Russell H. Conwell, Founder of the Institutional Church in America Part 5

He being an officer, they came back for his body, and found a living man instead of the dead. He was taken to the field hospital. One arm was broken in two places, his shoulder badly shattered, and because there was no hope of his living, they did not at once amputate his arm, which would have been done had he been less seriously injured.

Long days he lay in the hospital with life going out all about him, the moan of the suffering in his ears, thinking, thinking, of the mystery of life and death, as the shadows flitted and swayed through the dimly lighted wards at night, the suns.h.i.+ne poured down during the day. His love of humanity burned purer. His desire to help it grew stronger. Long were the talks he had with the chaplain, a Baptist preacher, and when he recovered and left the hospital, his mind was fully made up. Like his father, his actions never lagged behind his speech, and he made at once an open profession of the faith on which he now leaned with such happy confidence.

The fearless, unselfish love of humanity, the desire to help the oppressed that burned in the bosom of John Brown had sent the impetuous boy into the war.

The fearless, unselfish act of John Ring sent Colonel Conwell out of the war a G.o.d-fearing man, determined to spend his life for the good of humanity.

Providence uses strange instruments. Thousands in this country to-day have been inspired, helped, made different men and women through knowing Russell Conwell. What may not some of them do to benefit their country and their generation! Yet back of him stand this old gray-haired man and a young, fearless boy, whose influence turned the current of his life to brighten and bless countless thousands.

CHAPTER XII.

WESTWARD

Resignation from Army. Admission to Bar. Marriage. Removal to Minnesota. Founding of Minneapolis Y.M.C.A. and of the Present "Minneapolis Tribune." Burning of Home. Breaking Out of Wound.

Appointed Emigration Agent to Germany by Governor of Minnesota. Joins Surveying Party to Palestine. Near to Death in Paris Hospital. Journey to New York for Operation in Bellevue Hospital. Return to Boston.

When Colonel Conwell was able to leave the hospital, he was still unable to a.s.sume active duty in the field, and he was sent to Nashville for further rest and treatment. Here he reported to General Thomas and was instructed to proceed to Was.h.i.+ngton with a despatch for General Logan. Colonel Conwell started, but the rough traveling of those days opened his wounds afresh and he completely broke down at Harper's Ferry. Too weak longer to resist, he yielded to the entreaties of his friends, sent in his resignation and returned home for rest and nursing. Before he fully recovered, peace was declared.

Free to resume his studies, he entered the law office of Judge W.S.

Shurtleff, of Springfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, his former Colonel, read law there for a short time, then entered the Albany University, where he graduated.

Shortly after pa.s.sing his examination at the bar and receiving his degree, he was married at Chicopee Falls, March 8, 1865, to Miss Jennie P. Hayden, one of his pupils in the district school at West Granville, Ma.s.sachusetts, and later one of his most proficient music scholars. Her brothers were in his company, and when Company F was in camp at Springfield after the first enlistment, she was studying at Wilbraham and there often saw her soldier lover. Anxious days and years they were for her that followed, as they were for every other woman with father, husband, brother or sweetheart in the terrible conflict that raged so long. But she endured them with that silent bravery that is ever the woman's part, that strong, steady courage that can sit at home pa.s.sive, patient, never knowing but that life-long sorrow and heartache are already at the threshold.

Immediately after their marriage, they went West and finally settled in Minneapolis. Colonel Conwell opened a law office, and while waiting for clients acted as agent for a real estate firm in the sale of land warrants. He also began to negotiate for the sale of town lots. This not being enough for a man who utilized every minute, he became local correspondent for the "St. Paul Press." Nor did he stop here, though most men would have thought their hands by this time about full. He took an active part in local politics and canva.s.sed the settlement and towns for the Republican and temperance tickets. He also was actively interested in the schools, and not only advocated public schools and plenty of them, but was a frequent visitor to the city and district schools, talking to the children in that interesting, entertaining way that always clothes some helpful lesson in a form long to be remembered.

True to the faith he had found in the little Southern hospital, he joined the First Baptist Church of Saint Paul. But mere joining was not sufficient. He must work for the cause, and he opened a business men's noon prayer-meeting in his law office at Minneapolis, rather a novel undertaking in those days and in the then far West. For three months, only three men attended. But nothing daunted, he persevered.

That trait in his character always shone out the more brightly, the darker the outlook. Those three men were helped, and that was sufficient reason that the prayer-meeting be continued. Eventually it prospered and resulted finally in a permanent organization from which grew the Minneapolis Y.M.C.A.

Poor though he was, and he started in the West with nothing, he made friends everywhere. His speeches soon made him widely known. His sincerity, his unselfish desire to help others, his earnestness to aid in all good works brought him, as always, a host of loyal, devoted followers. A skating club of some hundred members made him their President, and his first law case in the West came to him through this position.

A skating carnival was to be given, and the club had engaged an Irishman to clear a certain part of the frozen Mississippi of snow for the skating. This he failed to do at the time specified and the club had it cleaned by some one else. Claiming that he would have done it, had they waited, the Irishman sued the club. Colonel Conwell, of course, appeared for the defense. The whole hundred members marched to the court house, the scene being town talk for some days. Needless to say he won his suit.

