his time and energy, was grow- ing ; more and more deeply was he convinced that God would accept from him no divided service; "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind ;" and all of these "alls " did not leave much room for self. Nevertheless, it was no easy matter to give up all his life ambitions; 154 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. "all" is a large word to any man when it is applied to "giving up." During these years of uncertainty, the influence of a good, noble, true-hearted Christian woman again came into his life, to lead it in right paths, to mold it to God's purposes. In his work in Boston, he met, at a German mission school in the suburbs. Miss Sarah F. Sanborn, of Newton Centre, Massa- chusetts. Miss Sanborn was an orphan ; a member of a wealthy, cultured, and influential family. Her birthplace was Parsonfield, Maine ; her father, an in- timate personal friend of James G. Blaine, was for many years a prominent figure in public affairs, and a member of the State Senate. At the time of her acquaintance with Colonel Conwell, she was making her home with her brother, the late John H. Sanborn, of Newton Centre. She was an earnest, consecrated Christian woman. Profoundly interested in the same lines of work, the Colonel and Miss Sanborn were naturally brought together by their mission labors, and the acquaintance deepened into the sincerest friendship. They were married at the residence of Mr. Sanborn, April 23d, 1874, and began their life- work at Colonel Conwell's new home at College Hill, Somerville, Massachusetts. Largely did her womanly influence mold her husband's career. She strength- ened his convictions of duty and encouraged his in- clination toward the ministry. In all the years of their wedded life, she has been to him a wise coun- "HE PREACHED TO ALL MEN EVERYWHERE." ISS selor and a zealous coadjutor. For years she was his private secretary; she enters into all his work with a cheery, earnest enthusiasm that is of incalcu- lable value to the over-busy man ; she is his gentlest and wisest critic ; and withal, never too busy herself to cooperate in the intellectual life and plans of the preacher and orator, she makes for him a home glow- ing with the brightest social life — a model parson- age, both for pastor and people. All the love, and respect, and admiration which holds its course in a clear and overflowing stream from the Temple to the parsonage surrounds the "Mistress of the Manse," even as it eddies about her distinguished husband. One child was born to them, a daughter — Agnes, now a young woman. " Standing with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet." She inherits the intellectual strength of her gifted parents, some sketchy and entertaining letters of travel have appeared from her pen, and she is a devoted and successful teacher in the Sunday-school at the Temple. " For a time Colonel Conwell continued his law practice and engaged in building enterprises and real estate speculations. But it was all unsatisfactory, and he says that work became merest drudgery. It had no attraction to him, and it seemed to bring only trouble and loss. Providence set its tide against him, and he pulled against the stream. He tried to satisfy his 1S6 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. conscience by taking a Bible class in the Baptist church at Tre- raont Temple, Boston. But that only intensified his unrest. His class, beginning with four scholars, in a few months num- bered six hundred regular registered attendants." As he noted the growing influence of the teacher with this great class of learners, the sense of respon- sibility increased ; a part of his time would not sufifice for the labor demanded in the great field white unto harvest. And still, as more and more he yielded to this call which he could not shut out of his thoughts, he became fearful lest he might be making a mistake, stepping into a work for which he was unfitted ; that he was misinterpreting the impulses of his con- science. He sought advice of President Hovey, of Newton Theological Seminary ; how could he decide, he wanted to know, if he had "a call to the min- istry" .' "If people are called to hear you," replied the Doctor, " then you may safely claim that you are called to preach." Wherein truly lieth a great differ- ence between the preacher and the hypnotist. It is one thing to awaken men so that they must hear, though they would not ; and quite another to lull them to sleep. The preacher, crying in the wilder- ness, makes the desert populous : he builds churches in the waste places. Alas for the man who thinks he is "called to preach," when his experience in the "sacred desk" shows unmistakably that God in- tended him to be a sleepiitg-car conductor. CHAPTER XVIII. " FOR HE HATH BUILT US A SYNAGOGUE." " Of course, I've seen great changes made, And fought against 'em, too; And first a choir was interdooced. Then cushings in each pew; Next, boughten carpet for the floor. And then, that very year, They got a new melodeon And the big shandyleer." — The Old Deacon's Lament. Shrinking from seeking ordination to the ministry yet impelled to "do the work of an evangelist," Mr. Conwell entered the pulpit of his first pastorate through the door of his law office. There was a meet- ing-house in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1877, well- nigh old enough and sufficiently dilapidated, had it belonged to the right church, to work miracles. It was the property of the Baptist society, which had tired itself to death doing nothing, than which no kind of exertion will kill a church more quickly or more completely. Consequently the old building was useless either as a gospel ship in active commission or a relic with the odor of sanctity hanging over it The few surviving Baptists in Lexington wished to IS7 1S8 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. sell the house and lot, " to dispose of it in some way that it might be used in Christian, work," or at least cease to be a moldy and tottering reproach to them. They consulted Lawyer Conwell, and as a lawyer he went to Lexington and called a meeting of the mem- bers of the old church, for the purpose of securing legal action on the part of that body preparatory to selling the property. He got some three or four old Baptists together and, as they talked the business over, they became reluctant to vote, either to sell, destroy, keep, or give away the old meeting-house. Long years of inactivity had incapacitated them from doing anything ; even from being able to know what they wanted to do. It was not at all an isolated instance of paralysis, or petrifaction of the will. A church that sleeps long enough never knows when to awake. But in this instance the slumbering church, just a little restless with dawning wakefulness, had been led at the right time by Providence to retain a human alarm clock for their lawyer. While discussing the situation with these sorrowful old saints, and one good old deacon wept to think that " Zion had gone into captivity," while " Moab had been at his ease from his youth," the preacher came to the front and dis- placed the lawyer ; rather, the two became yoke-fel- lows in the work to be done. It was the crisis in his life ; the parting of the ways. In a flash of light, thg decision was made. "It flashed upon me, sitting there as a lawyer, that there was a mission for me "FOR HE HATH BUILT US A SYNAGOGUE." 159 there." He advised promptly and strongly against selling the property. " Keep it ; hold service in it ; have preaching in it ; hold prayer-meetings in it ; re- pair the altar of the Lord that is broken down ; go to work ; get God to work for you, and work with Him ; God will turn again your captivity, your mouths shall be filled with laughter and your tongues with sing- ing." They listened -to this enthusiastic lawyer whom they had retained as a legal adviser, in dumb amaze- ment — "Is Saul also among the prophets.'" But having given his advice, he was prompt to act upon it himself. " Where will we get a preacher } " " Here is one who will serve you until you can get one you will like better, and who can do you more good." " But we are poor; we have no money." "The preacher won't cost you so much as a lawyer." (Neither of him cost them anything.) " Announce preaching in the old meeting-house next Sunday ! " Sunday came, and the lawyer-preacher was there. Less than a score of hearers sat in the moldy old pews. The windows were broken and but illy repaired by the curtaining cobwebs tattered by their wintry blast. The hand of time and decay had frescoed the ceiling by tearing off the plastering in irregular and angular patches. The old stove, fireless as the church, "had rusted out at the back," and the crumbling stove-pipe was a menace to the saints who sat within range of its fall. The pulpit was what Mr. Conwell called a "crow's perch," and one can imagine the platform 160 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. creaking under the military tread of the tall lawyer who stepped into its lofty height to preach. Pity that the camera had not caught that interior as a compan- ion plate to the interior of the Temple, shown else- where in these pages. But, old although it was, they say, " a cold, gloomy, damp, dingy old box," it was a meeting-house, and Mr. Con well preached in it. That a lawyer should practice, was a commonplace, everyday truth ; but that a lawyer should preach — that was indeed a novelty. That was something to " behold " and " lo " about. Alas, that the commonplace thing about the — but this is irrelevant. The congregation of " sixteen or seventeen " at the first service was no more discouraging to Mr. Conwell then, than the Temple congregations of four to five thousand are surprising to him now. The following Sabbath, about forty worshipers sat in the rickety pews and heard a lawyer preach. Another week, and when the new preacher climbed into that high pul- pit, he looked down upon a crowded house — " the little old chapel was dangerously full." Indeed, before the hour for service, under the thronging feet of the gathering congregation, " one side of the front steps" — astonished, no doubt, and over- whelmed by the unwonted demand upon their ser- vices — "did fall down." They were encouraged to build a fire in the ancient stove that morning, but it was past regeneration ; like Sanballat and the Ammonite it seemed to be " grieved exceedingly '^■L.i\^,,_^ EI" I CONWELL ACADEMY. MR. CONWELL'S FAVORITE BROOK ON THE WORTHINGTON ROAD. "FOS HE HATH BUILT US A SYNAGOGUE." 161 that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel ; " it smoked so viciously that " all the invalids who had come to the meeting were smoked out." The old stove had lived its. day and was needed no longer. There was a fire burning in the old meeting-house that the hand of man had not lighted and could not kindle ; that all the storms of the winter could not quench. The pulpit and the preacher had a misty look in the eyes of the old saints at that service. They had to laugh or cry and it was indecorous, if not outbreakingly wicked, to laugh in meeting. And the preacher } He looked into the earnest faces before him, into the tearful, hopeful eyes, and said in his own strong heart, " We will build a new church." A poor church ; not a dollar in the treasury ; not a rich man — far from it — in the society. A society without influence in the community, so long had it been asleep. After service he spoke about building a new church to two or three of the members. " A new church.'" They couldn't raise enough money to put windows in the old one. " I don't want new windows, I want a new church." They shook their heads and went home, thinking what a pity it was that such an able lawyer should be so visionary in practical church affairs. That was Sunday night. Early Monday morning Colonel Con- well went shopping, as is the manner of the preacher who has had a good collection on Sunday. He bought 162 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. a pick-axe and a woodman's axe, shouldered them, and marched upon that devoted old meeting-house, as he had marched against Hood's intrenchments before Atlanta. Strange, unwonted sounds saluted the ears of the early risers and awakened the sluggards in Lexington that Monday morning. Bang, Bang, Bang ! Crash — Bang ! Travelers over the Revolutionary battle-field at Lexington listened and wondered. By and by a man turned out of his way to ascertain the cause of the racket. There was a black coat and vest hanging on the fence, and a professional-looking man in his shirt sleeves was smashing the meeting-house. The rickety old steps were gone by the time this man, with open eyes and wider open mouth, came to stare in speechless amazement. Gideon couldn't have demolished "the altar of Baal and the grove that was by it " on his father's farm at Ophrah of the Abi-ezrites with more enthusiastic energy than did this preacher tumble into ruin his own meeting-house, wherein he had preached not twelve hours before. Other men came, looked, laughed, and passed by. The Iconoclast had no time to waste on idle gossips. Clouds of dust hovered about him, "planks, boards, and timbers came tumbling down in heaps of ruin." Presently there came along an eminently respect- able citizen, who "seldom went to church." He stared a moment, and said, "What in the name of goodness are you doing here .' " " There is going to be a new meeting-house here," "FOR HE HATH BUILT US A SYNAGOGUE." 163 was the reply, as the pick-axe tore away the side of a window-frame for emphasis. The neighbor laughed ; " I guess you won't build it with that axe," he said. " I confess I don't know just exactly how it is going to be done," said the preacher, speaking in detached phrases, as he hewed away at a piece of '■' studding," "but in some way it is going to be done." The doubter burst into an explosion of derisive laughter and walked away. A few paces, and he came back ; walking up to Mr. Conwell he seized the axe and said, " See here, Preacher, this is not the kind of work for a parson or a lawyer. If you are determined to tear this old building down, hire some one to do it. It doesn't look right for you to be lifting and pulling here in this manner." " We have no money to hire any one," said the destroyer, " and the front of this structure must give way to-day, if I have to tear it down all alone." " I'll tell you what I'll do," persisted the wavering doubter ; " if you will let this alone, I'll give you one hundred dollars to hire some one." Mr. Conwell tranquilly poked the axe through the few remaining panes yet unbroken in the nearest window and replied, " We would like the money, and I will take it to hire some one to help, but I shall keep right on with the work myself." "All right,'' said the doubter; "go ahead, if you have set your heart upon it. You may come up 164 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. to the house for the hundred dollars any time to- day." And with many a backward look the generous doubter passed on, half beginning to doubt his doubts. Evidently, the Baptists of Lexington were beginning to do something. It had been many a year since they had made such a noise as that in the village. And it was a noise destined to be heard a long, long way ; much farther than the doubter and a great many able scientists have supposed that sound would "carry." After the doubter, came a " good-natured man who disliked churches in general, and therefore enjoyed the fun of seeing a preacher tug and puff" in the heavy work of demolition, for many-tongued rumor by this time had noised it all around Lexington — and when it is borne in mind that sound travels about one thousand feet per second, and that the human voice is capable of uttering two hundred words a minute, the reader may calculate how long it would require for the report that the new preacher was tearing down the Baptist meeting-house, to circulate around the town of Lexington. Gallic, who "cared for none of these things," looked on until he could no longer keep his enjoy- ment to himself. " Going to pull the whole thing down, are you .' " he asked. "Yes, sir," replied the working preacher, ripping off a strip of siding, " and begin all new." "FOR HE HATH BUILT US A SYNAGOGUE." 