 11. His splendid efficiency. Conwell has a few strong and efficient executive helpers who have long been associated with him, men and women who know his ideas and ideals who were devoted to him and who do their utmost to relieve him. And, of course, there is very much that thus is done for him. But even as it is, he is so overshadowing a man, there is really no other word, that all work with him, look to him for advice and guidance. The professors and the students, the doctors and the nurses, the church officers, the Sunday school teachers, the members of his congregation, and he has never been too busy to see anyone who really wishes to see him. He can attend to a vast intricacy of detail and answer myriad personal questions and doubts, and keep the great institutions splendidly going by thorough systemization of time and by watching every minute. He has several secretaries for special work besides his private secretary. His correspondence is very great. Often he dictates to his secretary as he travels on the train. Even in the few days, for which he can run back to the Berkshires, work is awaiting for him. Work follows him, and after knowing of this, one is positively amazed that he is able to give to his countrywide lectures the time and traveling that they inexorably demand. Only a man of immense strength, of the greatest stamina, a veritable superman, could possibly do it. And at time one quite forgets, noticing the multiplicity of his occupations, and that he prepares two sermons and two talks on Sunday. Here is his usual Sunday schedule, when at home he rises at seven and studies until breakfast, which at eight thirty. Then he studies until nine forty-five, when he leads a men's meeting, at which he is likely also to play the organ and lead the singing. At ten thirty is the principal's church service, at which he preaches, and at the close of which he shakes hands with hundreds. He dines at one, after which he takes fifteen minutes rest and then reads, and at three o'clock he addresses in a talk that is like another sermon, a large class of men, not the same men as the morning. He is also sure to look in the regular session of the Sunday school, home again where he studies and reads until supper time. At seven thirty is the evening service, at which he again preaches, and after which he shakes hands with several hundred more, and talks personally. In his study, with any who are in need to talk with him, he is usually home by ten thirty. I spoke of it one evening, of having been a strenuous day, and he responded, with a cheerfully whimsical smile, three sermons and shook hands with nine hundred. That evening, as the service close, he had said to the congregation, I shall be here for an hour. We always have a pleasant time together after service. If you are acquainted with me, come up and shake hands, if you are strangers. Just the slight of a pauses. Come up and let us make an acquaintance that will last for eternity. I remember how simply and easily this was said, in his clear deep voice, and how impressive and important it seemed, and with what unexpectedness it came. Come and make an acquaintance that will last for eternity. And there was a serenity about his way of saying this, which would make strangers think, just as he meant them to think. He had nothing whatever to do but to talk with them. Even his own congregation have most of them little conception of how busy a man he is and how precious is his time. One evening last June, to take an evening of which I happened to know, he got home from a journey of two hundred miles at six o'clock, and after dinner and a slight rest went to at the church prayer meeting, which he led in his usual vigorous way at such meetings, playing the organ and leading the singing, as well as praying and talking. And after the prayer meeting he went to two dinners in succession, both of them important dinners in connection with the clothes of the university year. And at both dinners he spoke at the second dinner he was notified of the sudden illness of a member of his congregation and instantly hurried to the man's home and thence to the hospital to which he had been removed. And there he remained at the man's bedside and in consultation with the positions until one in the morning. Next morning he was up at seven and again at work. This one thing I do is his private maxim of efficiency, and a literalist might point out that he does not one thing only, but a thousand things. Not getting Conwell's meaning, which is whatever the thing may be which he is doing, he lets himself think of nothing else until it is done. Dr. Conwell has a profound love for the country and particularly the country of his own youth. He loves the wind that comes sweeping over the hills. He loves the wide-stretching views from the heights and the forest intimacies of the nestled nooks. He loves the rippling streams. He loves the wildflowers that nestle in seclusion and unexpectedly paint some mountain meadow with the light. He loves the very touch of the earth. He loves the great bare rocks. He writes verses at times. At least he has written lines for a few old tunes, and it is interested me greatly to chance upon some lines of that picture heaven in terms of the Berkshires, the