His love for newspaper work led him to start the "Minneapolis Chronicle" and the "Star of the North," which were afterward merged into "The Minneapolis Tribune," for which his clever young wife conducted a woman's column, in a decidedly brilliant, original manner.

Mrs. Conwell wrote from her heart as one woman to other women, and her articles soon attracted notice and comment for their entertaining style and their inspiring, helpful ideas.

At this time they were living in two rooms back of his office, for they were making financial headway as yet but slowly. But times brightened and Colonel Conwell was soon able to purchase a handsome home and furnish it comfortably, taking particular pride in the gathering of a large law library.

It seemed now as if life were to move forward prosperously. But greater work was needed from Russell Conwell than the comfortable practice of law. One evening while the family were from home, fire broke out and the house and all they owned was destroyed. Running to the fire from a G.A.R. meeting, a mile and a half away, Colonel Conwell was attacked with a hemorrhage of the lungs. It came from his old army wounds and the doctor ordered him immediately from that climate, and told him he must take a complete rest. Here was disaster indeed. Every cent they had saved was gone. And with it the strength to begin again the battle for a living. It was a hard, bitter blow for a young, ambitious man, right at the start of his career; a stroke of fate to make any man bitter and cynical. But his was not a nature to permit misfortune to narrow him or make him repine. He rose above it.

It did not lesson his ambitions. It broadened, humanized them. It made him enter with still truer sympathy into other people's misfortune.

And his trust in G.o.d was so strong, his faith so unshaken, he knew that in all these bitter experiences of life's school was a lesson. He learned it and used it to get a broader outlook.

His friends rallied to his aid. Prominent as an editor, lawyer, leader of the Y.M.C.A., it was not difficult to get him an appointment from the Governor, already a warm friend. He secured the position of emigration agent to Europe, and he turned his face Eastward. Mrs.

Conwell was left in Minneapolis, and he sailed abroad in the hope that the sea trip and change of climate would heal the weakened tissue of his lung and fully restore him to health. But it was a vain hope. His strength would not permit him to fulfill the duty expected of him as emigration agent and he was compelled to resign. For several months he wandered about Europe trying one place, then another in the vain search for health. He joined a surveying party and went to Palestine, for even in those days that inner voice could not he altogether stilled that was calling him to follow in the footsteps of the Savior and preach and teach and heal the sick. The land where the Savior ministered had a strong fascination for him, and he gladly seized the opportunity to become a member of this surveying party and walk over the ground where the Savior had gone up and down doing good.

But the trip was of no benefit to his health. Instead of gaining he failed. He grew weaker and weaker. The hemorrhages became more and more frequent. Finally he came to Paris and lying, a stranger and poor, in Necker Hospital was told he could live but a few days. Face to face again with that grim, bitter enemy of the battlefield, what thoughts came crowding thick and fast--thoughts of his young wife in far-away America, of father and mother, memories of the beautiful woods, the singing streams of the mountain home, as the noise and clamor of Paris streets drifted into the long hospital ward.

Then came a famous Berlin doctor to the dying American. He studied the case attentively, for it was strange enough to arouse and enlist all a doctor's keen scientific interest. When a.n.a.lyzed, copper had been found in the hemorrhage, with no apparent reason for it, and the Paris doctors were puzzling over the cause. "Were you in the war?" asked the great man. "Were you shot?"

"Yes."

"Shot in the shoulder?"

Then came back to Colonel Conwell, the recollection of the duel with the Confederate around a tree in the North Carolina woods and the shot that had lodged in his shoulder near his neck and was never removed.

"That is the trouble," said the physician. "The bullet has worked down into the lung and only the most skillful operation can save you, and only one man can do it"--and that man was a surgeon in Bellevue Hospital, New York.

Carefully was the sinking man taken on board a steamer. Only the most rugged const.i.tution could have stood that trip in the already weakened condition of his system. But those early childhood days in the Berks.h.i.+re Hills had put iron into his blood, the tonic of suns.h.i.+ne and fresh air into his very bone and muscle. Safely he made the journey, though no one knew all he suffered in those terrible days of weakness and pain on the lone, friendless trip across the Atlantic. Safely he went through the operation. The bullet was removed, and with health mending, he made his way to Boston where his loving young wife awaited him.

But out of these experiences, suffering, alone, friendless, poor, in a strange city, grew after all the Samaritan Hospital of Philadelphia that opens wide its doors, first and always, to the suffering sick poor.

CHAPTER XIII

WRITING HIS WAY AROUND THE WORLD

Days of Poverty in Boston. Sent to Southern Battlefields. Around the World for New York and Boston Papers. In a Gambling Den In Hong Kong, China. Cholera and s.h.i.+pwreck.

Abject poverty awaited him on his return to Boston. The fire in St.

Paul had left them but little property, while their enforced hurried departure compelled that little to be sold at a loss. This money was now entirely gone, and once more he faced the world in absolute poverty. He rented a single room in the East district of Boston and furnished it with the barest necessities. Colonel Conwell secured a position on "The Evening Traveller" at five dollars a week, and Mrs.

