President Russell H. Conwell, the brilliant preacher, author and orator

              President Russell H. Conwell
THE   BRILLIANT   PREACHER,   AUTHOR   AND   ORATOR
PRESIDENT  OF   THE   TEMPLE  UNIVERSITY.  PHILADELPHIA
Pastor of the Raptist Temple, Philadelphia
President of  the Samaritan Hospital, Philadelphia
President of  the Garretson   Hospital, Philadelphia
President of the Philadelphia Psycho-Therapeutio Institution for saving
men and women from the evils of vitiated appetites
POPULAR   SUBJECTS-50th YEAR
Acres oi Diamonds t   Where men succeed                                       The Silver Crown t   How men succeed
The Jolly Earthquake:   Power of a cheerful spirit
Heroism ol a Private Life t   Life of Daniel Manin                          The Angel's Lily i   The happiest life
Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women :   Lessons from great lives
Artemus Ward:  The Morning Star of American Humor
Fifty Years on the Lecture Platform
BIOGRAPHICAL   SKETCH
RUSSELL H. CONWELL was born in the town of Worthington, Hamp¬shire County, Massachusetts, February 15, 1843, and spent his early days upon a small farm, known as "The Eagle's Nest," situated in the most sterile and mountainous portion of that region. Very early in his boy¬hood he was compelled to earn his own living, and, unassisted, secured the position he now holds as a "self-made man." He kept along with his classes in the district school by studying evenings, while working at manual labor dur¬ing school hours, and earned by daily labor his meager supply of food and clothing while at the Academy in Wilbraham, Mass. In i860 he entered upon the law and aca¬demic courses together at Yale College, the latter under a tutor, so as to economize his time and reduce his expenses. But the war of the Rebellion interrupted his studies in 1862 and took him to the field as a captain of infantry. He afterward served in the artillery branch of the service and as a staff officer.
At the close of the war he graduated in the law department of the Albany Uni¬versity and went to Minnesota, where he began the practice of law. In 1867 he repre¬sented the State of Minnesota as its Emigration Agent to Germany, and became the for¬eign correspondent of his own newspaper. In 1868 he was engaged as the corre¬spondent of the New York Tribune, and in the year following as the traveling corre¬spondent of the Boston Traveller. In 1870 he was sent to the different countries in Asia by the New York Tribune and Boston Traveller and made the entire circuit of the globe, filling at that time many important lecture engagements in India and Eng¬land. He afterwards visited England exclusively on a lecture tour through the im¬portant cities of that country. In 1870 he published his first book, "Why and How the Chinese Emigrate." It has been followed by many others of a historical and bio¬graphical character. He was a friend and traveling companion of Bayard Taylor, and his biography of that poet and traveler had a very extended sale. His biography of Spurgeon reached a sale of 125,000 copies in four months.
For eight years he practiced law in Boston and gained a great popularity as a lec¬turer and writer. In 1879 ne was ordained to the ministry. In 1882 he accepted a call from Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia, and removed to that city. The church of which he assumed charge at once entered upon a career of extraordinary prosperity and has become the largest Protestant Church in America. They built a Temple in 1891 on Broad Street, Philadelphia, which will seat comfortably over 3,000 people and has a capacity of 4,200. Mr. Conwell's preaching draws such crowds of listeners that for ten years admission has been obtained by tickets, and thousands are often turned away. Mr. Conwell has been in the lecture field forty-nine years, during which period he has delivered here and abroad nearly nine thousand lectures. He was the intimate associate with Gough, Beecher, Holmes, Longfellow, Motley, Emerson, Everett, Whit-tier, Wendell Phillips, Douglass, Grant, Garfield, Burlingame, Sherman, and other of America's great men. He is to-day one of America's most popular speakers and among the last of the stars who made the platform brilliant in the days of Gough, Beecher and Chapin.
This season Conwell enters his "Golden Jubilee Year," being his fiftieth year consecutively on the American platform.
The story of his life haN been told by Rebt. .1. Rurdette in a book entitled ** The Modern Temple and Templars,** and more recently by Rev. Albert H. Smith in ** The life of Russell H. Conwell.** These are published by Silver, Rurdett & Co., New York and Roston. A new biography by Agnes R. Rurr was recently published by Winston & Co., Phila., Pa. New edition revised just out.
RUSSELL  H. GONWELL
Rev- Albert H. Smith in His Book on ConwelTs Work, says:
"Russell H. Conwell, the lecturer, is the most sought after of any man on the lecture plat¬form to-day. Of his thirty lectures, one, 'Acres of Diamonds/ has been delivered twenty-six hundred times in twenty-nine years. His lecture engagements average two hundred nights a year, and from his lecture fees he has contributed toward the education of poor stu¬dents more than half a million dollars.
"Russell H. Conwell, the preacher, presides over the largest Protestant congregation in America. The net increase of his church dur¬ing the seventeen years of his pastorate has been twenty-eight hundred members.
"Russell H. Conwell, the author, has written nineteen books, a number of which have had a sale exceeding two hundred thousand copies each. Some of his books written ten years ago are coming again into circulation with all the call of new books.
"Russell H. Conwell, the philanthropist, is founder and president of a university of four thousand students, which, in addition to a large day department, adapts itself to the needs of the working people, who are too busy and too poor to attend Harvard, Yale or Princeton, but who receive at Temple University, during their evenings, and in times of cessation from customary toil, inspiration and instruction by which thousands h^ve been enabled to earn a better living, and hundreds to climb to posi¬tions of power and influence in the learned professions. He also has a large list of stu¬dents supported by him in Eastern colleges.
