Temple University - Templar Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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is If illuaarll ZH. Glnmurll By LAURA H. CARNELL, LITT.D. Associate President of Temple University Russell H. Conwell was born on February 15, 18413, among the hills of Western Massachusetts, where every prospect pleases, but where money was so scarce that he had to earn all that he needed for an education beyond that which. he got in the little red schoolhouse about a mile from his home. He taught music, waited on table, did all sorts of things to carry himself through Wilbraham Academy and Yale University. The Civil War' interrupted his college course, he volunteering in the beginning and serving to the end. His New England friends will always know l1i1n as Colonel Conwell. In camp he read law and after the war was over he attended the Albany Law School, which granted him its diploma. While studying law he worked as a reporter Hrst on the Boston Traveller and then on the New York Herald. While with the Boston Traveller he was sent on a trip around the world, at that time a great undertaking. It was to him a University education because he was alive to every scene, to every condition with which he came in contact. After serving a valuable apprenticeship in the newspaper world and having secured his diploma with the right to practice law, he opened a law office in Boston where he built up a successful practice. But the hills had given him a great gift, a marvelous voice that could control the hearts of men. When a very young boy he was one day teaming from his fathei-'s village store ,to Huntington, a town eight miles away. He had to do this very often. There were no motor trucks and the way back was all up hill, so that it was the better part of a day's journey. This morning as he went down the mountain he was practicing a speech he was to make in their village debating society. He came to the quotation Woe unto thee, Chorazinlu His oratory was so effective that the old horse whoaed instantly and the young orator went over the horse's back into the ditch, striking a stone. Just at the edge of his hair the scar could be seen to the last of his life. As a result of this episode he always defined oratory as effective speech. He had this gift of oratory, and the young lawyer began to make speeches and deliver lectures. He taught a great Bible Class in Tremont Temple and here the feeling grew with him that he must go out as a preacher and a teacher. He studied -ig ' - - H --- f - ferr .3-' g-'fre . 29 Eight

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Q i theology in the Newton Theological Seminary, still a lawyer but now also a lecturer and a teacher. On Sundays he preached in old historic Lexington in a little wooden church. But the church grew so fast under his preaching that the little church was pulled down and a larger and finer one built. By this time his fame as a preacher was spreading and a man down in Philadelphia heard of him. He asked him to preach a trial sermon in his church, which needed a preacher, and on Thanksgiving day, 1882, he began his work in Philadelphia. He started almost immediately a Young Men's Congress modeled on our Na- tional Congress. VVhenever in the city he presided at its meetings. Here hundreds of young men in the city received training in public speech and parliamentary pro- cedure. Some members of this Congress today hold positions of national importance. - But in that church there were some young people who soon realized that they could not achieve the possibilities of the vision held out to them unless they had more education, they appealed to Dr. Conwellg in response he formed a class in 1884 to help a group of young men get ready for college. He taught the class himself. Very soon others had to be called in to help him. By 1888 he realized that the need was so great in Philadelphia and the classes he had started had already become so numerous it was wise to obtain a charter that these students might have oflicial recognition for the work they were doing. Young people of all denominations had applied for admission to the classes that had been formed, and Doctor Conwell wisely decided that this new college must be entirely non- sectarian, open to all the people of the city who needed it, regardless of sex, race or religion. Its charter read primarily for working men. When the old church was sold, Temple College, as it then was, went into a couple of rented houses. It was an independent institution but still had to turn to Dr. Conwell and the friends he could rally around him for its support. It opened a day department to give stability to its night work. The two houses were crowded day and night. These houses were inadequate to hold all those who came for help. There was a lot, just south of the large new Temple which he was building, for sale. Even Dr. Conwell hesitated to ask his people to subscribe any money for so seemingly wild a projectg so he quietly bought the land himself on mortgage and held it until the Trustees of the young college could raise funds to pay him. But they raised the money and three years after the opening of the Temple went into a building of their own. There were several gifts of one thousand dollars each from the moneyed men of that day, one for five thousand, the rest being small in amounts. With the opening of the new building the educational needs of the city became more and more apparent. When a young person came with the request for a course and the course was not being given elsewhere in the city he was told to find others lllQQg,,i,2 r - ' is ---- .1 -1-,gg' - al' -L W-fx .ru ' Lil- 'ffts 'H . P' -f'EW,src,. 424 ' 1 Nine