Yet he laughs, his quiet, infectious, characteristic laugh, as he tells of how once he was deceived, for he defended a man, charged with stealing a watch, who was so obviously innocent that he took the case in a blaze of indignation and had the young fellow proudly exonerated. The next day the wrongly accused one came to his office and shamefacedly took out the watch that he had been charged with stealing. "I want you to send it to the man I took it from," he said. And he told with a sort of shamefaced pride of how he had got a good old deacon to give, in all sincerity, the evidence that exculpated him. "And, say, Mr. Conwell—I want to thank you for getting me off—and I hope you'll excuse my deceiving you—and—I won't be any worse for not going to jail." And Conwell likes to remember that thereafter the young man lived up to the pride of exoneration; and, though Conwell does not say it or think it, one knows that it was the Conwell influence that inspired to honesty—for always he is an inspirer.
Conwell even kept certain hours for consultation with those too poor to pay any fee; and at one time, while still an active lawyer, he was guardian for over sixty children! The man has always been a marvel, and always one is coming upon such romantic facts as these.
That is a curious thing about him—how much there is of romance in his life! Worshiped to the end by John Ring; left for dead all night at Kenesaw Mountain; calmly singing "Nearer, my God, to Thee," to quiet the passengers on a supposedly sinking ship; saving lives even when a boy; never disappointing a single audience of the thousands of audiences he has arranged to address during all his years of lecturing! He himself takes a little pride in this last point, and it is characteristic of him that he has actually forgotten that just once he did fail to appear: he has quite forgotten that one evening, on his way to a lecture, he stopped a runaway horse to save two women's lives, and went in consequence to a hospital instead of to the platform! And it is typical of him to forget that sort of thing.
The emotional temperament of Conwell has always made him responsive to the great, the striking, the patriotic. He was deeply influenced by knowing John Brown, and his brief memories of Lincoln are intense, though he saw him but three times in all.
The first time he saw Lincoln was on the night when the future President delivered the address, which afterward became so famous, in Cooper Union, New York. The name of Lincoln was then scarcely known, and it was by mere chance that young Conwell happened to be in New York on that day. But being there and learning that Abraham Lincoln from the West was going to make an address, he went to hear him.
He tells how uncouthly Lincoln was dressed, even with one trousers-leg higher than the other, and of how awkward he was, and of how poorly, at first, he spoke and with what apparent embarrassment. The chairman of the meeting got Lincoln a glass of water, and Conwell thought that it was from a personal desire to help him and keep him from breaking down. But he loves to tell how Lincoln became a changed man as he spoke; how he seemed to feel ashamed of his brief embarrassment and, pulling himself together and putting aside the written speech which he had prepared, spoke freely and powerfully, with splendid conviction, as only a born orator speaks. To Conwell it was a tremendous experience.
The second time he saw Lincoln was when he went to Washington to plead for the life of one of his men who had been condemned to death for sleeping on post. He was still but a captain (his promotion to a colonelcy was still to come), a youth, and was awed by going into the presence of the man he worshiped. And his voice trembles a little, even now, as he tells of how pleasantly Lincoln looked up from his desk, and how cheerfully he asked his business with him, and of how absorbedly Lincoln then listened to his tale, although, so it appeared, he already knew of the main outline.
"It will be all right," said Lincoln, when Conwell finished. But Conwell was still frightened. He feared that in the multiplicity of public matters this mere matter of the life of a mountain boy, a private soldier, might be forgotten till too late. "It is almost the time set—" he faltered. And Conwell's voice almost breaks, man of emotion that he is, as he tells of how Lincoln said, with stern gravity: "Go and telegraph that soldier's mother that Abraham Lincoln never signed a warrant to shoot a boy under twenty, and never will." That was the one and only time that he spoke with Lincoln, and it remains an indelible impression.
The third time he saw Lincoln was when, as officer of the day, he stood for hours beside the dead body of the President as it lay in state in Washington. In those hours, as he stood rigidly as the throng went shuffling sorrowfully through, an immense impression came to Colonel Conwell of the work and worth of the man who there lay dead, and that impression has never departed.
John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, old Revolutionary Lexington—how Conwell's life is associated with famous men and places!—and it was actually at Lexington that he made the crucial decision as to the course of his life! And it seems to me that it was, although quite unconsciously, because of the very fact that it was Lexington that Conwell was influenced to decide and to act as he did. Had it been in some other kind of place, some merely ordinary place, some quite usual place, he might not have taken the important step. But it was Lexington, it was brave old Lexington, inspiring Lexington; and he was inspired by it, for the man who himself inspires nobly is always the one who is himself open to noble inspiration. Lexington inspired him.