But though the hat seemed too expensive for three dollars a week, Dr. Conwell is not a man who makes snap-judgments harshly, and in particular he would be the last man to turn away hastily one who had sought him out for help. He never felt, nor could possibly urge upon any one, contentment with a humble lot; he stands for advancement; he has no sympathy with that dictum of the smug, that has come to us from a nation tight bound for centuries by its gentry and aristocracy, about being contented with the position in which God has placed you, for he points out that the Bible itself holds up advancement and success as things desirable.
And, as to the young woman before him, it developed, through discreet inquiry veiled by frank discussion of her case, that she had made the expensive-looking hat herself! Whereupon not only did all doubtfulness and hesitation vanish, but he saw at once how she could better herself. He knew that a woman who could make a hat like that for herself could make hats for other people, and so, “Go into millinery as a business,” he advised.
“Oh—if I only could!” she exclaimed. “But I know that I don’t know enough.”
“Take the millinery course in Temple University,” he responded.
She had not even heard of such a course, and when he went on to explain how she could take it and at the same time continue at her present work until the course was concluded, she was positively ecstatic—it was all so unexpected, this opening of the view of a new and broader life.
“She was an unusual woman,” concluded Dr. Conwell, “and she worked with enthusiasm and tirelessness. She graduated, went to an up-state city that seemed to offer a good field, opened a millinery establishment there, with her own name above the door, and became prosperous. That was only a few years ago. And recently I had a letter from her, telling me that last year she netted a clear profit of three thousand six hundred dollars!”
I remember a man, himself of distinguished position, saying of Dr. Conwell, “It is difficult to speak in tempered language of what he has achieved.” And that just expresses it; the temptation is constantly to use superlatives—for superlatives fit! Of course he has succeeded for himself, and succeeded marvelously, in his rise from the rocky hill farm, but he has done so vastly more than that in inspiring such hosts of others to succeed!
A dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions—and what realizations have come! And it interested me profoundly not long ago, when Dr. Conwell, talking of the university, unexpectedly remarked that he would like to see such institutions scattered throughout every state in the Union. “All carried on at slight expense to the students and at hours to suit all sorts of working men and women,” he added, after a pause; and then, abruptly, “I should like to see the possibility of higher education offered to every one in the United States who works for a living.”
There was something superb in the very imagining of such a nation-wide system. But I did not ask whether or not he had planned any details for such an effort. I knew that thus far it might only be one of his dreams—but I also knew that his dreams had a way of becoming realities. I had a fleeting glimpse of his soaring vision. It was amazing to find a man of more than three-score and ten thus dreaming of more worlds to conquer. And I thought, what could the world have accomplished if Methuselah had been a Conwell!—or, far better, what wonders could be accomplished if Conwell could but be a Methuselah!
He has all his life been a great traveler. He is a man who sees vividly and who can describe vividly. Yet often his letters, even from places of the most profound interest, are mostly concerned with affairs back home. It is not that he does not feel, and feel intensely, the interest of what he is visiting, but that his tremendous earnestness keeps him always concerned about his work at home. There could be no stronger example than what I noticed in a letter he wrote from Jerusalem. “I am in Jerusalem! And here at Gethsemane and at the Tomb of Christ”—reading thus far, one expects that any man, and especially a minister, is sure to say something regarding the associations of the place and the effect of these associations on his mind; but Conwell is always the man who is different—“And here at Gethsemane and at the Tomb of Christ, I pray especially for the Temple University.” That is Conwellism!