16S " Who is going to pay the bills ? " asked Gallio, chuckling. The preacher tucked up his sleeves and stepped back to get a good- swing at an obstinate brace; "I don't know," he said, " but the Lord has money some- where to buy and pay for all we need." Gallio laughed, and hugged himself in the intense enjoyment of the absurdity of the whole crazy busi- ness. " I'll bet five dollars to one," he said, with easy confi- dence of a man who knows his bet will not be taken up, " that you won't get the money in this town." Mr. Conwell brought the axe down with a crashing sweep, and the splinters flew out into the air like a cloud of witnesses to the efficacy of the blow. "You would lose your money, then," quietly said the preacher, "for Mr. just now came along and gave me a hundred dollars without solicitation." Gallio's eyes opened a trifle wider, and his next remark faded away into a long-drawn whistle of astonishment. Presently — " Did you get the cash } " he asked, feebly. " No, but he told me to call for it to-day." Gallio considered. He wasn't enjoying the situ- ation with quite so much humor as he had been, but he was growing more interested. " Well ! Is that so ! I don't believe he meant it," he added, hopefully. Then, a man after all not disposed to go back on his own assertion, he said, 166 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. "Now, I'll tell you what I'll do. If you really get that hundred dollars out of that man, I'll give you another hundred and pay it to-night." And Gallio was as good as his word. All that day the preacher worked alone. Now came in the training of those early days at " Eagle's Nest," when he learned to swing an axe ; when he builded up rugged strength in a stalwart frame, when his muscles were hardened and knotted with toil. This was no 'prentice work for him. " Passers-by called one after another, to ask what was going on. To each one Mr. Conwell mentioned his hope and men- tioned his gifts. Nearly every one added something without being asked, and at six o'clock, when Mr. Conwell laid down the pick and the axe at the end of his day's work, he was promised more than half the money necessary to tear down the old meet- ing-house and build a new one. But Mr. Conwell did not leave the work. With shovel, or hammer, or saw, or paint-brush, he worked day by day all that summer alongside the workmen. He was architect, mason, carpenter, painter, and upholsterer, and he directed every detail, from the cellar to the gilded vane, and worked early and late. The money came without asking as fast as needed. The young people who began to flock about the faith-worker undertook to purchase a large bell, and quietly had Mr. Conwell's name cast on the exterior, but when it came to the diificult task of hanging it in the tower, they were obliged to call Mr. Conwell to come and superintend the management of ropes and pulleys. Then the deep, rich tones of the bell rang out over the surprised old town the triumph of faith." An unordained preacher, he had entered upon his first pastorate, and signalized his entrance upon his ministry by building a new meeting-house, awaken- "FOR HE HATH BUILT US A SYNAGOGUE." 167 ing a sleeping church, inspiring his congregation with his own enthusiasm and zeal. At last he had found his work ; God had fitted him into his place, and joy- fully and earnestly did he accept it ; his ordination to the ministry at the hands of a council followed in two months. His love for this, his first pastorate, never faded from his life ; the Lexington Baptists and others remember him lovingly for his work among them. The influence of his restless, progressive energy could not be hemmed in by denominational lines. " Progress, enterprise, life, followed his elo- quent encouragement. The governor of the state, Honorable John D. Long, visited the place on Mr. Conwell's invitation and large undertakings were strongly supported. The Baptist Church was filled from the first service in the new meeting-house. Such continual crowds at church services were never seen before in Lexington. Mr. Conwell's sermons were profusely illustrated, simple and liberal in spirit toward all Christian denominations." " The church won't never seem the same I'm half afraid to me, Under the preachin' of the truth I've been so used to be. And now, to see our parson stand Like any common man With jest a raUin' round his desk — I don't believe I can! " — The Old Deacon's Lament. CHAPTER XIX. "COME OVER INTO MACEDONIA AND HELP US." " A great statesman has said that liberty means that a man should have the right to make the most of himself; and he cannot do that unless he stands where his influence will have the greatest effect upon others, and where he can receive the best effect of their influence. He cannot do that until ambassadors arise, introduce him, point out the way, show him the right course, and assist him. I send out my call from this pulpit for ambassadors for Christ, who shall introduce the church membership to each other, the churches to each other, the world to the church, and bring Heaven nearer." — The Temple Maga- zine, Ambassadors for Christ. After Mr. Conwell's ordination to the ministry, he entered Newton Theological Seminary, where he had already attended several courses of lectures. The council of churches called for his ordination met in Lexington in 1879, President Alvah Hovey of Newton Seminary presiding. " Among the councilors was the life-long friend of Mr. Con- well, George W. Chipman, of Boston. The only objection made to Mr. Conwell's ordination was by a good old pastor who said, ' Good lawyers are too scarce to be spoiled by making ministers of them.' The ordination over, the Colonel Conwell of the past sank out of sight. The curtain fell. The ambitions of public life all disappeared, and henceforth, the homes of the poor, and the rooms of the sick. Henceforth, counselor to the dying, com- 168 « COME OVER INTO MACEDONIA AND HELP US." 169 forter of the mourning, teacher of the humble Christ. In this change he was seconded by his wife, who made no objection to his giving up all for the cause, and starting out with nowhere to lay his head. Never was there a more complete abandonment of things earthly for the Master's sake. "The large law offices in Boston were closed. His whole thought was concentrated in the purpose to do good. No one who knew him intimately then could doubt his motives, the sacrifice was so great, yet so unhesitatingly made. Buried from the world in one way, but alive to it in a better way. Large numbers of his former legal political and social associates called his action &na- ticism. Wendell Phillips, meeting Conwell and several friends on the way to church, one Sunday morning, remarked that ' Olympus had gone to Delphi, and Jove had descended to be an interpreter of oracles.' " For the time he gave up his popular lectures, but an impa- tient public soon forced him back again. He went, however, with evident reluctance. Public scenes and strange audiences became apparently distasteful to him. The pomp and parade of past oratorical victories had no attraction for him more. But more and more the pressure increased, until he again appeared, and is now heard in all the large cities of the country." After his ordination, the Rev. Russell H. Conwell continued his labors at Lexington until the fall of 1882, when he received a call from another church that needed a strong pastor. Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia had, about this time, strength enough to send up a cry for help, even as a drowning man puts all his life into his voice which a swimmer saves for his arms. Says one biographer : — " It was no smiling outlook, in a worldly sense, which took him to Philadelphia. The little church which called him had passed through a broken history. It was not prosperous, and it 170 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. was but little more than a mission. But it was trying to build a house of worship. It was not in a rich neighborhood. It was poor. We have heard that only twenty-seven people were pres- ent when the Grace Church in Philadelphia voted to call him. Few believed he would accept, and it was thought absurd by his friends in Massachusetts. The salary oifered him, in view of the difference in the cost of living to him, was considerably less than the amount paid by the Lexington church. The fact that it was a sacrifice, and perhaps because it was a pain, made the change appear reasonable to him. The people of the Phil- adelphia church were as good and true as they seemed poor and unknown. It was a field requiring work. There was no hesitation or doubt. He accepted the place as soon as he visited it and saw the opportunities for Christian labor." While Grace Church was debating whether to ex- tend a call to Mr. Conwell of Lexington, Deacon John A. Stoddart received the following letter from President Hovey of Newton Theological Seminary, which set at rest any doubts lingering in the minds of some of the brethren, who, not having heard of Russell H. Conwell until his name was brought before the church as a possible Moses, questioned the wisdom of calling to the work in " a great city like Philadel- phia," one whose pastoral experience has been limited to a feeble church in a New England village : — Newton Centre, Mass., October i6. Deacon. J. A. Stoddart: My dear Brother, — Rev. Russell H. Conwell has not taken the full course in Newton. He was a lawyer and lecturer and writer, when, providentially, he became convinced that it was the Lord's will to have him enter the ministry. Licensed by the Baptist Church in Newton Centre he undertook to save a " COME OVER INTO MACEDONIA AND HELP US." 171 feeble church in Lexington, Massachusetts. A blessing attended his labors. The people gathered about him, and remarkable success, on the whole, followed his efforts. He was residing in Newton Centre, and was allowed to enter the Institution and do what he could while continuing his work in Lexington. I have never heard him preach, but I know that he has an active mind, that he works rapidly, that he gets hold of the minds and hearts of the people. I know, too, that a good many persons have been hopefully converted during his ministry in Lexington. My belief therefore is, that you would find him an energetic worker in the ministry, bold, positive, aggressive. . . . November 26th, 1882, Mr. Conwell entered upon his duties and labors as pastor of Grace Baptist Church. It was Thanksgiving Day, and surely the day has been ever since a time of rejoicing in the annals of that church. The beginning of the new pastorate was not under very auspicious circum- stances. The pastor was taken ill ; the church was in debt — " of course " — it was weak in numbers and poor in purse. But the new pastor had supped with poverty when he was a boy ; he attended Wilbraham .Academy in company with a group of Discourage- ments, he went to Yale College with one Hard Times, who was his constant companion, and he entered the ministry as pastor of the Church of the Hopeless Debt. Consequently " none of these things moved him ; " he was used to them. He did not enter the ministry with the hope of having an easy time. " God did anoint thee with His odorous oil To wrestle, not to reign." 172 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. Go to Crozer Seminary next commencement, and look at the young men, graduates in theology, lined up with their backs to the seminary and their faces to the world. There is no " primrose path " before them. Where light hearts and merry feet are danc- ing the hours away, uncounted and unnoted, where the laughter is mingling with music, where Hope at the prow sees all the way to the distant horizon line but smooth seas and golden sunshine, while Pleasure at the helm steers always with the tide and the favor- ing wind, there will be little call for the preacher. Indeed, his presence on the craft will suggest Jonah ; the laughter of fools will die away in crackling dimin- uendo at his approach. But where there is heartache and loneliness ; where there is trouble ; where Care and Poverty sit at the hearth corners ; where the black shadow of death falls across the threshold ; where disgrace, blacker than death, bitterer than sorrow, hangs like a pall over the home ; where there is sin and squalor and vice ; where there is a fallen man to lift to his feet, a weak" man to encourage ; defeat to overthrow ; wherever there is something that will draw upon his own strength and courage and sym- pathy until he is tired, body and soul, needing himself the ministry of hope and good cheer, — there he will be called ; there he will be waited for ; there he will be made welcome. And if it be so that he misses these things in great measure, he may be a successful pul- pit lecturer, but a preacher of the gospel of redemp- " COME OVER INTO MACEDONIA AND HELP US." 173 tion he is not. To such a ministry he looks forward. If he will shrink from it, the time for him to enter upon a useful and honorable career in the life insur- ance business, or as a successful canvasser of sub- scription books which no man buyeth save under the deadly compulsion of the tireless human tongue, and never readeth, no, not under any compulsion, — is before his ordination ; not five years afterward. " No, no, Parson," says Farmer Thistlepod, shak- ing his head, "you hev no more right to complain about your lot bein' harsh an' your work bein' hard, than I hev. Not s' much, becuz it's what you ought to expect ; it's what you set out for. And I didn't. But I hev to meet it, same as you dp. Good an' evil ain't equally distributed in this world, no where, not by a long chalk. See here, now ; I drop into this good ground one grain of good wheat. 'Tain't stony ground, nor thorny ground, nor wayside, an' the scarecrow keeps the birds out o' the field. It's good wheat in good ground. But, all the same, straight after that one wee little mite of good, see what an army of evil comes — chinch bugs, cut worms, weevil bugs, army worms, wire worms, blight, rust, drought, mildew, freshets, hard winters, short summers, grub worms, rain, heat, cold, dry, wet, prairie fires, neighbors' cattle, weeds, people from town — why, it's a livin' miracle thet any good in the world survives at all when we see what it hez to struggle agin. But then," added the old man, hope- 174 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. fully, stooping to pluck up by its roots a cheery "red poppy that grows in the wheat " and throw it over into the highway, " I reckon if 'twan't as good's it is we wouldn't take the interest in helpin' it along an' fightin' fer its life as we do." And the old man closed his lay sermon with a shout that startled the guinea hens into chattering applause as he sent the dog across the field to warn away a party of light- hearted young people from the city, who were swarm- ing over the fence to gather a few armfuls of growing wheat wherewith to decorate the church for the reception of the delegates of the Baptist Young People's Union, home returning from Torontimore. " Judge not the preacher, for he is thy judge ; If thou mislike him, thou conceiv'st him not. God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge To pick out treasures from an earthen pot. The worst speaks something good." — Herbert. " Within four weeks I have witnessed the tears of scores of sin- ful men and women, who, feeling the cold and darkness of their situation in the world, having no light here and no Father in heaven, have called out in despair, ' It seems hopeless! O God, forgive me ! ' There is something unspeakably grand in pointing such souls heavenward, and^vaiting with them in prayer for the pearly door to open. Let lovers tell of love accepted, let soldiers speak of the hour of victory, and let long-imprisoned men tell of their release; but, ah! to the entranced soul of a Christian watching by a kneeling sinner waiting for Jesus, there is a far sublimer sense of holy awe ; and, when the door of heaven does open to the sinner, a more thrilling joy gleams into the Chris- tian's soul, and one which even heated tears cannot express. "COME OVER INTO MACEDONIA AND HELP US." 175 " O Christian, would you taste of bliss unspeakable, and find heaven here below? Plead with some loved one to stand beside you, or kneel with you, and urge him to call for Jesus with repent- ant heart. Then you shall catch the shadows of loved forms as they pass and repass the windows of heaven, and your waiting shall be rewarded with the sight of the