wide-stretching valleys in colors so fadeless, where trees are all deathless and flowers are bloom. That is heaven in the eyes of the New England Hillman, not golden pavement and ivory palaces, but valleys and trees and flowers and a wide sweep of the open. Few things please him more than to go, for example, black-bearing, and he has a knack of never scratching his face or fingers when doing so, and he finds black-bearing wherever he goes, whether he goes alone or with friends an extraordinary good time for planning something he wishes to do or working out the thought of a sermon, and fishing is even better, for in fishing he finds immense recreation and restfulness, and at the time a further opportunity to think and plan. As a small boy, he wished that he could throw a dam across the trout-brook that runs near the little Conwell home, and as he never gives up he finally realized that ambition, although it was after half a century, and now he has a big pond three-quarters of a mile long by half a mile wide, lying in front of the house, down a slope from it. A pond stocked with splendid pickerel he likes to float about restfully on this pond, thinking or fishing or both, and on that pond he showed me how to catch pickerel, even under the blaze of sunlight. He is a trout-fisher also, for it is a trout stream that feeds this pond, and goes dashing away from it through the wilderness, and for miles adjoining his place a fishing-club of wealthy men bought up the rights to this trout stream, and they approached him with a liberal offer, but he declined it. I remembered what good times I had when I was a boy fishing up and down the stream, and I couldn't think of keeping my boys of the pleasant day from such a pleasure, so they may still come down and fish for trout here. As he walked one day besides the brook he suddenly said, Did you ever notice that every brook has its own song? I should know the song of this brook anywhere. It would seem as if he loved his rugged native country, because it is rugged even more than because it is native. Himself so rugged, so hearty, so endearing, the strength of the hills is his also. Always in his very appearance you see something of the ruggedness of hills. A ruggedness, a sincerity, a plainness, that mark alike his character and his books. And always one realizes the strength of the man, even when his voice, as it usually is, is low, and one increasingly realizes the strength when on the lecture platform or in the pulpit or in conversation he flashes vividly into fire. A big- boned man he is, a sturdy-framed tall man with broad shoulders and strong hands. His hair is a deep chestnut brown, that at first seems black. In his early manhood he was superb in looks, as his pictures show. But anxiety and the work and the constant flight of years with physical pain have settled into his face into lines of sadness and almost of severity, which instantly vanishes when he speaks. His face is illuminated by marvelous eyes. He is a lonely man. The wife of his early years died long, long ago, before success had come, and she was deeply mourned, for she had loyally helped him through a time which held much struggle and hardship. He married again, but this wife was his loyal helpmate for many years in a time of special stress, when a defalsification of sixty-five thousand dollars threatened to crush Temple College. Just when it was getting on his feet for both Temple Church and Temple College, had in those early days buoyantly assumed heavy indebtedness, he raised every dollar he could by selling or mortgaging his own possessions. And in this his wife, as he lovingly remembers, most cordially stood behind him, although she knew that if anything should happen to him the financial sacrifice would leave her penniless. She died after years of companionship. His children married and made homes of their own. He is a lonely man, yet he is not unhappy. For the tremendous demands of his tremendous work leave him little time for sadness or retrospect. At times the realization comes that he is getting old, that friends and comrades have been passing away, leaving him an old man with younger friends and helpers. But such realization only makes him work with an earnestness still more intense, knowing that the night cometh when no man shall work. Deeply religious though he is, he does not force religion into conversation on ordinary subjects, or upon people who may not be interested in it. With him it is action and good works. With faith and belief that count except when talk is the natural of the fitting the necessary thing. When addressing either one individual or thousands he speaks with superb effectiveness. His sermons are, it may almost literally be said, parable after parable. Although he himself would be the last man to say this, for it would sound as if he claimed to model after the greatest of all examples. His own way of putting it, and he uses stories frequently because people are more impressed by illustrations than by argument. Another where, whether in the pulpit or out of it, is as simple and home-like, human and unaffected. If he happens to see someone in the congregation to which he speaks, he may just leave the pulpit and walk down the aisle while the choir is