His private secretary gave the following account, in the "Temple
Magazine," of a week day and a Sunday in Dr. Conwell's life:
"No two days are alike in his work, and he has no specified hour for definite classes of calls or kinds of work.
"After breakfast he goes to his office in The Temple. Here visitors from half a dozen to twenty await him, representing a great variety of needs or business.
"Visitors wait their turn in the ante-room of his study and are received by him in the order of their arrival. The importance of business, rank or social position of the caller does not interfere with this order.
[Illustration: THE CHORUS OF THE BAPTIST TEMPLE]
"Throughout the whole day in the street, at the church, at the College, wherever he goes, he is beset by persons urging him for money, free lectures, to write introductions to all sorts of books, for sermons, or to take up collections for indigent individuals or churches. Letters reach him even from Canada, asking him to take care of some aunt, uncle, runaway son, or needy family, in Philadelphia. Sometimes for days together he does not secure five minutes to attend to his correspondence. Personal letters which he must answer himself often wait for weeks before he can attend to them, although he endeavors, as a rule, to answer important letters on the day they are received. People call to request him to deliver addresses at the dedication of churches, schoolhouses, colleges, flag-raisings, commencements, and anniversaries, re-unions, political meetings, and all manner of reform movements. Authors urge him to read their work in manuscript; orators without orations write to him and come to him for address or sermon; applications flow in for letters of introduction highly recommending entire strangers for anything they want. Agents for books come to him for endorsements, with religious newspapers for subscriptions and articles, and with patent medicines urging him to be 'cured with one bottle.'
"It is well known that he was a lawyer before entering the ministry, and orphans, guardians, widows, and young men entering business come to him asking him to make wills, contracts, etc., and to give them points of law concerning their undertakings. Weddings and funerals claim his attention. Urgent messages to visit the sick and the dying and the unfortunate come to him, and these appeals are answered first either by himself or the associate pastor; the cries of the suffering making the most eloquent of all appeals to these two busy men."
Frequently he comes to the church again in the afternoon to meet some one by appointment. Both afternoon and evening are crowded with engagements to see people, to make addresses, to attend special meetings of various kinds, with College and Hospital duties.
"I am expected to preside at six different meetings to-night," he said smilingly to a friend at The Temple one evening as the membership began to stream in to look after its different lines of work.
Much, of the time during the winter he is away lecturing, but he keeps in constant communication with The Temple and its work. By letter, wire or telephone he is ready to respond to any emergency requiring his advice or suggestion. These lecture trips carry him all over the country, but they are so carefully planned that with rare exceptions he is in the pulpit Sunday morning. Frequently, when returning, he wires for his secretary to meet him part way, if from the West, at Harrisburg or Altoona; if from the South, at Washington or beyond. The secretary brings the mail and the remaining hours of the journey are filled with work, dictating letters, articles for magazines or press, possibly material for a book, whatever work most presses.