open door, and the long- unseen faces radiant within, — a joy unspeakable and full of glory." — CONWELL, "The Open Door," from Gleams of Grace. CHAPTER XX. "THE FOUNDATION OF THE HOUSE WAS LAID." " But, lo ! a door, wide and high, opened startlingly before the faces of an astounded, godless multitude. In that doorway, Jesus Christ, the holy, the heroic, the beautiful, stood and smiled a welcome to the affrighted people. The sudden glory overwhelmed them all. Yet a few recognized the face of Jesus as that of their best friend, and, longing for the joys of an eternal life in His home, ran to meet Him ^ith a kiss of love. But with the worldly masses the contrast was too great. Envy is the most devilish of sins. He could teach as man could not. He could heal as no other physician could do. He could see into the future as other prophets could not. He could give of the inexhaustible riches of eternal life, but others could not. He was the Son of God, while they were sinful creatures of earthly mold. Their envy over- came their fear and their love of life. They fell on Him, wounded Him, spit on Him, crucified Him, and drove Him back to His home. But He went back to stand by the door, and to open it whenever, from the darkness and chill of earth's existence. He should hear a cry of dis- tress and supplication." — The Temple Magazine, Heaven's Open Door. On i6th of May, 1870, the Young Men's Christian Association of the Tenth Baptist Church of Philadel- phia, possessing among other soldierly qualities a certain alertness and spirit which impelled them to go forth and hunt up the enemy when he seemed a little slow about coming to them, sent out three skirmishers to locate a mission outpost where they might establish a garrison and annoy him. Of this 176 " THE FOUNDATION OF THE HOUSE WAS LAID." 177 militant committee of young men, two, Alexander Reed and Henry C. Singly are to-day deacons in Grace Baptist Church ; the third, Frederick B. Greul, D.D., honored and beloved of Philadelphia Baptists, has been pastor of the Berean Baptist Church, of that city. These skirmishers began aggressive work promptly and earnestly ; the outpost was known as "The Kennard Mission ; " John A. Stoddart, now the Deacon Stoddart elsewhere mentioned, was the first superintendent of the Sabbath-school. Not often is it given the sowers to join in the songs of the reap- ers ; but these yoke-fellows have been privileged to enter into their own labors. They are specially blessed ; they have wrought from Moses to Solomon ; they were young men when, with " every one whose heart stirred him up to come unto the work to do it," on the 25th day of the eighth month, 1872, they moved out of the hired hall and reared the tabernacle at the corner of Berks and Mervine streets. A Tent it was ; they " made boards for the tabernacle ; " " for the south side southward and for the other side of the tabernacle, which is toward the north corner," they made boards, but sloping roof and the gables were of canvas. The courage and zeal and enthusi- asm of the morning time came up to its dedication ; here they lighted the lamps before the Lord ; here the prayers from hearts enkindled with the Holy Spirit were sent forth as incense, and the uplifted hands of the praying workers were as the evening sacrifice. 178 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. "The glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle," for men and women came out of the surrounding dark- ness seeking its light ; drawn by " the Light of the World" held up in darkness for the lost and the weary, the troubled and heart-broken ; the sinful and despairing came to it seeking life and peace, help and consolation. So many came to these young dis- ciples, saying, " Sirs, we would see Jesus," that soon a Baptistry was constructed in the Tent ; one winter night, February 3d, 1873, the first converts baptized in the tabernacle went down into the baptismal waters. Others followed, more and more, for the Kennard Mission was a working church and abode not long in one camping-place ; daily the " cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle and they went on- ward in all their journeys ; " so many " were baptized into Jesus Christ," " buried with Him by baptism into death," rising from the crystal grave in the likeness of His resurrection to " walk in newness of life," that the household of faith outgrew the Tent which was its home. In September, 1873, only eight months from the time the Baptistry was dedicated, the build- ers reared an annex. Five months later, in January, 1874, they numbered the people who worshiped within the curtains of the Tent ; over two hundred were they, and the Sunday-school had a membership of nearly four hundred — about as large, according to authority more unquestionable than the United States census, as the entire population of the city of New " THE FOUNDAl^lON OF THE HOUSE WAS LAID." 179 York. Such a congregation could not be content to abide in a small oasis, merely because rest was good and the land was pleasant, when there remained yet so very much land to be possessed. They talked a little while about building — only a little while, for it was a people so busy " doing " that it had not much time for "talking," and then all they whose spirit God had raised, rose up to build and all they that were about them "strengthened their hands with gold " — a little of it, for it was not a gilded congre- gation — and with silver — not overburdened were they with silver, for the Resumption Act was not passed until a year later and silver was not, as in the days of Solomon and some later rulers, " made to be as stones" and to be "nothing accounted of." But " precious things " these workers had, more precious, for church building, than silver and gold, and a great deal harder to get for the purpose ; these things were willingly offered. The new building was begun in June, 1874; not a very good building year, the finan- cier would say; the panic of 1873, one of the most disastrous in the history of the United States, the alarm for which had been sounded by the failure of the great banking house of Jay Cooke & Company, of Philadelphia, was still felt ; financial confidence had been destroyed, business had been paralyzed, and nation and community recovered slowly from such prostration. A man with a broken back straightens out scarce less slowly than a community with a 180 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. broken bank. And as a rule, the man who had noth- ing in the bank loses by it most heavily ; — or at least says he does, which, so far as his subscription for the next year or two is concerned, is practically the same thing. The cellar was dug ; the foundations laid ; and the basement of the new building rapidly carried up until the basement story was completed. Here they stopped to take breath, unable to proceed further, roofed over the unfinished house, and looked gloomy financial obstacles and discouragements in the face. Again they grappled their extraordinary difficulties ; their courage and determination raised up for them at last stanch friends who admired — as men always do — the hearty self-reliance and faith that moves upon the enemy's works with a battle cry, instead of "sitting down in the mud shrieking for reinforce- ments." In October, 1880, the house, so far as it was builded, was entirely paid for. Still the cloud moved on and the people followed it. There was no resting- place ; the work went steadily on ; in the fall of 1882, after the call to Mr. Conwell, the building was com- pleted and all the people shouted with a great shout and " they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord," and there were no " ancient men " to weep with a loud voice and say, " Oh, but you ought to have seen this church before we spoiled it by improving it," because it was such a youthful church that the most ancient member " THE FOUNDATION OF THE HOUSE WAS LAID." 181 thereof hadn't more than enough beard on his face to be presentable outside of Jericho. Rev. Russell H. Conwell of Boston, pastor of the Baptist Church of Lexington, Massachusetts, was called to the pastorate of Grace Church, and it was Kennard Mission no longer. The daughter of the Tenth had grown to womanhood. A council was called to sit in the Tenth Church, for the purpose of recogniz- ing the "little one" lovingly nursed in her motherly- arms ; " the little one that had become a thousand." A church has this advantage over a helpless human being : it is permitted, at its christening, to have some part in the selection of its own name, whereas the babe born of mortals is ofttimes burdened with such handicap of appellation as bests suits, not the unhappy being who is to answer to it, and to write it in albums in the years of maturity and reason, but the taste of the inhuman relatives who have the helpless one at their mercy. And it appears that even in the naming of churches the relatives sometimes claim this privi- lege. Of the naming of Grace Baptist Church, Dr. Frederick B. Greul writes : — " A little incident in the early history of Grace Baptist Church do I recall which is illustrative of a sort of divine forecast. When the council to recognize the Grace Baptist Church sat in the mother church (the Tenth Baptist), I remember quite well the discussion that arose about the name ' Grace.' Numer- ous opinions were presented on either side of the question. At that time, though it was but comparatively few years ago, there was not the freedom now enjoyed of ' doing as one pleases, 182 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. if you please.' in such matters. Churches were being named by number, or the locality in which the church property stood, or possibly the street on which the ibeeting-house faced. Such names as Grace, Epiphany, Trinity, Temple, Messiah, Geth- semane, were not popular, although the Tabernacle was organ- ized in 1848, the Berean in 1859, and the Beth Eden in 1870. " At this council considerable objection was raised to the name ' Grace.' Dr. Cathcart headed the opposition. He got off one of his telling appeals to history, and wound up by saying, 'Grace church ! Why, bless you, suppose this church should get some graceless rascal for a pastor, what a pitiful plight it would be in!' " The opposition may seem flat in a simple narrative, but to those who recall the vigorous and ringing fashion in which Dr. Cathcart expressed his dissents on public occasion, the matter becomes one of life and dash. But 'Grace' has triumphed, and the outlined calamity has not visited the church, for which we all thank God. This little bit of unpatented history, I am sure, will not annoy any one, but may add a little emphasis to the marvelous galaxy of evidence that God organized this church." However, as Baptist councils are not in the habit of ordaining graceless rascals to the ministry, and Baptist churches are not given to calling them to pastorates, even Dr. Cathcart's " vigorous and ring- ing fashion of dissent " failed to convince the council, and Grace Baptist Church was recognized and has lived up to its name quite as well as the Baptist " Anniversaries," which are so called by the denom- ination at large, because they meet some time in May, or the "Centennial" church, which is so called because it is eighteen years old and will soon be nineteen ; " Enon," because it is so far from " THE FOUNDATION OF THE HOUSE WAS LAID:' 183 the river ; or " Rising Sun," because it is in West Philadelphia. A new church in Philadelphia ! So rapidly do workingmen write history, that the three young men who located Kennard Mission in the hall, who helped to rear the tent and to build the meeting-house of Grace Church, were not old men when they, being yet active workers and builders, saw the corner-stone and capstone laid and placed on the new temple. And all the toil and discouragement, the pain, the anxieties, and the weariness of yesterday was made sweet for them by the triumph of to-day. " With aching hands and bleeding feet. We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return. All we have built do we discern." — Matthew Arnold. CHAPTER XXL "so BUILT WE THE WALL." " The church of Christ should be so conducted always as to save the largest number of souls, and in the saving of souls the Institutional church may be of great assistance. It is of little matter v^hat your theories are or what mine are ; God, in His providence, is moving His church onward and moving it upward at the same time, adjusting it to new situations, fitting it to new conditions and to advancing civilization, requiring us to use the new instrumentalities He has placed in our hands for the purpose of saving the greatest number of human souls." — CoNWELL, The Institutional Church. From Thanksgiving Day, 1882, the history of Grace Church has been a prolonged season of thanksgiving. Steadily has the membership increased, and the ad- ditions have been made with a singular regularity that attracted attention and comment throughout the continent. "In 1887, and for five years there- after, every week, seven persons, no more and no less, arose to ask for prayers or to make application to be admitted to church membership." As this fact became known more and more widely, letters from all directions came to the officers of the church, ask- ing if the story was authentic ; relating instances in the experience of the writer in which the number seven had borne some peculiar part ; all indicating a 184 "SO BUILT WE THE WALL." 185 profound interest in the growth of Grace Church and the connection of the "'sacred number " therewith. From the time it became a church, there was no special revival season on its calendar. Conversions and baptisms were as common at one time of the year as at another. Frequently converts from other de- nominations came to Grace Church to receive baptism at the hands of Mr. Conwell before uniting with their own churches, although it is not recorded that there was any " reciprocity " in this arrangement, and it is not known that any members of Grace Church were ever impelled to seek baptism in the scantier " Jor- dans " of neighboring churches. The membership of " Grace " rose from two hundred to over five hun- dred. In less than a year from the beginning of Mr. Conwell's pastorate, it was necessary to issue tickets of admission to the pewholders for the Sunday services, although the meeting-house had a seating capacity of one thousand two hundred. " I am glad," the pastor once remarked to a friend, " when I get up Sunday morning and can look out of the window and see it snowing, sleeting, and raining, and hear the wind shriek and howl. ' There,' I say, ' I won't have to preach this morning, looking all the while at people patiently standing through the ser- vice, wherever there is a foot of standing-room.' " He never had to preach from the well-known texts, " Why do not people come to church .'' " and " How to reach the masses ? " He may have pondered over the 186 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. question, "Why do not people go to some other church ? " and indeed he did at one time suggest this, favoring the division of " Grace " into three churches. His people did not object seriously to that, but when they assured him that they would all unite with the one which should call him to the pas- torate, he gave up the project. As to "reaching the masses," he had a very simple, Christian way of solving that oft-discussed question. He knew where the masses were. There were several lines of street cars which would take him directly to them. Or, he could take a hansom, which came a little higher, but was quite as direct. Or, there was a 'bus line which ran quite close to the habitations of the masses. Or, he could walk. Consequently he had no difficulty in " reaching the masses " by old-fashioned methods. " My sword is too short," complained the young Spartan warrior. " Lengthen it by a step," replied his father. This preacher did not wait for the people to come to him. He went to them, and they came to the church where "that man" preached. There was contagion in the spirit of the man ; like pastor, like people ; it had always been a working church ; always it had an aggressive spirit from the days of the hall and tent ; the people were ready to follow and follow closely too, wherever he would lead ; too far and too fast for them he could not go. The right man and the