singing and quietly say a few words and return. In the early days of his ministry, if he heard of a poor family in immediate need of food, he would be quite likely to gather a basket of provisions and go personally and offer this assistance, and such other as he might find necessary when he reached the place. As he became known he ceased from this direct and open method of charity, for he knew that impulsiveness would be taken for intentional display. But he has never ceased to be ready to help on the instant that he knows help is needed. Delay and lengthy investigation are avoided by him. When he can be certain that something immediate is required, and the extent of his quiet charity is amazing, with no family for which to save money and no care to put away money for himself, he thinks only of money as an instrument for helpfulness. I never heard a friend criticize him except for too great open-handedness. I was strongly impressed after coming to know him, that he possessed many of the qualities that made for the success of the old-time district leaders of New York City. And I mentioned this to him, and at once he responded that he had himself met Big Tim, the long-time leader of the Sulevans, and had told him, at his house, Big Tim, having gone to Philadelphia to aid some henchmen in trouble, and having promptly sought the aid of Dr. Conwell. And it was characteristic of Conwell that he saw, with so many never saw, the most striking characteristic for that timony leader. For Big Tim's Sullivan was so kind-hearted. Conwell appreciated the man's political unscrupulousness, as well as he did his enemies. But he saw also what made this underlying power his kind-heartedness, except that Sullivan could be supremely unscrupulous, and that Conwell supremely scrupulous. There were marked similarities in these masters over men. And Conwell possesses, as Sullivan possessed, a wonderful memory for faces and names. Naturally Russell Conwell stands steadily and strongly for good citizenship. But he never talks boastful Americanism. He seldomly speaks in so many words of either Americanism or good citizenship. But he consistently and silently keeps the American flag as the symbol of good citizenship before his people. An American flag is prominent in his church, an American flag is seen in his home, a beautiful American flag is up in his Berkshire Place, and surmounts a lofty tower, where when he is a boy, there stood a mighty tree at the top, of which was an eagle's nest, which was given the name for the home, for he terms it the eagle's nest. Remembering a long story that I had read of his climbing to the top of that tree, I thought that it was well nigh an impossible feat, and securing the nest by great perseverance and daring. I ask him if the story were a true one. Oh, I've heard something about it. Somebody said something watched me or something of the kind, but I don't remember anything about it myself. Any friend of his was sure to say something after a while about his determination and insistence on going ahead with anything on which he has really set his heart. One of the very important things on which he insisted, in spite of very great opposition and especially in opposition from the other church of his denominations, for this was a many years ago, when there was much more narrowness in church and sex than there is at present, was the regard to doing away with close communion. He determined on an open communion, and his way of putting it once decided upon was, my friends, it is not for me to invite you to the table of the Lord. The table of the Lord is open. If you feel that you could come to the table, it is open to you. And this is the form which he still uses. For he not only never gives up, but so his friends say he never forgets a thing upon which he has once decided. And at times long after, they suppose the matter has been entirely forgotten. They suddenly find Dr. Conwell bringing his original purpose to pass. When I was told of this, I remembered the Pickerel Pond in the Berkshires. If he really is set upon doing anything little or big, adverse criticism does not disturb his serenity. Some years ago he began wearing a large diamond whose sides attracted much criticism and cost a comment. He never said a word in defense. He just kept wearing the diamond. One day, however, after some years he took it off. And people said he has listened to the criticism at last. He smiled reminiscently. As he told me about this and said, A dear old deacon of my congregation gave me that diamond. And I did not have the heart to hurt his feelings by refusing it. It really bothered me to wear such a glaring big thing. But because I did not want to hurt the old deacon's feelings, I kept wearing it until he was dead. Then I stopped wearing it. The ambition of Dr. Conwell is to continue working and working until the very last moment of his life. In work he forgets the sadness, his loneliness, his age. And he is said to me, One day I will die in harness. End of Part 11. Part 12 of Acres of Diamonds This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Acres of Diamonds by Russell H. Conwell, Part 12. 