Acres of Diamonds [22]
``I came down early one morning, and saw a huge, hairy man sprawled upon the bed there--and I was frightened,'' he says.
But John Brown did not long frighten him! For he was much at their house after that, and was so friendly with Russell and his brother that there was no chance for awe; and it gives a curious side- light on the character of the stern abolitionist that he actually, with infinite patience, taught the old horse of the Conwells to go home alone with the wagon after leaving the boys at school, a mile or more away, and at school-closing time to trot gently off for them without a driver when merely faced in that direction and told to go! Conwell remembers how John Brown, in training it, used patiently to walk beside the horse, and control its going and its turnings, until it was quite ready to go and turn entirely by itself.
The Conwell house was a station on the Underground Railway, and Russell Conwell remembers, when a lad, seeing the escaping slaves that his father had driven across country and temporarily hidden. ``Those were heroic days,'' he says, quietly. ``And once in a while my father let me go with him. They were wonderful night drives-- the cowering slaves, the darkness of the road, the caution and the silence and dread of it all.'' This underground route, he remembers, was from Philadelphia to New Haven, thence to Springfield, where Conwell's father would take his charge, and onward to Bellows Falls and Canada.
Conwell tells, too, of meeting Frederick Douglass, the colored orator, in that little cottage in the hills. `` `I never saw my father,' Douglass said one day--his father was a white man--`and I remember little of my mother except that once she tried to keep an overseer from whipping me, and the lash cut across her own face, and her blood fell over me.'
``When John Brown was captured,'' Conwell went on, ``my father tried to sell this place to get a little money to send to help his defense. But he couldn't sell it, and on the day of the execu- tion we knelt solemnly here, from eleven to twelve, just praying, praying in silence for the passing soul of John Brown. And as we prayed we knew that others were also praying, for a church-bell tolled during that entire hour, and its awesome boom went sadly sounding over these hills.''
Conwell believes that his real life dates from a happening of the time of the Civil War--a happening that still looms vivid and intense before him, and which undoubtedly did deepen and strengthen his strong and deep nature. Yet the real Conwell was always essentially the same. Neighborhood tradition still tells of his bravery as a boy and a youth, of his reckless coasting, his skill as a swimmer and his saving of lives, his strength and endurance, his plunging out into the darkness of a wild winter night to save a neighbor's cattle. His soldiers came home with tales of his devotion to them, and of how he shared his rations and his blankets and bravely risked his life; of how he crept off into a swamp, at imminent peril, to rescue one of his men lost or mired there. The present Conwell was always Conwell; in fact, he may be traced through his ancestry, too, for in him are the sturdy virtues, the bravery, the grim determination, the practicality, of his father; and romanticism, that comes from his grandmother; and the dreamy qualities of his mother, who, practical and hardworking New England woman that she was, was at the same time influenced by an almost startling mysticism.
And Conwell himself is a dreamer: first of all he is a dreamer; it is the most important fact in regard to him! It is because he is a dreamer and visualizes his dreams that he can plan the great things that to other men would seem impossibilities; and then his intensely practical side his intense efficiency, his power, his skill, his patience, his fine earnestness, his mastery over others, develop his dreams into realities. He dreams dreams and sees visions--but his visions are never visionary and his dreams become facts.
The rocky hills which meant a dogged struggle
But John Brown did not long frighten him! For he was much at their house after that, and was so friendly with Russell and his brother that there was no chance for awe; and it gives a curious side- light on the character of the stern abolitionist that he actually, with infinite patience, taught the old horse of the Conwells to go home alone with the wagon after leaving the boys at school, a mile or more away, and at school-closing time to trot gently off for them without a driver when merely faced in that direction and told to go! Conwell remembers how John Brown, in training it, used patiently to walk beside the horse, and control its going and its turnings, until it was quite ready to go and turn entirely by itself.
The Conwell house was a station on the Underground Railway, and Russell Conwell remembers, when a lad, seeing the escaping slaves that his father had driven across country and temporarily hidden. ``Those were heroic days,'' he says, quietly. ``And once in a while my father let me go with him. They were wonderful night drives-- the cowering slaves, the darkness of the road, the caution and the silence and dread of it all.'' This underground route, he remembers, was from Philadelphia to New Haven, thence to Springfield, where Conwell's father would take his charge, and onward to Bellows Falls and Canada.
Conwell tells, too, of meeting Frederick Douglass, the colored orator, in that little cottage in the hills. `` `I never saw my father,' Douglass said one day--his father was a white man--`and I remember little of my mother except that once she tried to keep an overseer from whipping me, and the lash cut across her own face, and her blood fell over me.'
``When John Brown was captured,'' Conwell went on, ``my father tried to sell this place to get a little money to send to help his defense. But he couldn't sell it, and on the day of the execu- tion we knelt solemnly here, from eleven to twelve, just praying, praying in silence for the passing soul of John Brown. And as we prayed we knew that others were also praying, for a church-bell tolled during that entire hour, and its awesome boom went sadly sounding over these hills.''
Conwell believes that his real life dates from a happening of the time of the Civil War--a happening that still looms vivid and intense before him, and which undoubtedly did deepen and strengthen his strong and deep nature. Yet the real Conwell was always essentially the same. Neighborhood tradition still tells of his bravery as a boy and a youth, of his reckless coasting, his skill as a swimmer and his saving of lives, his strength and endurance, his plunging out into the darkness of a wild winter night to save a neighbor's cattle. His soldiers came home with tales of his devotion to them, and of how he shared his rations and his blankets and bravely risked his life; of how he crept off into a swamp, at imminent peril, to rescue one of his men lost or mired there. The present Conwell was always Conwell; in fact, he may be traced through his ancestry, too, for in him are the sturdy virtues, the bravery, the grim determination, the practicality, of his father; and romanticism, that comes from his grandmother; and the dreamy qualities of his mother, who, practical and hardworking New England woman that she was, was at the same time influenced by an almost startling mysticism.
And Conwell himself is a dreamer: first of all he is a dreamer; it is the most important fact in regard to him! It is because he is a dreamer and visualizes his dreams that he can plan the great things that to other men would seem impossibilities; and then his intensely practical side his intense efficiency, his power, his skill, his patience, his fine earnestness, his mastery over others, develop his dreams into realities. He dreams dreams and sees visions--but his visions are never visionary and his dreams become facts.
The rocky hills which meant a dogged struggle