right people had met each other. From the day of "SO BUILT WE THE WALL." 187 its beginning Grace Church was an "Ironsides" regi- ment. "Truly," said Cromwell, "they were never really beaten at all." " Last summer" (Temple Magazine, January 22d, 1893), " I rode by a locality where there had been a mill, now partially destroyed by a cyclone. I looked at the great engine lying upon its side. I looked at the wheels, at the boilers so out of place, thrown carelessly together. I saw pieces of iron the uses of which I did not understand. I saw iron bands, bearings, braces, and shafting scattered about, and I found the great circular saw rusting, flat in the grass. I went on my way wondering why any person should abandon so many pieces of such excellent machinery, leaving good property to go to waste. But again, not many weeks ago, I went by that same place and saw a building there, temporary in its nature, it is true, but with smoke pouring out of the stack and steam hissing and puffing from the exhaust pipe. I heard the sound of the great saw singing its song of industry ; I saw the teamsters hauling away great loads of lumber. The only differ- ence between the mass of apparently useless old lumber and scrap iron, piled together in promiscuous confusion, machinery thrown into a heap without the arrangement, and the new build- ing with its powerful engine working smoothly and swiftly for the comfort and wealth of men, was that before the rebuilding the wheels, the saw, the shafting, boilers, piston-rod, and fly wheel had no definite relation to each other. But some man picked out all these features of a complete mill and put them into proper relation ; he adjusted shaft, boiler, and cogwheel, put water in the boiler and fire under it, let steam into the cylinders, and moved piston-rod, wheels, and saw. There were no new cogs, wheels, boilers, or saws ; no new piece of machinery ; there has only been an intelligent spirit found to set them in their proper places and relationship. " One great difliculty with this world, whether of the entire globe or the individual church, is that it is made up of all sorts of machinery which is not adjusted ; which is out of place ; no fire under the boiler ; no steam to move the machinery. There 188 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. is none of the necessary relationship — there can be no afSnity between cold and steam, between power wasted and utility ; and to overcome this difficulty is one of the great problems of the earth to-day. The churches are very much in this condi- tion. There are cogwheels, pulleys, belting, and engines in the church, but out of all useful relationship. There are sincere, earnest Christians, men and women, but they are adjusted to no power and no purpose ; they have no definite relationship to utility. They go or come, or lie still and rust, and a vast power for good is unapplied. The text says ' We are ambassadors for Christ ; ' that means, in the clearest terras, the greatest object of the Christian teacher and worker should be the bringing into right relations all the forces of men, and gearing them to the power of Christ.'' This church readily "adjusted itself" to itself, its pastor, and its work. The membership climbed up until the roll held over a thousand names. Roomier quarters became an imperative need. The pastor does not believe in self-torture as a means of grace. Writing from London to his home church (1894), he says, describing a Sunday morning service he attended in that city : — " I heard a sermon which helped me greatly. It was delivered by an old preacher, and the subject was, ' This God is Our God.' He described the attributes of God in glory, knowledge, wisdom, and love, and compared Him to the gods the heathen do worship. He then pressed upon us the message that this glorious God is the Christians' God, and with Him we cannot want. It did me so much good, and made me long so much for more of God in all my feelings, actions, and influence. The seats were hard, and the back of the pew hard and high, the church dusty and neglected ; yet, in spite of all the discomforts, I was blessed. I was sorry for the preacher who had to preach against all those discomforts, and did not wonder at the thin congregation. Oh ! "SO BUILT WE THE WALL." 189 it is all wrong to make it so unnecessarily hard to listen to the gospel. They ought for Jesus' sake to tear out the old benches and put in comfortable chairs. There was an air about the ser- vice of perfunctoriness and lack of object, which ma"de the ser- vice indefinite and aimless. This is a common fault. We lack an object and do not aim at anything special in our services. That, too, is all wrong. Each hymn, each chapter read, each anthem, each prayer, and each sermon should have a special and appropriate pmpose. May the Lord help me, after my return, to profit by this day's lesson." Always he was studying the wants of men and the needs of his church ; how its work could be in- creased and made more effective, its field of usefulness widened. Never was there a thought of how his work could be made easier, but, rather, how time and cir- cumstance might be so arranged, so adjusted, that he might be able to do more. He believed in, and he illustrated in his methods, " practical Christianity and its possibilities." "If," a reporter of the Philadelphia Press once asked Dr. George A. Peltz, the associate pastor of Grace Church, " if you were called upon to express in three words the secret of the mysterious power that hjis raised Grace Church from almost nothinsr to a membership of nearly seventeen hundred (Feb- ruary, 1893), that has built this Temple, founded a college, opened a hospital, and set every man, woman, and child in the congregation to working, what would be your answer ? " "Sanctified common sense," was the Doctor's unhesitating reply. "Nothing is undertaken here 190 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS, unless a definite object is to be attained. Russell H. Conwell was a lawyer before he entered the min- istry, and in the temporal affairs of the church he brings to bear all the astuteness and practical methods of a trained attorney. There is no haphazard grop- ing through uncertain channels after results. He takes up one thing at a time and finishes it before he leaves it to begin another. He never permits himself to be hurried. He calmly surveys a field of work, decides upon the method to be pursued in accomplishing a certain result, interests everybody who can contribute to its success, then unfalteringly pushes it to a conclusion, leaving the rest to God." In this way, and under this leadership, and with this hearty cooperation of all the membership of a united church, Grace Baptist Church is growing; trusting and working, the one no less than the other, steadily "doing the next thing." " Some only work with a cotton thread, And sit all day in the weaving-room ; Some work with the fleecy wool instead, And some have richest silk in loom ; Wool, cotton, or silk, none need to care. If only the work be good and fair. " So I sit to-night in the waning light, And my life sinks low in the setting sun; My weary hands and my failing sight Tell me the web of life is done ; Give me, O Master so good and true, My wage — and some better work to do! " — Amelia E. Barr. CHAPTER XXII. "A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM." " You go into some churches and you see a lovely Sunday-school. It is arranged with the nicety of a watch. Every wheel within a wheel is adjusted with such care that a man touches a button, and every person winks at exactly the same time. And when they get up to sing, . they all rise together as one, as though there was a great machine to lift them all at once. And then they sing, oh, so lovely ! and then exposition of the Scriptures is put on the blackboard, in red and blue and green and white. And when the bell rings, they all go home. You go to the superintendent and say, ' Well, well, well ; you have a. fine Sunday-school. But why do the children come here?' 'What for? They come here to sing.' Or, 'They come here to learn their pieces' ; or, 'To listen to this exposition of the lesson.' 'Yes, but what are you here for? ' 'I am here to keep order. Other superin- tendents could not do anything with the school. Before I came it was the noisiest, most disorderly school in the whole county. But I am here to be a superintendent, and a superintendent means a man who can keep excellent order.' That man forgets altogether the real mission of a successful Sunday-school." — Conwell, The Mission of the Church. One day in 1883, a little girl six years old, Hattie May Wiatt, came to the meeting-house at the corner of Berks and Mervine streets, to attend the Sunday- school of Grace Church. She was a very little girl, and it was a very large Sunday-school. She wouldn't take up very much room in a big school, and the superintendent of a certain Sunday-school right here 191 192 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. in the United States, — the name of which is with- held out of consideration for the superintendent's feelings, — who offers a prize to the pupil who brings a new scholar, might think there could surely be found room for one little girl, who even came of her own accord without the glittering allurement of a chromo. There is an old Sunday-school hymn, rich in its exuberance of hospitality and charity, which the chronicler remembers to have heard sung many times with overflowing enthusiasm by about 150 children, in a room having a capacity for 240 people in a city of 23,000 — " Then bring them in, we've room for all, And food and shelter and pity ! And we'll not shut the door against one of God's poor, Though you bring every child in the city! " That is undoubtedly the right spirit, and yet, had every child in that city been brought to that hospita- ble Sunday-school, there can be no question that it would have made little difference to several thousand of them whether the door was open wide as a barn- door in wheat-harvest, or shut tight as a ^5000 pew door on Easter Sunday. The most liberal quart jug that ever distended itself never yet managed to entertain a gallon at a time. It has been whis- pered — on the house-tops — that Mr. Conwell has a habit of inviting his lecture audiences to come and spend their summer vacation with him at "Eagle's "A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM." 193 Nest." It may be that some day ^ but it is not wise to anticipate trouble. So it was that when little Hattie Wiatt asked to be admitted to the Sunday-school of Grace Church, there was no room for her; absolutely no room. Every department in the school was overcrowded. Superintendent and teachers had. been compelled to say "No" to other little children, not once, but many times; always sadly, always reluctantly, but always under the compulsion of dire necessity. The pastor's self had to tell the little girl why she could not come in. His heart was big enough for her; she found a warm place there for herself and her little trouble readily enough. God makes men's hearts so much bigger than men can build churches or hospitals. That's the way the world grows ; men keep trying to build up to God's plans ; trying to make a ten-page sermon as big as a three-line text ; to make a creed as long and broad and deep and high as the eleventh Commandment ; to develop a charity as beautiful* and immortal as the nameless " certain Samaritan " ; trying to write the life of Him the books of whose deeds "the world itself could not contain " ; that's the way the world grows better and broader and sweeter. Now and then, in these times of ours, there arises a wise man, — usually about as wise as he is young, — who dis- covers for the rest of us that the world has outgrown the Bible ; that the Old Book was written for a crude 194 TEMPLE AND fEMPLARS. and undeveloped people and time ; that it does not apply to our own day and civilization. Well ; there does appear to be a misfit now and then, but it re- mains an open question in the minds of a few un- learned men, whether it is the straight edge or the plank that is out of line; whether the clay or the potter is at fault. ,"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing } " quotes young Freethinker, and adds, as one who knows the time of night without having to look at the sun-dial by candle-light, "I say they are not." Oh, well, that may be true ; but possibly it is this generation that is out of tune. Two spar- rows were sold for a farthing at that time. Because there is a generation of men in the United States to-day that wrings from a pining invalid 1^1.50 for a spring chicken no bigger than a robin ; that charges eighty .cents for a squab only five days out of the shell ; that sells a peck of peaches — half of them "clings," at that — -in a two-quart basket ; that makes butter out of beef tallow, catches imported sardines off the coast of Maine, brings milk to the city that the inspectors pitch into the river, sells "bob-veal" in the markets until arrested, fined, and sent to jail for it ; that when children ask for bread gives them a preparation of alum ; a generation that mixes split peas with the coffee, and sand with the sugar it sells, — of course you can't make the Sermon on the Mount fit such a people as that. But this day and generation can be made to fit the Sermon on the "^ LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM." 195 Mount ; that can be done. And that's what Christian men and women are trying to do. Not warping the New Testament to fit a perverse and crooked gen- eration, but rather straightening out ' the Hves and characters of men to line with the pure and lofty morality which Christ taught. And when the coun- try is brought up to the "two sparrows for a far- thing" basis, our children will laugh to think that their fathers grew bald and wrinkled and blind, puz- zling over such simple questions as the relations of Capital and Labor, very much as we laugh at our fathers for dodging the question of human slavery until it turned into a cannon-ball that no man could dodge. Little Hattie Wiatt turned away from the door of Grace Church with a heart in her breast not quite so heavy and. sore as the one that beat in the breast of the Pastor, who watched her walking slowly away. But hers was more than a passing disappointment of childhood. The tears that came welling up from the overcharged heart and dropped from her eyes, could not wash away this little trouble. The little one pondered, and with the beautiful faith of a child prayed over her disappointment. Her little trial sweetened her soul ; she thought of other children, wistfully peering in through the closing door at the overcrowded rooms. She said : — " I will save my money and build a bigger Sunday- school, and then we can all go." 196 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. Among her possessions was a tattered red pocket- book that had seen ' much service before it was char- tered by Hattie for her savings bank. It came to her empty, fo^ it had had the habit of most pocket- books of letting out very easily what came into it with great difficulty, which is not characteristic of the average bank. But under its new charter it be- came a savings bank indeed. Penny by penny the little one stored away her income ; the dimpled fin- gers went over the coin in the shallow treasury day by day, her eyes dancing with a joyous light as the balance sheet showed a steady increase. No tempta- tion of toy or sweetmeat could entice a penny from the little red pocketbook ; the treasury of the Temple wherein " many that were rich cast in much " was not. more sacred than this tiny treasure box of copper mites, consecrated to the Lord. What struggles she had, what temptations she had, to shut her eyes and steel her heart against in this little time of savings, are secrets that the little one, happy forever, told to the Love that was leading her. The pavements of gold are under her feet and she knows how much richer than all the wealth of men is the blessing of God. But still one wonders if the saint, full grown " unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," does not look back lovingly and tenderly — gratefully, to the days of her childish self-denial and labor in the work of Temple-building. There were but a few weeks of planning and hop- "A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM." 197 ing and saving. One day Pastor Conwell was hastily summoned to the Wiatt home. The little Temple- builder was ill; even the old world, which was so overcrowded centuries gone by that it had no room in its home or inns for the Christ-child, was closing its doors against her now. The little Pilgrim was bending her footsteps toward the Beautiful City "having the glory of God" whereof "the twelve gates were twelve pearls which shall not be shut at all by day : for there shall be no night there ; " and so she passed in at an open gate, beyond the farthest reach of sun or moon or stars, into the light of the Lamb, into the " house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." The little girl, in her unwritten will, left all her property to the Grace Baptist Church. It was a legacy worthy of a millionaire. Wisely — oh, very wisely, with that wisdom "that is from above," pure, gentle, "full of good fruits" — she invested it for the church ; a church wherein there were busi- ness men, bankers, financiers, merchants, invested it so well that the income from it up to this time has been upward of 1^300,000, and the principal has not been touched. When they administered upon her little estate they found the little red pocket^ook. • There were just fifty-seven cents in it. That was her legacy. The pastor took charge of it. It was with a swelling heart and misty eyes that he told his people what Hattie May Wiatt had left 198 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. for them. And when they heard how God had blessed them with so great an inheritance, there was silence in the room ; the silence of tears and earnest consecration. The corner-stone of the Temple was laid. " She hath done what she could. Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her." " Each life hath one grand day : the clouds may lie Along the hills and stprmwinds fiercely blow — The great red sun shine like a thing of woe, And death's sad skeleton stalk grimly by. Yet none of these, no matter how they try, Can shroud the perfect triumph we shall know, ' Or dim the glory that some star will show Set far away in depths of purple sky.'' — Thomas S. Colier. CHAPTER XXIII. "STRENGTHENED THEIR HANDS WITH GOLD." " The preaching of the gospel is the ordained instrument for the salva- tion of men; but I want to say again that the highest and most effective method of preaching is not from the formal platform. In the old days they did not have any platform. The apostles went around and preached in the streets, on the comers, in the kitchen, in the parlor. Preached wherever they could get a man to listen ! They would preach to one man just as earnestly and zealously as they would to one thousand or six thousand. It does not make any difference where the minister stands if he remembers his commission, ' Go, preach the gospel to every creature.' " — CoNWELL, The Institutional Church, June 5th, 1893. The interest on Hattie Wiatt's fifty-seven cents began to compound itself in a multiplying fashion that would astonish the able financiers who frame tariff-bills and levy taxes. The congregation of Grace Church could not point with pride to the fact that its pastor "preached to ^100,000,000 in the cen- ter aisle " every Sunday. Such a statement would have been the wildest fiction, too extravagant for the most, rabid campaign purposes — "a Morgan" that would not "last even till after election." Shop-girls, saleswomen, mechanics, factory boys and girls, busi- ness men with small incomes, working people, young men and women on salaries — there were no rich men 199 200 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. who would carelessly fill out a check when money was needed, and pass it over to the treasurer without being overly particular as to the amount. The men in that church who were so fortunate as to have bank accounts at that time, had to be very careful and particular indeed, when filling up a check, to see that it didn't " shovel where there was no sand." The funds for the new building were to come like "the gentle rain from heaven," in steady, quiet, penetrating " drizzle-drozzle," not much at a time but from all around the sky and all the time. The young people organized "walking-clubs," not for pastime, but for business ; to be a member of a " walking-club " in Grace Church did not mean to don a natty walking- costume and saunter away for a pleasant stroll over meadow and mountain. It meant for a tired man, with muscles weary and aching from a long day's work and a worn-out woman wondering how much longer she could stand up and do her work, to trudge home, a long, tiresome walk, to a late supper, and put the saved nickel into the Temple building-fund ; to get up earlier in the morning that the time might be had to walk to work, while street car after car rang and rattled by, calling the worker to get aboard and ride. Girls whose bright young faces knew and loved the charm of a dainty vision of plume and ribbon from the milliners' as well as any girls in America, made the head-dress of last year and the year before that do for this year and next by such manipulation of "STRENGTHENED THEIR HANDS WITH GOLD." 201 feminine dexterity as no man may understand and fewer men describe ; the new bonnet that smiled en- chantment from the window went into the new Tem- ple. Even the boys^ — God bless the boys, only a man who has been a boy, or a mother who has raised one, knows how any coin from a cent to a dollar blisters the palm of the boyish hands until it be spent for something he can eat, break, or lose — the boys caught the enthusiasm,. set their teeth, gave up their money, and drowned the cries of the sacrifice by shouting more loudly and wrestling more roughly, if that were possible, at their play. The people of Grace Church learned to poise a coin a long time, balancing it in the hand between the contemplated purchase and the desired Temple. Such a lesson in giving it was, for the entire church from usher to organist — that includes everything, for the one shows the people in and the other plays them out. All the time the congregation was growing ; converts were going down into the baptismal waters ; a united church was praying and working ; not for one moment were the spiritual interests of the church neglected or overlooked while the work of raising money was going on ; all the affairs of the church moved on together. After six years of self-denial and labor, " which seemed unto them but a few days for the love they had " for the service, the cloud lifted once more, and Grace Church and its congregation moved into The Temple, on the corner of Broad and Berks streets. 202 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. Ground was broken for The Temple March 27th, 1889; the corner-stone was laid July 13th, 1890, and on the first of March, 1891, the house was occupied for worship. " During the opening exercises over nine thousand people were present at each service " (Philadelphia Press.) The great throng overflowed into the Lower Temple ; into the old church building ; large as were the ideas of the Temple-builders, it would seem that they were yet smaller than the ne- cessity for the new church home. Overflow meetings continued to be a feature of The Temple service from that day. The most sys- tematic arrangement and classification of the work in every department became an immediate necessity. So close together stood the Tent and The Temple, only a score of years, that the suddenness of the transition must have been confusing ; a hard thing to realize. But they were not carried off their feet by their triumph ; they had learned "-how to be abased;" they were now to learn the much harder lesson, " how to abound." " Ah, that is a dangerous hour in the history of men and in- stitutions, — when they become too popular ; when a good cause becomes too much admired or adored, so that the man, or the institution, or the building, or the organization, receives an idol- atrous worship from the community. That is always a danger- ous time. Small men always go down, wrecked by such dizzy elevation. Whenever a small man is praised, he immediately loses his balance of mind and ascribes to himself the things which others foolishly express in flattery. He esteems himself more than he is ; thinking himself to be something, he is conse- quently nothing. How dangerous is that point when a man, or "STRENGTHENED THEIR HANDS WITH GOLD." 203 a woman, or an enterprise has become accepted and popular! Then, of all times, should the man or the spciety be humble. Then, of all times, should they beware. Then, of all times, the hosts of Satan are marshaled that by every possible insidious wile and open warfare they may overcome. The weakest hour in the history of great enterprises is apt to be when they seem to be, and their projectors think they are, strongest. Take heed lest ye fall in the hour of your strength. The most powerful mill stream drives the wheel most vigorously at the moment be- fore the flood sweeps the mill to wildest destruction." — The Temple Magazine, Danger of Success,"' Paxil at Ephesus." So, The Temple had lighted at last upon dangerous times, and busy times, and hard times, and good times, all sorts of times, indeed, as most times in this world of time are apt to be. But if they were in danger, the Templars were too busy to notice it. They were carrying a great deal of sail, it is true ; but they were carrying a great deal of ballast also. Possibly, too, they remembered that if they lost them- selves in more work for humanity, if they used their success only as a stepping-stone for other and greater successes, that He who died for man. He in whose name they wrought, would care for them and their enterprises. So they enlarged the place of their tent, and stretched forth the curtains of their habitation and broke forth on the right hand and on the left. Theirs was the joy of labor, not of completion. " If all our life were one broad glare Of sunlight, clear, unclouded ; If all our path were smooth and fair, By no dark gloom enshrouded ; 204 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. If all life's flowers were fully blown Without the sweet unfolding, And happiness were rudely thrown On hands too weak for holding — Should we not miss the twilight hours, The gentle haze and sadness ? Should we not long for storms and showers To break the constant gladness ? " CHAPTER XXIV. "THE GLORY OF THIS LATTER HOUSE." " We went to a Baptist church in Edinburgh on Sunday. We had a fine sermon on ' I have loved you with an everlasting love.' It was an excellent sermon which inspired one with admiration for the love that is faithful, unshaken, unflinching, even unto death. But the audi- ence did not exceed one hundred and fifty, and there were no evidences of active soul-saving life. No one spoke to us except the minister, and that was a formality. The world is not to be saved by such worship, and one feels disheartened when he thinks of the dying world rushing on with no warning to halt from churches. I do not know what is to be done, but I do wish I could set The Temple and its working congre- gation down along side of Edinburgh Castle for about three weeks. But the people over here never heard of The Temple, and probably never will; yet the world needs ten thousand churches like it." — Russell H. Conwell, July, 1894. Once open, as though there was ever before the pastor's eyes the vision of a little girl, slow-paced, with bowed head, choking back her sobs and trying to dry the tears that would come faster than she could brush them away as she walked away from the old meeting-house, the doors of The Temple were never closed. Not an hour in the day or night, not a day in the year, should find the great building un- tenanted. "At the present time" (Conwell, "The Institutional Church," 1894) "the general idea of a 205 206 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. church edifice is a place, a hall, in which people as- semble regularly twice on the Lord's day, in which one man rises and speaks ; then follows the hymn, the collection, the dismissal of the assembly, and the people return to their homes. The institutional church of the future, I think, will have connected with it something more than is connected with our churches to-day." The Temple, the home, the meeting-house of Grace Baptist Church, is a building of hewn stone. The clear dimensions are 107 by 150 feet. From the sidewalk to the top of the dome is 90 feet. At the height of 60 feet, just above the half-rose window, is an iron balcony ; here on special occasions the band and the choir play sacred melodies and sing hymns, notably on Christmas and New Year's Eve and at Easter, filling the midnight hour with the music of the church. The auditorium of The Temple has the largest seating capacity among Protestant church edifices in the United States. It contains 3500 plush-covered opera chairs, with room for 600 additional chairs which can be placed without encroaching upon the main aisles. Its actual seating capacity is 4108, which can be increased to 46CX), with camp chairs. Under the auditorium and below the level of the street is the part of the building called the Lower Temple. Here are Sunday-school rooms, with a seating capacity of 2000 ; this, exclusive of the pastor's Bible class, which meets "THE GLORY OF THIS LATTER HOUSE." 207 in the main auditorium, and numbers from looo to 1500. The Sunday-school room and lecture room of the Lower Temple is 48 by 106 feet in dimen- sions. It is carpeted ; has stained-glass windows ; beside the reading-desk on the platform is a cabinet organ and a grand piano. In the rear of the lecture room is a dining-room, 45 by 46 feet, with a capacity for seating 500 people. Folding tables and hundreds of chairs are stowed away in the store rooms when not in use in the great dining-room. Opening out of this room are the rooms of the Board of Trustees, and the Business Men's Union ; the parlors and reading-rooms of the Young Men's Association and the Young Women's Association ; other rooms on this floor are the kitchen, carving-room, cloak- room, the armory of the Temple Guard and Boys' Brigade, and through the kitchen a passageway to the engine and boiler rooms. In pantries and cup- boards is an outfit of china and table cutlery, etc., sufficient to set a table for 500 persons. The kitchen is fully equipped, with two large ranges, hot-water cylinders, sinks, and drainage tanks. In the annex beyond the kitchen, a separate building contains the boilers and engine room and the electric-light plants. The steam-heating of the building is supplied by four loo-horse-power boilers. In the engine room are two i3S-horse-power engines, directly connected with dynamos having a capacity of 2500 lights, which are controlled by a switchboard in this room. The elec- 206 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. church edifice is a place, a hall, in which people as- semble regularly twice on the Lord's day, in which one man rises and speaks ; then follows the hymn, the collection, the dismissal of the assembly, and the people return to their homes. The institutional church of the future, I think, will have connected with it something more than is connected with our churches to-day." The Temple, the home, the meeting-house of Grace Baptist Church, is a building of hewn stone. The clear dimensions are 107 by 150 feet. From the sidewalk to the top of the dome is 90 feet. At the height of 60 feet, just above the half-rose window, is an iron balcony ; here on special occasions the band and the choir play sacred melodies and sing hymns, notably on Christmas and New Year's Eve and at Easter, filling the midnight hour with the music of the church. The auditorium of The Temple has the largest seating capacity among Protestant church edifices in the United States. It contains 3500 plush-covered opera chairs, with room for 600 additional chairs which can be placed without encroaching upon the main aisles. Its actual seating capacity is 4108, which can be increased to 4600, with camp chairs. Under the auditorium and below the level of the street is the part of the building called the Lower Temple. Here are Sunday-school rooms, with a seating capacity of 2000 ; this, exclusive of the pastor's Bible class, which meets "THE GLORY OF THIS LATTER HOUSE." 