9. The Story of Acres of Diamonds Considering everything, the most remarkable thing in Russell Conwell's remarkable life is his lecture, Acres of Diamonds. That is, the lecture itself, the number of times he has delivered it. What a source of inspiration. It has been to the myriads, the money that has been made, and is making, and still more, the purpose for which he directs the money. In the circumstances surrounding Acres of Diamonds in its tremendous success, in the attitude of mind revealed by the lecture itself, and by what Dr. Conwell does with it, it is illuminative of his character, his aims, his ability. The lecture is vibrant with his energy, it flashes with his hopefulness. It is his enthusiasm. It is packed full of his intensity. It stands for the possibilities of success in everyone. He has delivered it over five thousand times. The demand for it never diminishes. The success grows, nevertheless. There is a time in Russell Conwell's youth of which it was a pain for him to think. He told me of it one evening, and his voice sank lower and lower as he went far back into the past. It was of his days at Yale that he spoke, for they were days of suffering, for he had not money for Yale, and in working for more he endeared bitter humiliation. It was not that the work was hard, for Russell Conwell has always been ready for hard work. It was not that there were privations and difficulties, for he has always found difficulties, only things to overcome, and endeared privations with cheerful fortitude. But it was the humiliations that he met, the personal humiliations that after more than half a century make him suffer in remembering them. Yet one of those humiliations came a marvellous result. I determined, he says, that whatever I could do to make the way easier at college for other young men working their way I would do. And so many years ago he began to devote every dollar he made from acres of diamonds to this definite purpose. He has what may be termed a waiting list. On that list are very few cases he has looked into personally. Infinite busy man that he is. He cannot do extensive personal investigation. A large proportion of his names come to him from college presidents who know of students in their own college in need of such a helping hand. Every night he said, when I ask him to tell me about it, when my lecture is over and the check is in my hand I sit down in my room in the hotel. What a lonely picture, too. I sit down in my room in the hotel and subtract from the total sum received my actual expenses for that place, and make out a check for the difference, and send it to some young man on my list. And I always send with the check a letter of advice and helpfulness, expressing my hope that it will come to be of some service to him, and telling him that he is to feel under no obligation except to his Lord. I feel strongly. And I try to make every young man feel that there must be no sense of obligation to me personally. And I tell them that I am hoping to leave behind me, men who will do more work than I have done. Don't think that I put in too much advice, he added, with a smile. For I only try to let them know that a friend is trying to help them. His face lighted as he spoke. There is such a fascination in it, he exclaimed. It's just like a gamble, and as soon as I have sent the letter and crossed a name off my list I am aiming for the next one. And after a pause, he added, I do not attempt to send any young man enough for all of his expenses. But I want to save them from bitterness, and each check will help, and too. He ex-concluded naively in the vernacular. I don't want them to lie down on me. He told me that he made it clear that he did not wish to get returns or reports from this branch of his life work. For it would take a great deal of time in watching and thinking and in reading and writing of letters. But it is mainly, he went on, that I do not wish to hold over their heads a sense of obligation. When I suggested that this was surely an example of bread cast upon the waters that could not return, he was silent for a little and then said thoughtfully, as one gets on in years there is satisfaction in doing a thing for the sake of doing it. The bread returns in the sense of effort made. On a recent trip through Minnesota he was positively upset, so his secretary told me, though being recognized on a train by a young man who he had helped through acres of diamonds, and who finding that this was really Dr. Conwell eagerly brought his wife to join him in the most fervent thanks for his assistance. Both the husband and wife were so emotionally overcome that it quite overcame Dr. Conwell himself. The lecture to quote the noble words of Dr. Conwell himself is designed to help every person of either sex, who cherishes the high resolve of sustaining a career of usefulness and honor. It is the lecture of helpfulness, and it is a lecture when given with Conwell's voice and face and manner that is full of fascination, and yet it is so simple. It is packed full of inspiration of suggestion of aid. He alters it to meet the local circumstances of the thousands of different places in which he delivers it. But the base remains the same, and even those to whom it is an old story will go and hear it time after time. It amuses him to say that he knows individuals who have listened to it