Conwell cheerily took in sewing. Thus they made their first brave stand against the gaunt wolf at the door. Here their first child was born, a daughter, Nima, now Mrs. E.G. Tuttle, of Philadelphia. These were dark days for the little household. Night after night the father came home to see the one he loved best in all the world, suffering for the barest necessities of life, yet cheerful, buoyant, never complaining. So sensitive to the sufferings of others that he must do all in his power to relieve even his comrades in the war when, injured or ill, what mental anguish must he have endured when his dearly loved wife was in want and he so powerless to relieve it. She read his heart with the sure sympathy of love, knew his bitter anguish of spirit, and suffered the more because he suffered. But bravely she cheered him, encouraged him, and spent all her own spare minutes doing what she could to add to the family income.

Thus they pluckily-worked, never repining nor complaining at fate, though knowing in its bitterest sense what it is to be desperately poor, to suffer for adequate food and clothing. Colonel Conwell learned in that hard experience what it is to want for a crust of bread. No man can come to Dr. Conwell to this day with a tale of poverty, suffering, sickness, but what the minister's eyes turn backward to that one little room with its pitiful makes.h.i.+fts of furniture, its brave, pale wife, the wee girl baby; and his hand goes out to help with an earnest and heartfelt sympathy surprising to the recipient.

But the tide turned ere long. Colonel Conwell's work on the paper soon began to tell. His salary was raised and raised, until comfort once more with smiling face took up her abode with them. They moved into a pretty home in Somerville. Colonel Conwell resumed his law practice and began, as in the West, to deal in real estate. He also continued his lecturing.

Busy days these were, but his life had already taught him much of the art of filling each minute to an exact nicety in order to get the most out of it. His paper sent him as a special correspondent to write up the battlefields of the South, and his letters were so graphic and entertaining as to become a widely known and much discussed feature of the paper. Soldiers everywhere read them with eager delight and through them revisited the scenes of the terrible conflict in which each had played some part. While on this a.s.signment, he invaded a gambling den in New Orleans, and interfering to save a colored man from the drunken frenzy of a bully, came near being killed himself.

Coming to the aid of a porter on a Mississippi steamboat, he again narrowly escaped being shot, striking a revolver from the hand of a ruffian just as his finger dropped on the trigger. He mixed with all cla.s.ses and conditions of men and saw life in its roughest, most primal aspect But all these experiences helped him to that appreciation of human nature that has been of such, value and help to him since.

These letters aroused such widespread and favorable comment that the "New York Tribune" and "Boston Traveller" arranged to send him on a tour of the world. When the offer came to him, his mind leaped the years to that poorly furnished room in the little farmhouse, where he had leaned on his mother's knee and listened with rapt attention while she read him the letters of foreign correspondents in that very "New York Tribune." The letter he wrote his mother telling her of the appointment was full of loving grat.i.tude for the careful way she had trained his tastes in those days when he was too young and inexperienced to choose for himself.

It was a wrench for the young wife to let him go so far away, but she bravely, cheerfully made the sacrifice. She was proud of his work and his ability, and she loved him too truly to stand in the way of his progress.

This journey took him to Scotland, England, Sweden, Denmark, France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Palestine, Arabia, Egypt and Northern Africa.

He interviewed Emperor William I, Bismarck, Victor Emanuel, the then Prince of Wales, now Edward VII of England. He frequently met Henry M. Stanley, then correspondent for the London papers, who wrote from Paris of Colonel Conwell, "Send that double-sighted Yankee and he will see at a glance all there is and all there ever was."

He also made the acquaintance of Garibaldi, whom he visited in his island home and with whom he kept up a correspondence after he returned. Garibaldi it was who called Colonel Conwell's attention to the heroic deeds of that admirer of America, the great and patriotic Venetian, Daniel Manin. In the busy years that followed on this trip Colonel Conwell spent a long time gathering materials for a biography of Daniel Manin, and just before it was ready for the press the ma.n.u.script was destroyed by fire in the destruction of his home at Newton Centre, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1880. One of his most popular lectures, "The Heroism of a Private Life," took its inception from the life of this Venetian statesman.

He also gave a series of lectures at Cambridge, England, on Italian history that attracted much favorable comment.

Mr. Samuel T. Harris, of New York, correspondent of the "New York Times" in 1870, in a private letter, says, "Conwell is the funniest chap I ever fell in with. He sees a thousand things I never thought of looking after. When his letters come back in print I find lots in them that seems new to me, although I saw it all at the time. But you don't see the fun in his letters to the papers. The way he adapts himself to all circ.u.mstances comes from long travel; but it is droll. He makes a salaam to the defunct kings, a neat bow to the Sudras, and a friendly wink at the Howadji, in a way that puts him cheek-by-jowl with them in a jiffy. He beats me all out in his positive sympathy with these miserable heathen. He has read so much that he knows about everything.

The way the officials, English, too, treat him would make you think he was the son of a lord. He has a dignified condescension in his manner that I can't imitate."