"He is founder and promoter of the Samari¬tan Hospital, healing twelve hundred people a month. In this hospital the poor can have the advantage of the best medical skill, and receive the attention of trained nurses, without money and without price, a Christian hospital, where the sick are healed for Jesus' sake.
"He is founder of an orphanage which cares for the little ones of the fireman or policeman who lays down his life to save his neighbor's life or property.
"You ask what you shall say in introducing Conwell! If I were in your place, I would say that Conwell has given more money, earned by himself, to unsectarian charity, than any other American, past or present.   That through the
"Russell H. Conwell, the man, was born in a mountain cottage. He is a self-made man, with a great heart. He has accomplished mar-velous results through prodigious toil, is in¬spired by the noblest motives, has learned much by experience and is a man of like pas-sion with ourselves.
"It cannot be proved beyond dispute, but careful investigation reveals the strong prob¬ability, that Russell H. Conwell has addressed more people than any other man living. He has been on the lecture platform forty-nine years, and averaged two hundred lectures a year, besides preaching to the thousands who throng his church, and addressing the largest conventions that assemble in America. He prepared fifteen popular lectures before he was thirty years old.
"Churches have been established, magazines founded, inventions made, business enterprises undertaken, the discouraged have taken heart, the poor have become rich, teachers have adopted methods more in harmony with psy¬chological laws, real estate has been advanced, hotelkeepers have become more thoughtful of the comfort of their guests, hundreds of young men have entered the ministry, thousands have secured an education, hundreds of thousands of characters have been ennobled, and heaven will be the richer, in consequence of Conwell's lectures. A winning cordiality, a glow of in¬terest, an absorbing and all unconscious mag¬netism, a quenchless enthusiasm communicated through a delightful at-homeness, It sincere purpose to help the listener to be better, hap¬pier, and more useful for having heard the lecture—all making an evening with Conwell a profitable delight.
"Conwell is the most popular lecturer in the world, which statement can be sustained by the statistics of the lecture bureaus; and while his prices are high, lecture committees have * found him to be one of the cheapest men on the platform."
thousands he has educated and inspired, and the multitudes he has addressed, he has done and will do more good than any other living American, all of which would be the truth."
Dr. Henry G. Weston, President oi Crozer Theological Seminary, Pennsylvania, in answer to a letter from Kewanee, 111., in 1897, wrote:
onwell never saved a notice of his lectures, never supplied information to his biographers, never wrote a lecture or sermon, and refuses outright to give material for advertising him. I v was a close friend of Phillips, Beecher and Chapin.
RUSSELL  H. CONWELL
Charles A. Dana, just before his death, wrote to Harper Brothers recommending that Mr. Conwell be secured to write a series of books for an ''American Biographical Library,'' and in his letter said:
"I write the above of my own motion, as I have seldom met Mr. Conwell, but as a writer of biographies he has no superior. Indeed I can say considerately that he is one of Ameri¬ca's greatest men. He never advertises him¬self, never saves a newspaper clipping con-cerning himself, never keeps a sermon of his own, and will not seek applause. You must go after him if you want him. He will not apply to you. His personal history is as fas¬cinating as it is exceptional. He took himself as a poor back country lad, created out of the crude material the orator which often combines a Webster with Gough, and made himself a
He   delivered   his   first
lecture    September 8, 
1862,    in    Westfield
Mass.,   and has been
1 ec tu r ing
from  100 to
225 nights a
year,ever
since.
scholar of the first rank. He created from nothing a powerful university of high rank in Philadelphia specially for the common people. He created a great and influential church out of a small unknown parish. He has assisted more men in securing an education than any other American. He has created a hospital of the first order and extent. He has fed the poor and housed large numbers of orphans. He has written many books and has addressed more people than any other living man. To do this without writing or dictating a line to ad-vertise himself is nothing else than the victory of a great genius. He is a gem worth your seeking, valuable anywhere. I say again that I regard Russell H. Conwell, of Philadelphia, as America's greatest man in the best form. I cannot do your work; he can."
"The   orator   just   seems   to
hold   the   people   as   children
stare    at    brilliant    and
startling pictures."—
London News.
THE   TEMPLE,
"He is to the mind of the writer the great¬est living American. But it is clear that he is en¬tirely oblivious of the fact. Nothing he does or says is treasured or preserved for the day after his death. Yet he is one of those unconscious geniuses who will only be valued justly years after his demise. He expects no gratitude and gets none. He never remembers or saves a compliment, and so no one thinks of pleasing him by giving him one."—Manchester (Eng.) Guardian.
Harper's Weekly, of New York, commenting upon a vote by one of the schools upon the prominent Americans whose names would be appropriate in the living "Hall of Fame," said:
"The vote for the living 'Hall of Fame' gave Edison the first place, and Conwell, of Phila¬delphia, second. It would be difficult perhaps to get the leading educators to unite on even
PHILADELPHIA
ten of the greatest men in America, but for creating much out of nothing, and doing great deeds with the smallest means, Conwell has no peer in the United States now."
In cities where he has lectured twenty or twenty-five years in succession, he has been especially- requested to deliver an address this year on his recollections of the distinguished men and women he has met in his long public life, hence his new lecture, "Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women."
"The only lecturer in America who can fill a hall in this city with three thousand people at a dollar a ticket."—Philadelphia Times.
"Mr. Conwell has repeated 'Acres of Dia¬monds' at the Academy of Music three times with equal success in one year."—Philadelphia Inquirer.
More special trains are run to Conwell's lectures every year than to any other single attraction in the United States* Within nineteen years over five thousand people have joined his church in Philadelphia.