twenty times. He begins with a story told to Conwell by an old Arab as the two journeyed toward Nineveha, and as to listen you hear the actual voices and you see the sands of the deserts and the waving palms. The lecturer's voice is so easy, so effortless, it seems so ordinary in matter of fact. Yet the entire scene is instantly vital and alive, instantly the man in his audience under a sort of spell, eager to listen, ready to be merry or grave. He has the faculty of control, the vital quality that makes him the orator. The same people who will go and hear this lecture over and over, and that is the kind of tribute that Conwell likes. I recently heard him deliver it in his own church, where it would naturally be thought to be an old story, and where presumably only a few of the faithful would go. But it was quite clear that all of his church are the faithful, for it was a large audience that came to listen to him. Hardly a seat in the great auditorium was vacant, and it should be added that although it was in his own church it was not a free lecture, where a thorn might be expected. But each one paid a liberal sum for a seat, and having paid of admission is always a practical test of the sincerity of desire to hear, and the people were swept along by the current as if the lecturer and lecture were of novel interest. The lecture itself is good to read, but it is only when it is illuminated by Conwell's vivid personality that one understands how it influences in the actual delivery. On that particular evening he decided to give the lecture in the same form as when it was first delivered many years ago, without any of the alterations that have come with time and changing localities. And as he went on with the audience rippling and bubbling with laughter, as usual, he never doubted that he was giving it as he had given it in the years before, and yet, so up to date and alive, must be necessarily be in spite of the definite effort to set himself back. Every once in a while he was coming out with illustrations, from such distinctively recent things as the automobile. The last time I heard him was the 5124th time for the lecture. Doesn't it seem incredible? 5124 times. I noticed that he was to deliver it in a little out-of-the-way place. Difficult for any considerable number to get to, and I wondered just how much of an audience would gather and how they would be impressed. I went over from there I was a few miles away. The road was dark and I pictured a small audience, but when I got there I found the church building in which he was to deliver the lecture, had a seating capacity of 830, and that precisely 830 were already seated there, and that there was a fringe of others standing behind. Many had come from miles away, yet the lecture had scarcely, if at all, been advertised. And people said to one another, aren't you going to hear, Dr. Conwell? And the word had thus been passed along. I remember how fascinating it was to watch that audience, for they responded so keenly and with such heartfelt pleasure throughout the entire lecture. And not only were they immensely pleased and amused and interested, and to achieve that as at a crossroads church was in itself a triumph to be proud of, but they knew that every listener was given an impulse toward doing something for himself and for others, and that at least some of them, the impulse, would materialize into acts. Over and over one realized what a power such a man wields. And what an unselfishness! For far on as years as he is, and suffering pain he does not chop down his lecture to a definite length. He does not to have for just an hour or go on grudgingly for an hour and a half. He sees that the people are fascinated and inspired, and he forgets pain, ignores time, forgets that the night is late, and that he has a long journey to go to get home. He keeps on generously for two hours, and everyone there wishes it were for. Always he talks with ease and sympathy. There are generally composure, humor, simple and homely jests, yet never does the audience forget that he is every moment in tremendous earnest. They bubble with responsive laughter or a silent, enriveted attention. A stir can be seen to sweep over the audience of earnestness or surprise or amusement or resolve. When he is grave and sober or fervid, the people feel that he is himself a fervently earnest man, and when he is telling something humorous, there is, on his part, an almost repressed chuckle, a genial appreciation of the fun of it, and not in the least as if he were laughing at his own humor, but as if he and his hearers were laughing together at something which they were all humorously cognizant. Married successes in life have come through the direct inspiration of this single lecture, for one hears of so many of the there must be vastly more that are never told. A few of the most recent were told to me by Dr. Conwell himself, one being of a farmer's boy, who walked along a great distance to hear him. On the way home, so the boy now, a man has written him, he thought over and over of what he could do to advance himself. And before he reached home, he learned that a teacher was wanted in a certain country school. He knew that he did not know enough to teach, but was sure he could