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