207 in the main auditorium, and numbers from looo to 1500. The Sunday-school room and lecture room of the Lower Temple is 48 by 106 feet in dimen- sions. It is carpeted ; has stained-glass windows ; beside the reading-desk on the platform is a cabinet organ and a grand piano. In the rear of the lecture room is a dining-room, 45 by 46 feet, with a capacity for seating 500 people. Folding tables and hundreds of chairs are stowed away in the store rooms when not in use in the great dining-room. Opening out of this room are the rooms of the Board of Trustees, and the Business Men's Union ; the parlors and reading-rooms of the Young Men's Association and the Young Women's Association ; other rooms on this floor are the kitchen, carving-room, cloak- room, the armory of the Temple Guard and Boys' Brigade, and through the kitchen a passageway to the engine and boiler rooms. In pantries and cup- boards is an outfit of china and table cutlery, etc., sufficient to set a table for 500 persons. The kitchen is fully equipped, with two large ranges, hot-water cylinders, sinks, and drainage tanks. In the annex beyond the kitchen, a separate building contains the boilers and engine room and the electric-light plants. The steam-heating of the building is supplied by four lOO-horse-power boilers. In the engine room are two 135-horse-power engines, directly connected with dynamos having a capacity of 2500 lights, which are controlled by a switchboard in this room. The elec- 208 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. trician is on duty every day, giving his entire time to the management of this plant. The building is also supplied with gas. Directly behind the pulpit is a small closet containing a friction wheel, by means of which, should the electric light fail for any reason, every gas jet in The Temple can be lighted from dome to basement. The acoustics of the great auditorium are perfect. There is no building on this continent with an equal capacity which enables the preacher to speak and the hearers to listen with such perfect comfort. The weakest voice is carried to the farthest auditor. There is not a "ghost of an echo" in the room, because there was never an echo in it to leave a ghost. Lecturers who have tested the acoustic prop- erties of halls in every state in the Union speak with praise and pleasure of The Temple, which makes the delivery of an oration to 4000 people as easy, so far as vocal effort is concerned, as a parlor conversation. This is one of the greatest triumphs of the builder of The Temple, William Wilkins of Philadelphia. He lived to see the completion of this, his great- est work in architectural construction, and when the building was completed great was his joy to discover the perfection of its acoustic properties. All his work was honest and sinerce. In former years he was a successful temperance orator, and was prominently identified with much of the good work done by the Philadelphia Methodists, of which "THE GLORY OF THIS LATTER HOUSE." 209 body he was an active member. Mr. Wilkins died in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in April, 1894, in the seventy-fourth y^ax of his age. Compared with other assembly rooms in the coun- try, the auditorium of The Temple is a model It seats, as we have seen, 4108 persons ; with extra chairs this can be increased to 4600. The American Academy of Music, Philadelphia, seats 2900; the Academy of ilusic, BrookljTi, 2433; Academy in New York, 2433 ; the Grand Opera House, Cincin- nati, 2250 ; and the Music Hall, Boston, 2585. The large number of dreary bams, inclosing vast areas of echoing desolation in sundry towns, which, having run their vicious course as " RoUer Skating links " continue a partially reformed existence under the alias of " Opera Houses " are not, of course, included in this list When the Baptist Young People's Union met in International Convention in Toronto, in July, 1894, they were elated to find a public hall, Massey's, described by one of the best of correspondents as " an admirable place for such a meeting,' seating fewer people than this Baptist Church in Philadelphia. " Seated for 3600 people is Massey's Hall, and, including the platform, 4000 peo- ple can get into it easily." Quite a large, imposing edifice to most people, but rather ordinary to the congr^ation who attend service r^jolarly at Grace Baptist Church. \Mien the Baptists of the United States held their " anniversaries " in Philadelphia in 210 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. 1892, Grace Church invited the delegates to hold all their meetings in The Temple, with its great audito- rium for the mass meetings, its dining-hall, commo- dious committee rooms, lecture rooms, admirably adapted to the uses and wants of such a convention. However, The Temple does not wait for national conventions to come along and fill its seats. Crowds are no novelty to the people who worship there. When the invited guests go elsewhere, then out of the streets and lanes of the city and from the high- ways and hedges, the multitude is gathered, and great as The Temple building is, its activities and its workers have outgrown its walls. By the side of the main building stands the Temple College, farther removed stands the Samaritan Hospital, and other things are " in the air ; " and what is in the air about The Temple does not stay there long ; it con- -denses into a blessed and blessing rain that " coraeth down and watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater." Said Pastor Conwell on the occasion of his fiftieth anniversary — " I met a man, a few days ago, on a railway train in Massa- chusetts. He said to me, '1 would like to know how you ever expect to build the College, and enlarge the Hospital, and found an Orphanage and a Young Ladies' Home, and all these things of which I have read.' I said, ' I don't expect to do it.' " ' Are you going to give it up ? ' " ' No. We will have the Young Women's Home and the Orphanage.' "THE GLORY OF THIS LATTER HOUSE." 211 " ' Well, what do you mean by that ? You say you don't expect to do it, yet you are not going to give it up, and you expect to have it?' " I said, ' When the church gets ready to go on with it, it will go ; not when I get ready, for I am ready now.' Indeed we do need a better home for our College ; our Hospital should be extended until the great Baptist denomination which we repre- sent shall have a place for the sick, until thousands instead of hundreds shall have the advantage of a home for the maimed, the sick, and the suffering ; and I believe that is yet to come. That will grow out under God's leadership for purposes of greater philanthropic work when we have passed into eternity. I am ready for it now. When the church is ready, it will come, and I am willing to wait until the judgment of our people shall say, ' The time is come.' " One cannot study the growth, the methods, and the work of this church without feeling the contagion of the enthusiasm, the zealous eagerness which is char- acteristic of this people. The little tendency to boast- ing which may be apparent to the humble mind of the meek^and retiring reader, comes entirely from the Scribe, who is not and was never a member of Grace Church or its congregation, and whose only apology for this boasting is the contagious enthusiasm be- fore mentioned ; and perhaps the additional fact that he once sat at the annual supper of a New England Society, and once, at a college banquet, heard two noble Virginians respond, in the same evening, to the toast, "Virginia." And a man who can calmly sit through two such occasions and not fail to learn how to fill the horn which he next essays to blow with a crescendo note, compared with which the sounding 212 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. of Roland's horn at Roncessvalles should trill away into the pipe of the sparrow, is fast ripening for a kin- dergarden of the Science of Self- Exaltation. His be the blame ; Grace Church has no hand in this history j as for that people — " But we will not boast of things beyond our measure ; but according to the measure of the limit which God hath distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you. For we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure, as though we reached not unto you : for we are come as far as to you also in preaching the gos- pel of Jesus Christ.'' " The Lord who fashioned my hands for working, Set me a taslc and it is not done ; I have tried and tried since the early morning, And now to westward sinketh the sun. " Others have found me, cheerfully toiling, Showed me their work as they as passed away ; Filled were their hands to overflowing. Proud were their hearts, and glad and gay. " Laden with harvest spoils they entered In at the golden gate of their rest ; Laid their sheaves at the feet of the Master, Found their places among the blest. " Now I know my task will never be finished, And when the Master calleth my name, His voice will find me still at my labor, Weeping beside it in weary shame." CHAPTER XXV. "AND THE SINGERS WERE IN THEIR PLACE." " O, I need not a wing, — bid no genii come With a wonderful web from Arabian loom, To bear me again up the river of Time When the world was in rhythm and life was its rhyme, And the stream of the years flowed so noiseless and narrow That across it there floated the song of a sparrow; For a sprig of green caraway carries me there To the old village church and the old village choir; When clear of the floor my feet slowly swung And timed the sweet pulse of the praise as they sung, Till the glory aslant from the afternoon sun Seemed the rafters of gold in God's Temple begun. " You may smile at the nasals of old Deacon Brown, Who followed by scent till he run the tune down; And dear Sister Green, with more goodness than grace. Rose and fell on the tunes as she stood in her place. And where ' Coronation ' exultingly flows. Tried to reach the high notes on the tips of her toes. To the land of the leal they have gone with their song. Where the choir and the chorus together belong. O, be lifted, ye Gates ! Let me hear them again, — Blessed song, blessed singers ! Forever ! Amen ! " — Be-N'jamin F. Taylor. Back of the pulpit in The Temple rises the amphi- theater of seats, filled Sunday after Sunday by the grand chorus of The Temple, the largest permanent 213 214 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. choir, it is said, in the United States. It numbers about two hundred and fifty singers ; many of these receive their musical education in the department of music in Temple College, where instruction is given to classes or individuals, in single or course lessons, voice culture forming a special department. The choir is under the charge of the organist, Profess'or David D. Wood, Mus. Doc. — a name that will kindle thousands of eyes with the light of recognition. It pleased God to close this man's eyes so that all the sunshine in his world must gleam into them from within. And his soul is full of God's sunshine : the brightest and kindliest sunshine, as it is of the sweet- est music. He was born in Pittsburg, March 2d, 1838. His father was a carpenter, a hard-working man who built for himself the log cabin in which David first saw the little light that has shone into his eyes from the skies above the outer world. When the little one was a babe only a few months old, the sight of one eye was destroyed by a severe cold and resulting in- flammation. When he was nearly three years, the child followed his sister down into the cellar one evening, intending, in a spirit of boyish mischief, to blow out the candle she carried. As he leaned over her shoulder for this purpose, she rose, and the can- dle in her hand was thrust by the action against his good eye. The child's cry of pain was the first inti- mation she had that he was near her. Shortly after o o UJ I H I- < Q O O "AND THE SINGERS WERE IN THEIR PLACE." 21S this accident he was attacked with scarlet fever, and when he recovered the light of candle or sun had gone out for him, until there shall dawn on him the morn that hath neither twilight nor shadow. He was rugged and merry ; and played about with a boy's enjoyment of life. One day he nearly met with an accident that might have closed his little chapter of accidents with a tragedy, being well-nigh run over by a carriage in which a lady was driving. Learning that the little fellow for whose funeral she had almost arranged, was blind, she became sufficiently inter- ested in him to tell his father of the School for the Blind, in Philadelphia. To this school the father sent the little boy. He came to Philadelphia by canal, making the journey from Pittsburg in five days. October 21st, 1843, he entered the School for the Blind, in the same year that Russell Conwell, with both eyes wide open, was wondering if he could not catch the moon the next time he reached for it. In Puritan Massachusetts and in the Quaker city the pastor and the organist of The Temple were learning to live and to preach. David Wood was a persevering pupil. He learned to play the flute at eight years of age, and " without any instruction became flute-player in the orchestra of the school." He learned also to play the violin and piano. In his twelfth year he began playing the organ. In all this time, however, he received almost no musical instruction. In his other studies he was a diligent student and a great 216 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. reader. In mathematics James G. Blaine was his teacher for two years. His early years as an organ- ist, after leaving school, were full of struggles that would have disheartened any man with less will power and courage. He met far more refusals than encouragement. Finally, his persistence and hope- fulness triumphed. In an Episcopal Church in Phil- adelphia, two days before Easter, they had no one to play the Easter music. The rector's wife read the music to Mr. Wood; he learned it in an hour; re- hearsal and service passed off without a fault. He was engaged at the princely salary of one hundred dollars a year. His next position paid him one-half so much. In 1870 he went to St. Stephen's Episco- pal Church, Philadelphia, as choir master and organist. He is also a member of the faculty of the Philadel- phia Musical Academy, and principal instructor in the Philadelphia School for the Blind. It is said that he has trained more good organists than any other teacher in Philadelphia. His assistant at The Temple is Mr. Adam Geibel, a most talented musi- cian and composer. No better idea of the music of The Temple, its methods, the organization of the chorus, its discipline and system can be obtained than from Professor Wood's own words : — " In organizing a church chorus one must not be too particu- lar about the previous musical education of applicants. It is not necessary that they be musicians, or even that they read music "AND THE SINGERS WERE IN THEIR PLACE." lYl readily. All that I insist upon is a fairly good voice and a cor- rect ear. I assume, of course, that all comers desire to learn to sing. Rehearsals must be scrupulously maintained, beginning promptly, continuing with spirit, and not interrupted by disorder of any kind. A rehearsal should never exceed two hours, and a half hour less is plenty long enough, if there is no waste of time. In learning new music, voices should be rehearsed separately ; that is, all sopranos, tenors, basses, and altos by themselves first, then combine the voices. You should place before a choir a variety of music sufficient to arouse the interest of all concerned. This will include much beyond the direct demand for church work. The chorus of The Temple has learned and sung on ap- propriate occasions, war songs, college songs, patriotic songs, and other grades of popular music. " No one man's taste should rule in regard to these questions as to variety, although the proprieties of every occasion should be carefully preserved. Due regard must be paid to the taste of members of the chorus. If any of them express a wish for a par- ticular piece, I let them have it. When it comes my time to select, they are with me. Keep some high attainment before the singers all the time. When the easier tasks are mastered, attempt something more difficult. This was the thought that led the chorus of The Temple to grapple with the Oratorio of 'The Creation,' and still harder work is now in hand with Mendelssohn's ' Hymn of Praise.' It maintains enthusiasm to be ever after something better, and enthusiasm is a power everywhere. In music, this is ' the Spirit which quickeneth.' "In the preparation of chorus work do not insist on perfec- tion. When I get them to sing fairly well, I am satisfied. To insist on extreme accuracy will discourage singers. Do not, therefore, overtrain them. " An incredible amount may be done even by a crude com- pany of singers. When the preparation began for the opening of The Temple, there was but a handful of volunteers and time for but five rehearsals. But enthusiasm rose, reinforcements came, and six anthems, including the ' Hallelujah Chorus,' were prepared and sung in a praiseworthy manner. Do not fear to attempt great things. Timidity ruins many a chorus. 