learn, so he bravely asked for the place. And something in his earnestness made him win a temporary appointment. Thereupon he worked and studied so hard and so devoutly, while he daily taught that within a few months he was regularly employed there. And now says Conwell abruptly, with his characteristic skimming over the intermediate details between the important beginning of a thing and the satisfactory end, and now that young man is one of our college presidents. And very recently a lady came to Dr. Conwell, the wife of an exceptionally prominent man, who was earning a large salary, and she told him that her husband was so unselfishly generous with money, that they often were almost in straits. And she said that they had bought a little farm on a country place paying only a few hundred dollars for it, and that she said to herself, laughingly, after hearing the lectures, there are no acres of diamonds in this place. But she went on to tell him that he had found a spring of exceptionally fine water there, although in buying they had scarcely known of the spring at all. And she had been so inspired by Conwell that she had the water analyzed and finding that it was remarkably pure had began to have it bottled and sold under a trade name, a special spring water. She is making money, and she also sells pure ice from the pool, cut in wintertime, all because of acres of diamonds. Several million dollars in all have been received by Bressel Conwell as his proceeds from this single lecture. Such a fact is almost staggering, and it is more staggering to realize what good is done in the world by this man, who does not earn for himself, but uses the money in immediate helpfulness. And one can neither think nor write with moderation when it is further realized that far more good than can be done directly with money he does by uplifting and inspiring with his lecture. Because his heart is with the weary and the heavy laden, always he stands for self-bidderment. Last year, 1914, he and his work were given unique recognition, for it was known by his friends that this particular lecture was approaching its five-thousandth delivery, and they planned a celebration of such an event in the history of the most popular lecture in the world. Dr. Conwell agreed to deliver it in the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, and the building was packed and the street outside were thawed. The proceeds from all sources for that five-thousand lecture were over nine-thousand dollars. The hold which Conwell has gained on the affections and respect of his home city was seen not only in the thousands who strove to hear him, but in the prominent men who served on the local committee in charge of the celebration. There was a national committee, too, and a nationwide love that he has won. The nationwide appreciation of what he has done and is still doing was shown by the fact that among the names of the notables on this committee were those of nine governors of states. The governor of Pennsylvania was himself present to do Russell Conwell honor, and he gave him a key emblematic of the freedom of the state. The freedom of the state, yes, this man, well over seventy has won it. The freedom of the state, the freedom of the nation, for this man of helpfulness, this marvelous exponent of the gospel of success, has worked marvelfully for the freedom, the betterment, the liberation, the advancement of the individual. END OF PART XII PART XIII OF ACARS OF DIMONS This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Acars of diamonds by Russell H. Conwell, Part XIII Fifty years on the lecture platform by Russell H. Conwell. An autobiography, what an absurd request. If all of the conditions were favorable, the story of my public life could not be made interesting. It does not seem possible that any will care to read so plain and uneventful a tale. I see nothing in it for boasting, nor much that could be helpful. Even I never saved a scrap of paper intentionally, concerning my work to which I could refer. Not a book, not a sermon, not a lecture, not a newspaper notice or account, not a magazine article, not one of the kind biographies written from time to time by noble friends have I ever kept as a souvenir. Although some of them may be in my library. I have ever felt that the writers concerning my life were too generous and that my own work was too hastily done. Hence I have nothing upon which to base an autobiographical account except the recollections of which come to an overburdened mind. My general view of half a century on the lecture platforms brings me to this precious and beautiful memories, and fills my soul with devout gratitude for the blessings and kindness which have been given to me so far, beyond my desserts. So much more success has come to my hands than I ever expected, so much more of good I have found than even youths while the streams included. So much more effective have I been at my weakest endeavors than I ever planned or hoped, that a biography written truthfully would be mostly an account of what men and women have done for me. I have lived to see accomplished far more than my highest ambition included. I have seen the enterprises I have undertaken rush by me, pushed on by a thousand strong