That Miranda Conwell was an unusual woman for those times and circumstances is shown in those readings to her children. Not only did she read and explain to them the beautiful stories of the Bible, implanting its truths in their impressionable natures to blossom forth later in beautiful deeds; but she read them the best literature of the ancient days as well as current literature. Into this poor New England home came the "New York Tribune" and the "National Era." The letters of foreign correspondents opened to their childish eyes another world and roused ambitions to see it. Henry Ward Beecher's sermons, and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," when it came out as a serial, all such good and helpful literature, she poured into the eager childish ears. These readings went on, all through the happy days of childhood.
Interesting things were happening in the world then; things that were to mould the future of one of the boys at her knee in a way she little dreamed. A war was being waged in Mexico to train soldiers for a greater war coming. Out in Illinois, a plain rail-splitter, farmer and lawyer was beginning to be heard in the cause of freedom and justice for all men, black or white. These rumors and discussions drifted into the little home and arguments rose high around the crackling woodfire as neighbors dropped in. Martin Conwell was not a man to watch passively the trend of events. He took sides openly, vigorously, and though the small, blue-eyed boy listening so attentively did not comprehend all that it was about, Martin Conwell's views later took shape in action that had a marked bearing on Russell's later life.
But the mother's reading bore more immediate, if less useful, fruit. Hearing rather unusual sounds from the back yard one day, she went to the door to listen. The evening before she had been reading the children one of the sermons of Henry Ward Beecher and telling them something of this great man and his work. Mounted upon one of the largest gray rocks in the yard, stood Russell, solemnly preaching to a collection of wondering, round-eyed chickens. It was a serious, impressive discourse he gave them, much of it, no doubt, a transcript of Henry Ward Beecher's. What led his boyish fancy to do it, no one knew, though many another child has done the same, as children dramatize in play the things they have heard or read. But a chance remark stamped that childish action upon the boyish imagination, making it the corner stone of many a childish castle in Spain. Telling her husband of it in the evening, Miranda Conwell said, half jokingly, "our boy will some day be a great preacher." It was a fertile seed dropped in a fertile mind, tilled assiduously for a brief space by vivid childish imagination; but not ripened till sad experiences of later years brought it to a glorious fruition.
Another result of the fireside readings might have been serious. A short distance from the house a mountain stream leaps and foams over the stones, seeming to choose, as Ruskin says, "the steepest places to come down for the sake of the leaps, scattering its handfuls of crystal this way and that as the wind takes them." The walls of the gorge rise sheer and steep; the path of the stream is strewn with huge boulders, over which it foams snow white, pausing in quiet little pools for breath before the next leap and scramble. Here and there at the sides, stray tiny little waterfalls, very Thoreaus of streamlets, content to wander off by themselves, away from the noisy rush of the others, making little silvery rills of beauty in unobtrusive ways. Over this gorge was a fallen log. Russell determined to enact the part of Eliza in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," fleeing over the ice. It was a feat to make a mother's heart stand still. Three separate times she whipped him severely and forbade him to do it. He took the punishment cheerfully, and went back to the log. He never gave up until he had crossed it.
The vein of perseverance in his character was already setting into firm, unyielding mould—the one trait to which Russell H. Conwell, the preacher, the lecturer, writer, founder of college and hospital, may attribute the success he has gained. This childish escapade was the first to strike fire from its flint.
CHAPTER III
DAYS OF STUDY, WORK AND PLAY
The Schoolhouse in the Woods. Maple Sugar-making. The Orator of the
Dawn. A Boyish Prank. Capturing the Eagle's Nest.
At three years of age, he trudged off to school with his brother Charles. Though Charles was three years the senior, the little fellow struggled to keep pace with him in all their childish play and work. Two miles the children walked daily to the schoolhouse, a long walk for a toddler of three. But it laid the foundation of that strong, rugged constitution that has carried him so unflinchingly through the hard work of these later years. The walk to school was the most important part of the performance, for lessons had no attraction for the boy as yet. But the road through the woods to the schoolhouse was a journey of ever new and never-ending excitement. The road lay along a silver-voiced brook that rippled softly by shadowy rock, or splashed joyous and exultant down its boulder-strewn path. It was this same brook whose music drifted into his little attic bedroom at night, stilled to a faint, far-away murmur as the wind died down, rising to a high, clear crescendo of rushing, tumbling water as the breeze stirred in the tree tops and brought to him the forest sounds. Hour after hour he lay awake listening to it, his childish imagination picturing fairies and elves holding their revels in the woods beyond. An oratorical little brook it was, unconsciously leaving an impress of its musical speech on the ears of the embryo orator. Moreover, in its quiet pools lurked watchful trout. Few country boys could walk along such a stream unheeding its fascinations, especially when the doors of a school house opened at the farther end, and many an hour when studies should have claimed him, he was sitting by the brookside, care-free and contented, delightedly fishing. Nor are any berries quite so luscious as those which grow along the country road to school. It takes long, long hours to satisfy the keen appetite of a boy, and lessons suffered during the berry seasons. Another keen excitement of the daily journey through a living world of mystery and enchantment was the search for frogs. Woe to the unlucky frog that fell in the way of the active, curious boy. Some one had told him that old, old countryside story, "If you kill a frog, the cows will give bloody milk." Eager to see such a phenomenon, he watched sharply. Let an unlucky frog give one unfortunate croak, quick, sure-aimed, flew a stone, and he raced home at night to see the miracle performed. He was just a boy as other boys—mischievous, disobedient, fonder of play than work or study. But underneath, uncalled upon as yet, lay that vein of perseverance as unyielding as the granite of his native hills.
The schoolhouse inside was not unattractive. Six windows gave plenty of light, and each framed woodland pictures no painter's canvas could rival. The woods were all about and the voice of the little brook floated in, always calling, calling—at least to one small listener—to come out and see it dance and sparkle and leap from rock to rock. If he gained nothing else from his first school days but a love and appreciation of nature's beauties, it was a lesson well worth learning. To feed the heart and imagination of a child with such scenery is to develop unconsciously a love of the beautiful which brings a pure joy into life never to be lost, no matter what stress and storm may come. In the darkest, stormiest hours of his later life, to think back to the serene beauty of those New England hills was as a hand of peace laid on his troubled spirit.