218 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. " Do not be afraid to praise your singers. Give praise, and plenty of it, wlienever and wherever it is due. A domineering spirit will prove disastrous. Severity or ridicule will kill them. Correct faults faithfully and promptly, but kindly. " In the matter of discipline I am a strong advocate of the 'fine system.' It is the only way to keep a chorus together. The fines should be regulated according to the financial ability of the chorus. Our fine at The Temple is twenty-five cents for every rehearsal and every service missed. This is quite mod- erate. In some musical societies, the fine is one dollar for every absence. This system is far better than monthly dues. " The advantages to members of a chorus are many and of great value. Concerted work has advantages which can be se- cured in no other way. A good chorus is an unequaled drill in musical time. The singer cannot humor himself as the soloist can, but must go right on with the grand advance of the com- pany. He gets constant help also, in the accurate reading of music. Then, too, there is an indescribable, uplifting, enkind- ling power in the presence and cooperation of others. The volume of song lifts one, as when a great congregation sings. It is the esprit du corps of the army ; that magnetic power which comes from the touch of elbows, and the consecration to a com- mon cause. No soloist gets this. "Some would-be soloists make a great mistake right here. They think that choi-us work spoils them as soloists. Not at all, if they have proper views of individual work in a chorus. If they propose to sing out so they shall sound forth above all others, then they may damage their voices for solo work. But that is a needless and highly improper use of the voice. Sing along with the others in a natural tone. They will be helped and the soloist will not be harmed. " The best conservatories of music in the world require of their students a large amount of practice in concerted perform- ance and will not grant diplomas without it. All the great solo- ists have served their time as chorus singers. Parepa-Rosa, when singing the solo parts in oratorio, would habitually sing in the chorus parts also, singing from beginning to end with the others. "AND THE SINGERS WERE IN THEIR PLACE." 219 "Many persons have expressed their astonishment at the absence of the baton both from the rehearsals and pubhc per- formances of the chorus of The Temple. Experience has proved to me, beyond a doubt, that a chorus can be better drilled without a baton, than with it, though it costs more labor and patience to obtain the result. To sing by common inspira- tion is far better than to have the music 'pumped out,' as is too often the case, by the uncertain movements of the leader's baton." The record of attendance is regulated by the use of checks. Each member of the chorus is assigned a number. As they come to rehearsal, service, or con- cert, the singer removes his check from the board upon which it hangs and gives it to the person ap- pointed to receive it as he passes to his seat. When the numbers are checked up at the close of the even- ing, the checks which have not been removed from the board are marked " absent." The bill for sheet music for one year is something between ^4Cxd and S500. For the care of this music, each member is given by the librarian an envelope stamped ivith the singer's check number, and con- taining all the sheet music used by the chorus ; each person is therefore held responsible for his own music. Both in rehearsals, and in the service, each singer has an appointed seat, so that all confusion and in- convenience in placing the choir is avoided. There is also a system of signals employed by the organist, clearly understood and promptly responded to by the chorus, for rising, resuming their seats, and for any 220 TEMPLM AND TEMPLARS. Other duty. This regularity of movement, the pre- cision with which the great choir leads the attitudes and voices of the congregation in all the musical services, the entire absence of confusion, impresses the thoroughness of the chorus drill upon every one, and adds greatly to the effectiveness and decorum of the service. Out of such a chorus has naturally grown smaller musical organizations, such as the "Grace Male Quartette," the " Conwell Female Quartette," and others, which are in frequent demand by lyceums and churches in the city of Philadelphia and towns adjacent. And the money thus earned by these societies is always devoted to the work of The Tem- ple, in some of its many branches. In the Sunday-school, in addition to piano and organ, an excellent orchestra, the members of which are for the greater part members of the Sunday- school, assist in the musical portions of the sessions. The Temple believes in music. But only in consecrated music. It must be as much a part of the service of the church as is the Scripture lesson and the sermon. Says The Temple pastor ("Vocal Worship," 1893) : — " The most delicious things living are the most offensive when they are dead. It is true of vocal music in the Church of Christ. It is the ' deadest ' when it is dead, and the most offensive sac- rilege, when it is sacrilegious, that oflfend the nostrils of God's messengers to earth. It breeds awful contagion and kills in agony the spirit of prayer and the angel of praise ; and in that "AND THE SINGERS WERE IN THEIR PLACE." 221 church he only truly worships who sleeps soundly enough to dream through the performance. " Godless music ! In the Church of Christ ! It is a spoonful of arsenic in the Christmas turkey. The man who swears at the usher, and kicks the lost dog in the service, is a small offender beside the spiritless mumbler and piper who squeals his own praises from the shelf behind the pulpit. " Paid choirs are often condemned for being paid. But there is no reason why a professional singer should not be paid, in the same way the preacher is paid. But she who sings for money, as he who preaches for money, is a hired assassin, paid by the victim. As no preacher should be called who would not preach anyhow, whether paid much or little, so no singer should ever be paid who would not sing for the glory of God without pay. " Oh, happy church! Oh, blessed people, who have a volun- teer choir of lovely Christians who practice hard and sing sweetly without pay, for the praise of God only. With such a chorus, any church will grow in grace and attendance. The dull preacher will be pricked into lively utterance or drowned in a flood of musical roses. The sinner will become conscious of sin, the wandering sheep will think of the safe fold, the aged will be reminded of heaven, the young will adopt good resolutions, enemies will forgive each other, the saintly will drink deep at the wells of salvation, angels will stop to listen and join in the sweet song, where all the choir love Christ sincerely and sing with a pure heart. " Oh, brothers of the favored churches, where singers abound whose lovely Christian characters lead them to sing as spontane- ously as the birds, and whose strains wreath into halos of sacred incense as they carry upward your devotions, do not underesti- mate their priceless value. Christ and His disciples sang a hjmin at the last supper; Paul and Silas sang in the dungeon; the Comforter came to listen and remained to bless. There is no nobler character than the wounded disciple who can sing him- self into forgetfulness of his earthly pain ; or sing his hearers into sweet communion with the Eternal Father. As the churches ought to expel the desecrator who sings in church for 222 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. pay or human praise, so ought that church to love most tenderly, and care for most kindly, the devoted, inspiring, saintly souls who can sing and do sing only and splf-sacrificingly for the com- fort of the church and the salvation of sinners." In the rear and above the choir the great organ with its forest of richly ornamented pipes crowns and completes, with artistic and impressive finish, the portion of The Temple assigned to the sons of Asaph, "set over the service of song in the house of the Lord." The case is of oak, natural finish, 35 feet wide, 35 feet high, 16 feet deep. It was built by King & Son of Elmira, New York. Professor David D. Wood superintended the details of its construction. It has 41 stops; 2133 pipes; four sets of manuals, each manual with a compass of 61 notes ; there are 30 pedal notes ; nine double-acting combination pedals ; all the metal pipes are 75 per cent pure tin. The cost of the organ, with all the additions, reaches ;^20,ooo. The chorus, " ministering before the congregation with singing," leads, but in The Temple everybody sings. Even the tuneless stranger within the gates who wants to listen finds a hymn-book placed gently in his hand by some watchful member of the church, trained as they all are to observe most courteous Christian hospitality, and almost before he knows it he is lending all his heart and such voice as he has to the great volume of melody that fills the house with praise. The old hymns and the old "AND THE SINGERS WERE IN THEIR PLACE!' til tunes are favorites in The Temple worship. The old, old tunes and hymns, blessed and made holy by the aspirations and 'hopes, the burdens and sor- rows, the tears and the joys of generations of men, old hymns that were born to immortality ; that live despite the profaning claws and hoofs of the " hymn- tinker," and sing to the souls of men when the jig music and waltz measures of yesterday's hatching irritate and vex with their jingling lightness. " The congregation rise and stand : 'Old Hundred's' rolling thunder comes, In heavy surges, slow and grand, As bears the surf its solemn drums. " Now comes the time when ' China's ' wail Is blended with the faint perfume Of whispering crape and cloudy veil, That fold within their rustling gloom " Some wounded, human, mourning dove, And fall around some stricken one With nothing left alive to love Below the unregarded sun ! " And now they sing a star in sight — The Blessed Star of Bethlehem ; And now the air is royal bright With ' Coronation's ' diadem. <» " They show me spots of dimpled sod. They say the girls of old are there ; Oh no ! They swell the choirs of God ; The dear old songs are everywhere ! " — Benjamin F. Taylor. CHAPTER XXVI. THE TEMPLE COLLEGE. " I have far more faith in a young man's shaping his course by the bumps he gets in life, than by those the phrenologist finds on his head. If in the course of any effort of his to move forward, God hits him squarely in the face, he had better go around God's hand the next time. Watch God's providences. Set your sails by His breezes. You can learn more by studying your own actions than by years of the study of phre- nology. Don't trust to fortune-tellers of any stamp. Study the open doors, and your personal fitness for entering them — your education, your aptness, your opportunities. Let God lead you." — Conwell, The Pastor's Question Box. In the spring of the year 1887, Grace Church while working toward the new building, and trying to do, and doing a great deal more — as many wise men said — than it could do, came down to its work one morning, and lo ! new work waiting for it. It is an old saying that it is the busy man or woman who has always time to do something more, and that "more" for some one else. It is the bee in the church-hive that is always put on all manner of com- mittees ; it is the drone who rises and begs to be excused because he is so busy doing nothing he can not possibly spare the time to do anything. It is the working church that is always finding more work to 224 THE TEMPLE COLLEGE. 225 do. It is a common saying among workingmen, that when a man is out of a job he can never find a "lick of work of any sort ;" but the day he gets a steady position, he hears of three or four other places wait- ing for him. "To him that hath shall be given." What confronted the Templars just at this busy time was this : two young men anxious to study for the ministry. Their desire was their only equip- ment. Books, teachers, money — of these " sinews of war " they were destitute. Naturally they came to Pastor Conwell, showed him their empty hands and full hearts, turned their faces into interrogation points, and waited for his answer. Promptly he urged them to do just what he did when he had no money and wanted to go to college — begin study at once with- out money. He said, "Find some other men like yourselves, anxious to study ; I will teach you if you get up a class of ten." The day the pastor-professor, who for twenty years had given his lecture fees .for the education of young men, met his class of students, forty men ranged themselves before him ready for the opening lecture. Two men desirous of entering the ministry need a tutor ; forty demand a school. Con- sultation concerning the course of study for these forty resulted in a broadening of the plan. Other teachers were secured. The work grew, and in Octo- ber, 1886, "Temple College" opened its sessions and began work in the rooms of the old meeting-house. Naturally enough the second Dean of the College was Q 226 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. one of the " skirmishers " who had established that picket post in the Tentland of 1870, Frederick B. Greul, who now wrote " Reverend " before his name. He was Dean in 1889 and 1890, and did excellent service systematizing the work of the College, which was growing beyond the most sanguine expectations of the founders. The College overflowed the rooms in the old building into two adjoining houses, one owned by the church, the other rented for the pur- pose. When The Temple was completed, the College occupied all of the old building. When that was sold, the College moved into two large houses on Park Avenue, numbers 1831-1833. Still growing, it rented two large halls, one at 1235 Columbia Avenue, one at 2107 North Broad Street, and, cheered by the news of these enlarged accommodations, new students presented themselves at the doors in time to learn that there was no room ; earlier applicants had already taken all the new places. There was but one thing to do — build. The Templars were getting used to building ; they received the intimation that a new and costly structure had to be erected with some- thing of the complacency of a contractor. The Young Men's Bible Class, by their contribu- tions, created an " Investment Fund " for the Col- lege ; one boy brought to the pastor fifty cents, the first money he had ever earned ; a woman sent to the treasury a gold ring, the only gift she could make, which bore interest in the suggestion that all who THE TEMPLE COLLEGE. 