hands until they have left me so far behind them. The realities are like dreams to me, blessings on the loving hearts and noble minds, who have been so willing to sacrifice for others good, and to think only of what they could do and never of what they should get. Many of them have ascended into the shining Lord, and here I am, in my age, gazing up alone, only waiting till the shadows are a little longer grown. Fifty years I was a young man, not yet of age, when I delivered my first platform lecture. The Civil War of 1861-65 drew on with all its passions, patriotisms, horrors, and fears, and I was studying law at La Yale University. I had from childhood felt that I was called to the ministry. The earliest event of memory is the prayer of my father at family prayers in the little old cottage in the Hampshire Highlands of the Berkshire Hills, calling on God with a sobbing voice to lead me into some special service for the Saviour. It filled me with awe, dread, and fear, and I recoiled from the thought until I determined to fight against it with all my power. So I sought for other professions, and for decent excuses, for being anything but a preacher. Yet while I was nervous and timid before the class in declination, and dreaded to face any of the audience, I felt in my soul a strange impulsion toward public speaking, for which years made me miserable. The war and the public meetings for recruiting soldiers furnished me an outlet for my suppressed sense of duty. And my first lecture was on the lessons of history, as applied to the campaigns against the Confederacy. That matchless temperance orator and loving friend John B. Go introduced me to the little audience in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1862. What a foolish little schoolboy speech it must have been. But Mr. Go's kind words of praise, the bouquets and the applause made me feel that somehow the weight of public oratory would not be so hard as I had feared. From that time I acted on Mr. Go's advice and sought practice by accepting almost every invitation I received to speak on any kind of subject. There were many sad failures and tears, but it was a restful compromise with my conscience concerning the ministry. And it pleased my friends. I addressed picnics, Sunday schools, patriotic meetings, funerals, anniversaries, commencements, debates, cattle shows, and sewing circles. Without partiality and without price. For the first five years the income was all experience. Then voluntary gifts began to come occasionally in the shape of a jackknife, a ham, a book, and the first cash renumeration was from a farmer's club of seventy-five cents toward the horse hire. It was a curious fact that one member of the club afterward moved to Salt Lake City and was a member of the committee at the Mormon Tabernacle in 1862, which, when I was a correspondent on a journey around the world, employed me to lecture on men of the mountains in the Mormon Tabernacle at a fee of five hundred dollars. While I was gaining practice in the first years of platform work, I had the good fortune to have profitable employment as a soldier, or as a correspondent or lawyer, or as an editor, or as a preacher, which enabled me to pay my own expenses. And it is seldomly in the fifty years that I have ever taken a fee for my personal use. In the last thirty-six years I have dedicated solemnly all of my lecture income to benevolent enterprises. If I am antiquated enough for an autobiography, perhaps I may be aged enough to avoid the criticism of being an egoist. When I state that some years I have delivered one lecture, Acres of Diamonds, over two hundred times each year, at an average income of about one hundred and fifty dollars for each lecture. It was a remarkable good fortune, which came to me, as a lecturer, when Mr. James Redpath organized the first lecture bureau ever established. Mr. Redpath was the biographer of John Brown of Harper's Ferry, Renown. And as Mr. Brown had long been a friend of my father's, I found employment. While a student on vacation, in selling that life of John Brown, that acquaintance with Mr. Redpath was maintained until Mr. Redpath's death, to General Charles H. Taylor, with whom I was employed for a time as a reporter for the Boston Daily Traveler, I was indebted for the many acts of self-sacrificing friendship which softened my soul as I recall them. He did me the greatest kindness when he suggested my name to Mr. Redpath, as one who could fill in the vacancies in the smaller towns, where the great lights could not always be secured. What a glorious galaxy of great names that original list of Redpath lecturers contained. Henry Ward Beecher, John B. Go, Senator Charles Sumner, Theodore Tilton, Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, Bayord Taylor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many of the great preacher's musicians and writers of that remarkable era. Even Dr. Holmes, John Whittier, Henry W. Longfellow, John Lathrop Motley, George William Curtis, and General Burnside were persuaded to appear one or more times, although they refused to receive any pay. I cannot forget how ashamed I felt when my name appeared in the shadow of such names, and how sure I was that every acquaintance was