Russell H. Conwell, founder of the Institutional church in America

by Agnes Rush Burr

This love and joy in nature—and the trait was already in his blood—was at first all that he gained from his trips to school. Then came a teacher with a new way of instructing, a Miss Salina Cole, who had mastered the art of visual memory. She taught her pupils to make on the mind a photographic impression of the page, which could be recalled in its entirety, even to the details of punctuation. This was a process of study that appealed immediately to Russell's boyish imagination. Moreover, it was something to "see if he could do," always fascinating to his love of experiment and adventure. It had numerous other advantages. It was quick. It promised far-reaching results. If page after page of the school books could be stored in the mind and called up for future reference, getting an education would become an easy matter. Besides, they could be called up and pondered on in various places—fishing, for instance. He quickly decided to would master this new method, and he went at it with his characteristic energy and determination. Concentrating all his mental force, he would study intently the printed page, and then closing his eyes, repeat it word for word, even giving the punctuation marks. With the other pupils, Salina Cole was not so successful, but with Russell Conwell, the results were remarkable. It was a faculty of the utmost value to him in after years. When in military camp and far from books, he would recall page after page of his law works and study them during the long days of garrison duty as easily as though the printed book were in his hand.

But the work was of more value to him than the mere mastery of something new. It whetted his appetite for more. He began to want to know. School became interesting, and he plunged into studies with an interest and zest that were unflagging. And as he studied, ambitions awoke. The history of the past, the accomplishments of great men stirred him. He began to dream of the things to do in the days to come.

Outside of school hours his time was filled with the ordinary duties of the farm. In the early spring, the maple sugar was to be made and there were long, difficult tramps through woods in those misty, brooding days when the miracle of new life is working in tree and vine and leaf. Often the very earth seemed hushed as if waiting in awe for this marvelous change that transforms brown earth and bare tree to a vision of ethereal, tender green. But his books went with him, and in the long night watches far in the woods alone, when the pans of sirrup were boiling, he studied. So enrapt did he become that sometimes the sugar suffered, and the patience of his father was sorely taxed when told the tale of inattention.

It was during those long night watches that he learned by heart two books of Milton's "Paradise Lost," and so firmly were they fixed in the boyish memory that at this day, Dr. Conwell can repeat them without a break. Many a time as the shadows lightened and the dim, misty dawn came stealing through the forest, would the small boy step outside the rude sugar-house and repeat in that musical, resonant voice that has since held audiences enthralled, Milton's glorious "Invocation to the Light." Strange scene—the great shadowy forest, the distant mist-enfolded hills, the faintly flushing morning sky, the faint splash of a little mountain stream breaking the brooding stillness, and the small boy with intent, inspired face pouring out his very heart in that wonderful invocation:

"Hail, holy light, offspring of Heaven, Firstborn
Or of the Eternal, co-eternal beam,
May I express thee Unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity—dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
Or hear'st thou, rather, pure Eternal Stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God as with a mantle didst invest
The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless Infinite!"

Later in spring there was plowing, though the farm was so rocky and stony, there was little of that work to do. But here and there, a sunny hilltop field made cultivation worth while, and as he followed the patient oxen along the shining brown furrow, he looked away to the encircling hills so full of mystery and fascination. What was there? What was beyond? Then into the the morning and well into the afternoon they pried and labored. They dug away earth and exerted to the utmost their childish strength. Charles would soon have given up the gigantic task, but Russell was not of the stuff that quits, and so they toiled on. The father and mother at home wondered and searched for the boys. Then as they began truly to get alarmed, from the woods to the south came a crash and roar, the sound of trees snapping and then a shock that made the earth tremble. The rock had fallen, traversing a mile, in its downward rush to the river bed. Flushed and triumphant the boys returned, and the neighbors who had heard the noise, when it was explained to them, went to see the wreckage. It had dropped first a fall of fifteen feet, where it had paused an instant. Then the earth giving way under its tons of weight, it had plowed a deep furrow right down the mountain side, dislodging rocks, uprooting trees, until with a mighty crash, it struck the borders of the stream where it stands to this day, a monument to boyish ingenuity and perseverance.

But of all the mischievous pranks of these childish days, the one that had perhaps the greatest influence on his life was the capture of an eagle's nest from the top of a dead hemlock. To the north of the farmhouse a hill rises abruptly, covered with bare, outcropping rocks, their fronts sheer and steep. On top clusters a little sombre grove of hemlock trees, and from the midst of these rose the largest one, straight, majestic, swaying a little in the wind that swept on from the distant hills. In the top of this tree, an eagle had built her nest, and it had long been a secret ambition of the boy to capture it, the more resolved upon because it seemed impossible. One day in October he left his sheep, ran to the foot of the hill, and with the sure-footed agility of a mountain boy climbed the rocks and began the ascent of the tree. From the top of a high ledge nearby two men hid and watched him. A fall meant death, and many a time their hearts stood still, as the intrepid lad placed his foot on a dead branch only to have it break under him, or reached for a limb to find it give way at his touch. The tree was nearly fifty feet high and at some time a stroke of lightning had rent it, splintering the trunk. Only one limb was left whole, the others had been broken off or shattered by the storms of winter. In the very crown of the tree swayed the nest, a rude, uncouth thing of sticks and hay.

Up and up he climbed, stopping every now and then in the midst of his struggles to call to the sheep if he saw them wandering too far. He had only to call them by name to bring them nibbling back again.

"Not a man in the mountains," wrote one of those who watched him in that interesting sketch of Mr. Conwell's life, "Scaling the Eagle's Nest," "would have thought it possible to do anything else but shoot, that nest down. When we first saw him he was half way up the great tree, and was tugging away to get up by a broken limb which was swinging loosely about the trunk. For a long time he tried to break it off, but his little hand was too weak. Then he came down from knot to knot like a squirrel, jumped to the ground, ran to his little jacket and took his jack-knife out of the pocket. Slowly he clambered up again. When he reached the limb, he clung to another with his left hand, threw one leg over a splintered knot and with the right hand hacked away with his knife.

"'He will give it up,' we both said.