227 chose might offer similar gifts as did the women in the day of Moses ; a business man hearing of this said, " If a day is appointed, I will on that day give to the College all the gold and silver that comes into my store for purchases." Every organization of Grace Church contributed time, work, money, and prayer to the building of the College. Small wonder then that obligations were met and payments made promptly. Saturday afternoon, August 19th, 1893, the corner- stone of the College building was laid. Taking up the silver trowel which had been used in laying the corner-stone of The Temple, July 31st, 1889, Pastor Conwell said, " Now, in the name of the people who have given for this enterprise, in the name of the many Christians who have prayed, and who are now sending up their prayers to heaven, I lay this corner- stone." The work went on ; Thursday afternoon. May 3d, 1894, a great congregation thronged The Temple to attend the dedication services of "Temple College," for it was in its new home ; a handsome building, pre- senting with The Temple a beautiful stone front of two hundred feet on the broad avenue which it faces. Robert E. Pattison, governor of Pennsylvania, pre- sided at these services, saying, in his introductory remarks, " Around this noble city many institutions have arisen in the cause of education, but I doubt whether any of them will possess a greater influence 228 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. for good than Temple College.'' Bishop Foss, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, offered prayer. The orator was Honorable Charles Emory Smith, of Phila- delphia, ex-minister to Russia. A man whose own life, with its constancy of unswerving purpose, its successes, won by his own high courage and busy hands, often wrested from adverse circumstances, is in itself an inspiration to young men. The orator, in perfect and cordial sympathy with the Institution and its field of work, was in every respect well qualified to speak for the College ; his address combined the thoughtfulness of the scholar, the eloquence of an earnest and sincere speaker, and the impressiveness characteristic of a man whose journalistic training has brought him into closest contact with the motives and actions of men. Mr. James Johnson, the builder, gave the keys to the architect, Mr. Thomas P. Lonsdale, who delivered them to the pastor of Grace Church and president of Temple College, remarking that "it was well these keys should be in the hands of those who already held the keys to the inner temple of knowledge." President Conwell, receiving the keys, said that, "by united effort, penny by penny, and dollar by dollar, every note had been paid, every financial obli- gation promptly met. It is a demonstration of what people can do when thoroughly in earnest in a great enterprise." Originally the aim of the College was to give an THE TEMPLE COLLEGE. 229 education, entirely free, to the working people who desired it. As the students increased in numbers however, it was found necessary to charge a merely nominal tuition fee, for the purpose of keeping out the persons who would attend with no desire to learn, the so-called students who have in so many instances turned the "free night-school" into mere frolics. When it was decided to charge five dollars a year for the privilege of attending the evening classes, the announcement was received with the unanimous approbation of the students who honestly wished to study, and who more than any others were hindered by the aimless element. And one of the unexpected developments of the work was the attend- ance not only of the toiling poor, who had no other opportunities for acquiring an education, but the sons of the rich. This made the day department of the College a necessity. Then from the suburbs of the city came students ; from neighboring towns in Penn- sylvania and New Jersey students came in great numbers. In the old buildings this was no unusual spectacle — students who had worked hard all day, and had come long distances to attend these night- classes, standing outside the door, and upon the stairways, note books in hand, taking notes of recita- tion or lecture. Says Rev. F. E. Dager, D.D. : — "That the Temple College idea of educating working men and working women at an expense just sufficient to give them an appreciation of the work of the Institution, covers a wide and 230 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS, long-neglected field of educational effort, is at once apparent to a thoughtful mind. Remembering that out of a total enrollment in the schools of our land of all grades, public and private, of 14,512,778 pupils, 96J per cent are reported as receiving elemen- tary instruction only; that not more than 35 in 1000 attend school after they are fourteen years of age ; that 25 of these drop out during the next four years of their life ; that less than 10 in 1000 pass on to enjoy the superior instruction of a college or some equivalent grade of work, we begin to see the unlimited field before an Institution lilce this. Thousands upon thousands of those who have left school quite early in life, either because they did not appreciate the advantages of a liberal education or because the stress of circumstances compelled them to assist in the maintenance of home, awake a few years later to the realiza- tion that a good education is more than one-half the struggle for existence and position. Their time through the day is fully occupied ; their evenings are free. At once they turn to the evening college, and grasping the opportunities for instruction, convert those hours which to many are the pathway to vice and ruin, into stepping-stones to a higher and more useful career. . . . An illustration of the wide-reaching influence of the Col- lege work is the significant fact that during the past year (1893) there were personally known to the president no less than 93 persons pursuing their studies in various universities of our country, who received their first impulses toward a higher educa- tion and a wider usefulness in Temple College." The Gymnasium of the College, occupying the base- ment of the building, is one of the best equipped in Philadelphia ; the dimensions of the main room are 105 by 60 feet. It is open to members of Grace Church, students of the College, and to "outsiders" through proper channels of application, good moral character being one of the requisites to membership. Professor C. W. Williams, formerly of Yale College, THE TEMPLE COLLEGE. 231 was the first physical trainer for the College. The ladies' department of the Gymnasium was opened in September, 1894, under charge of Miss Martha Maccarty, reputed one of the best instructors of Phys- ical Culture in the country. Out of the Gymnasium grew the Temple College Athletic Association, num- bering 300 charter members, with a diamond for base- ball, a crease for cricket, several lawn-tennis courts and croquet lawns on the grounds of the Association. "During the past year" (Report of the Business Manager of Temple College, May, 1894) "about 2000 students were enrolled in Temple College, in the day, afternoon, and evening departments. The charge in the day department is $50 for the school year, September to June. The afternoon department is confined entirely to business studies, stenography, type-writing, book-keeping, commercial arithmetic. The expense is %io a year. The Evening Department represents the Temple College idea of educating working men and women on a benevolent basis, at an expense of $5 a year ; classes in session two hours, each student permitted to take any three of the studies taught. None but those employed during the day are admitted. Begin- ning with next term the management will establish academies in West Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, and Kensington, to be known as the West, South, Tioga, and East Academies of Tem- ple College. These institutions are established as the result of a demand from the working classes of these sections, situated so far from Temple College that those employed in the daytime find it impossible to reach the evening classes in time. The object of this departure is to locate the academies at points of convenience which will enable students to attend classes and also save car-fare. During the next year (1894-95) the Temple College building will accommodate 4000 students, and 2000 stu- dents additional will receive instruction in the annex and acade- mies ; including the instruction given in the ' allied departments ' 232 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. the faculty of this Institution will give instruction to no less than 10,000 students. A faculty of about 75 professors, teachers, and assistants will be required to carry on the work as now mapped out, and as the departments are enlarged and the number of stu- dents increase, additional lecturers and teachers will be engaged, which may increase the Temple College faculty to 100. One of the new features is the Temple College School of Chris- tian Religion, in charge of Rev. Forrest E. Dager, D.D., the object of which is to qualify men and women for Christian work and the Christian ministry." The estimates of the Business Manager were con- sidered large. As a matter of fact, as this book goes to press, six academies have been established and are in operation, "j^ instructors comprise the faculty, and 6100 students are receiving instruction. It is ex- pected that there will be twenty-five academies in operation at the beginning of the next school year. A fully-equipped Kindergarten is in operation in the Temple College in charge of an experienced instructor, where some thirty little ones between the ages of four and eight receive daily instruction after the most approved methods of the " schools after Freidrich Froebel's principles," which were sup- pressed and forbidden in Prussia only forty-three years ago. Thus The Temple takes the child when it is learning to walk and talk, and after a full clas- sical college course lets go of the man or woman when fully equipped and trained to meet the dangers, perform the duties, and accept the responsibilities of life. THE TEMPLE COLLEGE. 233 Temple College is a chartered corporation with all the privileges of any other college of older growth. Any contributor of ^ifare. A little girl of seven years went into a lively brokerage business with her penny, and took several "flyers" that netted her handsome margins. Here is her report: — •• Sold the ' talent penny ' to Aunt libby for seven cents ; sold the seven cents to Mamma for 25 cents ; sold the 25 cents to Papa 286 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. for JO cents. Aunt Caddie, lo cents ; Uncle Gilman, 5 cents ; Cousin Walter, 4 cents ; Uncle Charlie, 10 cents ; cash, 25 cents, — $1.04 and the penny talent returned." "Pinching the market-basket" sent in ^2.50; "all the pennies and nickels received in four months, ;?I2.70 ;" "walking instead of riding, t^-'^o; " "sing- ing and making plaster plaques, tj." A dentist bought of a fellow dentist one cent's worth of cement filling-material ; this he used, giving his labor, and earned 50 cents ; with this he bought 50 cents' worth of better filling, part of which he used, again giving his labor, and the College gained ;^3.oo. A boy sold his penny to a physician foi a dollar. The physician sold the "talent penny" for 10 cents, which he exchanged at the Mint foi bright new pennies. These he took to businesi friends and got a dollar apiece for them ; added IS 5. 00 of his own and turned in |! 15.00. Donations of one cent each were received through Mr. William P. Harding, from Governor Tillman of South Caro- lina, Governor McKinley of Ohio, Governor Russell of Massachusetts. From Governor Fuller of Vermont — a rare old copper cent, 1782, coined by Vermont before she was admitted to the Union ; the govern- ors' letters were sold to the highest bidders. Every- body who worked, everybody who traded with the penny, did something, and every penny was blessed, so lovingly and so zealously was the trading done. It was the Master's talent which they were working "PEOPLE BRING MUCH MORE THAN ENOUGH." 287 with. All the little things that went into the treas- ury; lead pencils, tacks, jiSs.oo in one case and ;^s.oo in another; "beef's liver, {814.00" — think of that! How tired the boarders must have grown of liver away out on Broad Street — stick pins, hairpins, and the common kind that you bend and lose ; candy, pretzels, and cookies ; " old tin cans," wooden spoons, pies ; one man sent 1(50.00 as a gift because he said " his penny had brought him luck ; " another found 16 pennies, which good fortune he ascribed to the presence of the penny in his pocket. So in October the workers who had received their pennies in April came together to show what they had done. Four thousand pennies had been given out; $6000 came directly from the returns, and in- directly about $8000 more. Among the romances of the Penny Talent effort is chronicled this pleasant little story: When Miss L. C. Fleming returned from Congo land to equip herself more fully for her missionary work, she brought home with her three African girls ; one, Mludy, the daughter of a Congo king; another, Nkebing; and the third, Lena Frederick Clark, daughter of a half-breed. Princess Mludy's English name is Estey C. Fleming, her name being after the philanthropist organ-builder, Estey, and her foster- mother, the missionjiry. Miss Fleming invested her talent penny and finally secured linen and embroid- ery material for a pair of pillow shams. The Prin- 288 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. cess Mludy selected a design and motto, Miss Lena Clark did the hemstitching, and Miss Nkebing (Maggie Ratray) the embroidery. The design of the first sham is a sleeping girl, flowers waving about her, an angel hovering over her; the motto, " I slept and dreamed that life was beauty." The second represents the girl with a broom, sweeping, emblems of industry about her, and the motto, "I woke and found that life was duty." This was the first contribution to the embroidery department of the fair. The " Feast of Tithes," held in December of the same year, was a great fair, extending through seven week days. The displays of goods and the refresh- ment booths were in the Lower Temple, while fine concerts and other entertainments were given in the auditorium. The Feast of Tithes netted ;^SSCX) for the College fund. At the Children's Festival in December each child brought at least one potato as a ticket of admission. The child was not restricted to one, but might bring as many as he could carry. Upon one occasion these gifts amounted to eight barrels of potatoes, besides a great many other articles of domestic value. The "tickets" were sent to the Baptist Orphanage. In 1880, the Rev. C. H. Kimball being then pastor of Grace Church, and Mr. Alexander Henderson, treasurer, there were no pew rentals, and the weekly "PEOPLB BRING MUCH MORE THAN ENOUGH." 289 revenue gathered in envelopes, and loose change in the baskets, was about $\J or $\Z. The pastor's salary was ;^iSoo a year, and the first year wound up with a deficit of %6oo. The church had no bank account ; it paid its bills in the " chicken-feed " currency of pennies, nickels, and dimes, just as it came into the baskets. The treasurer did a cash business, carrying the treasure to the pastor, sexton, coal man, or some other creditor, tied up in a hand- kerchief. Mr. Henderson, after faithfully serving the church in its hard and struggling times, removed to Williamsport in 1893. But before he went away he was a treasurer indeed, as he had always been to the church a treasure, and durmg The Temple build- ing he handled for the church ^2000 a week. " The next highest amount for a year was 1^82,000, and these great sums," says the Temple Magazine, "came more easily than did the ^17 per week." Indiscriminate giving is not encouraged in The Temple. The children of the Sabbath-school make their contributions in envelopes especially provided for the purpose. Every contribution has a definite object, and a complete book account is kept of ten years before. The "somehow or other" idea is frowned down; the "deer if I hit it, and cow if I miss it " is condemned as a poor method idea in good workmanship. Definiteness of purpose, clearness of aim, something to shoot at, something to work for, clean, straightforward, business-like methods are fol- 290 TEMPLE AND TEMPLARS. lowed in all the benevolent work of the church. A soldier once did, by drawing a bow at a venture and shooting into the air, — possibly with his eyes shut, — kill a king who needed killing, but that same day probably several thousand arrows shot in the same way lost themselves in harmless trees and the un- caring ground. " MacAllister, man," says the Scotch sergeant in one of Kipling's stories, correcting the aim of an excited recruit, " yer waisting the Queen's ammuneetion, an' the sun will tak' no har-r-m by your marksmanship, I'm thinkin'." At The Temple the average contributions of the Sunday-school are ^50 a week. The basket offer- ings of the church, at both services, range between ^150 and ^300. The pew rent of the regular givers is collected monthly. There are over 2700 accounts on the books of the Finance Committee. The highest amount contributed by one holding a sitting is $2.