ridiculing behind my back. Mr. Bayard Taylor, however, wrote me from the Tribune office a kind note saying he was glad to see me on the road to great usefulness. Governor Claflin of Massachusetts took the time to send me a note of congratulations. General Benjamin F. Butler, however, advised me to stick to the last and be a good lawyer. The work of lecturing was always a task and a duty. I did not feel, now, that I ever saw it to be an entertainer. I am sure I would have been an utter failure, but for the feeling that I must preach some gospel truth in my lectures, and at least that much toward the ever persistent call of God. When I entered the ministry, 1879, I had become so associated with the lecture platform in America and England that I could not feel justified in abandoning such a great field of usefulness. The experiences of all of our successful lectures are probably nearly alike. The way is not always smooth, but the hard roads, the poor hotels, the late trains, the cold halls, the hot church auditoriums, the over-kindness of hospitable committees, the broken hours of sleep or annoyances one soon forgets, and the host of intelligent faces, the messages of thanks and the efforts of the earnings on the lives of young college men can never cease the daily joy. God bless them all. Often I have been asked if I did not in fifty years of travel in all sorts of conveyance meet with accidents. It is a marvel to me that no such event ever brought me harm. In a continuous period over twenty-seven years I delivered about two lectures in every three days. Yet I did not miss a single engagement. Sometimes I had to hire a special train, but I reached the town on time, with only a rare exception, and then I was but a few minutes late. Accidents have preceded and followed me on trains and boats, and were sometimes in sight, but I was preserved without injury through all the years. In the Johnstown flood region I saw a bridge go out behind our train. I was once on a derelict steamer in the Atlantic for twenty-six days, and another time a man was killed in the birth of a sleeper I had left a half-hour before. Often I have felt the train leave the track, but no one was killed. Robbers have several times threatened my life, but all came without loss to me. God and man have never been patient with me. Yet this period of lecturing has been, after all, a side-issue, the temple and its church in Philadelphia, which when its membership was less than three thousand members, for so many years, contributed through its membership over sixty thousand dollars a year for the uplift of humanity, has made a life of continual surprise, while the Samaritan hospital's amazing growth and the Garretton's hospital's dispensaries have been so continually ministering to the sick and poor, and have done such skilful work for the tens of thousands who ask for their help each year, that I have been made happy while away lecturing by the feeling that each hour and minute they are faithfully doing good. Temple University, which was founded only twenty-seven years ago, has already sent out into the higher income and nobler life nearly a hundred thousand young men and women, who could not possibly have obtained an education in any other institution. The faithful, self-sacrificing faculty, now numbering two hundred and fifty-three professors, have done the real work, for I can claim but little credit, and I mention the university here only to show that my fifty years on the lecture platform has necessarily been a sideline of work. My best known lecture, Acres of Diamonds, was a mere accidental address, just given before a reunion of my old comrades at the 56th Massachusetts Regiment, which served in the Civil War, and which I was captain. I had no thought of giving the address again, and even after it began to be called for by lecture committees I did not dream that I should live to deliver it now as I have done almost five thousand times. What is the secret of its popularity? I could never explain to myself or others. I simply know that I always use attempts to enthuse myself on each occasion, and the idea that it is a special opportunity to do good, and I interest myself in each community, and apply the general principles with local illustrations. The hands which now holds this pen must in the natural course of events soon cease to gesture on the platform, and it is a sincere and prayerful hope that this book will go on into the years increasing the good for the aid of my brothers and sisters in the human family. Russell H. Conwell, South Worthingham, Massachusetts September 1, 1913 Footnote 1 This is the most recent and complete form of the lecture. It happened to be delivered in Philadelphia, Dr. Conwell's home city. When he says, right here in Philadelphia, he means the home city town village of every reader of this book, just as he would use the name of it when delivering the lecture there. Instead of going through the pages which follow. Footnote 2 Dr. Conwell was living and actively at work when these pages were written. It is, therefore, a much truer picture of his personality than anything written in the past tense. Footnote 3 This interview took place at the old Conwell farm in the summer of 1915. End of Acres of Diamonds