The way has been blazed, the path has been pointed out, it only remains for those who follow after to walk therein. And if they walk therein, they will gain that true greatness and deep happiness which Phillips Brooks says comes ever "to the man who has given his life to his race, who feels that what God gives him, He gives him for mankind."



ACRES OF DIAMONDS

Dr. Conwell's most famous lecture and one of his earliest has been given at this writing (October, 1905) 3420 times. The income from it if invested at regular rates of interest would have amounted very nearly to one million dollars.

PERSONAL GLIMPSES OF CELEBRATED MEN AND WOMEN

Is Dr. Conwell's latest lecture. It is a backward glance over his own life in which he tells in his inimitable fashion many of its most interesting scenes and incidents. It is here published for the first time.



ACRES OF DIAMONDS.[A]

[Footnote A: Reported by A. Russell Smith and Harry E. Greager.]

[Mr. Conwell's lectures are all delivered extemporaneously and differ greatly from night to night.—Ed.]

I am astonished that so many people should care to hear this story over again. Indeed, this lecture has become a study in psychology; it often breaks all rules of oratory, departs from the precepts of rhetoric, and yet remains the most popular of any lecture I have delivered in the forty-four years of my public life. I have sometimes studied for a year upon a lecture and made careful research, and then presented the lecture just once—never delivered it again. I put too much work on it. But this had no work on it—thrown together perfectly at random, spoken offhand without any special preparation, and it succeeds when the thing we study, work over, adjust to a plan is an entire failure.

The "Acres of Diamonds" which I have mentioned through so many years are to be found in Philadelphia, and you are to find them. Many have found them. And what man has done, man can do. I could not find anything better to illustrate my thought than a story I have told over and over again, and which is now found in books in nearly every library.

In 1870 we went down the Tigris River. We hired a guide at Bagdad to show us Persepolis, Nineveh and Babylon, and the ancient countries of Assyria as far as the Arabian Gulf. He was well acquainted with the land, but he was one of those guides who love to entertain their patrons; he was like a barber that tells you many stories in order to keep your mind off the scratching and the scraping. He told me so many stories that I grew tired of his telling them and I refused to listen—looked away whenever he commenced; that made the guide quite angry, I remember that toward evening he took his Turkish cap off his head and swung it around in the air. The gesture I did not understand and I did not dare look at him for fear I should become the victim of another story. But, although I am not a woman, I did look, and the instant I turned my eyes upon that worthy guide he was off again. Said he, "I will tell you a story now which I reserve for my particular friends!" So then, counting myself a particular friend, I listened, and I have always been glad I did.

He said there once lived not far from the River Indus an ancient Persian by the name of Al Hafed. He said that Al Hafed owned a very large farm with orchards, grain fields and gardens. He was a contented and wealthy man—contented because he was wealthy, and wealthy because he was contented. One day there visited this old farmer one of those ancient Buddhist priests, and he sat down by Al Hafed's fire and told that old farmer how this world of ours was made. He said that this world was once a mere bank of fog, which is scientifically true, and he said that the Almighty thrust his finger into the bank of fog and then began slowly to move his finger around and gradually to increase the speed of his finger until at last he whirled that bank of fog into a solid ball of fire, and it went rolling through the universe, burning its way through other cosmic banks of fog, until it condensed the moisture without, and fell in floods of rain upon the heated surface and cooled the outward crust. Then the internal flames burst through the cooling crust and threw up the mountains and made the hills of the valley of this wonderful world of ours. If this internal melted mass burst out and cooled very quickly it became granite; that which cooled less quickly became silver; and less quickly, gold; and after gold diamonds were made. Said the old priest, "A diamond is a congealed drop of sunlight."

This is a scientific truth also. You all know that a diamond is pure carbon, actually deposited sunlight—and he said another thing I would not forget: he declared that a diamond is the last and highest of God's mineral creations, as a woman is the last and highest of God's animal creations. I suppose that is the reason why the two have such a liking for each other. And the old priest told Al Hafed that if he had a handful of diamonds he could purchase a whole county, and with a mine of diamonds he could place his children upon thrones through the influence of their great wealth. Al Hafed heard all about diamonds and how much they were worth, and went to his bed that night a poor man—not that he had lost anything, but poor because he was discontented and discontented because he thought he was poor. He said: "I want a mine of diamonds!" So he lay awake all night, and early in the morning sought out the priest. Now I know from experience that a priest when awakened early in the morning is cross. He awoke that priest out of his dreams and said to him, "Will you tell me where I can find diamonds?" The priest said, "Diamonds? What do you want with diamonds?" "I want to be immensely rich," said Al Hafed, "but I don't know where to go." "Well," said the priest, "if you will find a river that runs over white sand between high mountains, in those sands you will always see diamonds." "Do you really believe that there is such a river?" "Plenty of them, plenty of them; all you have to do is just go and find them, then you have them." Al Hafed said, "I will go." So he sold his farm, collected his money at interest, left his family in charge of a neighbor, and away he went in search of diamonds. He began very properly, to my mind, at the Mountains of the Moon. Afterwards he went around into Palestine, then wandered on into Europe, and at last when his money was all spent, and he was in rags, wretchedness and poverty, he stood on the shore of that bay in Barcelona, Spain, when a tidal wave came rolling in through the Pillars of Hercules and the poor afflicted, suffering man could not resist the awful temptation to cast himself into that incoming tide, and he sank beneath its foaming crest, never to rise in this life again.

When that old guide had told me that very sad story, he stopped the camel I was riding and went back to fix the baggage on one of the other camels, and I remember thinking to myself, "Why did he reserve that for his particular friends?" There seemed to be no beginning, middle or end—nothing to it. That was the first story I ever heard told or read in which the hero was killed in the first chapter. I had but one chapter of that story and the hero was dead. When the guide came back and took up the halter of my camel again, he went right on with the same story. He said that Al Hafed's successor led his camel out into the garden to drink, and as that camel put its nose down into the clear water of the garden brook Al Hafed's successor noticed a curious flash of light from the sands of the shallow stream, and reaching in he pulled out a black stone having an eye of light that reflected all the colors of the rainbow, and he took that curious pebble into the house and left it on the mantel, then went on his way and forgot all about it. A few days after that, this same old priest who told Al Hafed how diamonds were made, came in to visit his successor, when he saw that flash of light from the mantel. He rushed up and said, "Here is a diamond—here is a diamond! Has Al Hafed returned?" "No, no; Al Hafed has not returned and that is not a diamond; that is nothing but a stone; we found it right out here in our garden." "But I know a diamond when I see it," said he; "that is a diamond!"

Then together they rushed to the garden and stirred up the white sands with their fingers and found others more beautiful, more valuable diamonds than the first, and thus, said the guide to me, were discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the most magnificent diamond mines in all the history of mankind, exceeding the Kimberley in its value. The great Kohinoor diamond in England's crown jewels and the largest crown diamond on earth in Russia's crown jewels, which I had often hoped she would have to sell before they had peace with Japan, came from that mine, and when the old guide had called my attention to that wonderful discovery he took his Turkish cap off his head again and swung it around in the air to call my attention to the moral. Those Arab guides have a moral to each story, though the stories are not always moral. He said had Al Hafed remained at home and dug in his own cellar or in his own garden, instead of wretchedness, starvation, poverty and death in a strange land, he would have had "acres of diamonds"—for every acre, yes, every shovelful of that old farm afterwards revealed the gems which since have decorated the crowns of monarchs. When he had given the moral to his story, I saw why he had reserved this story for his "particular friends." I didn't tell him I could see it; I was not going to tell that old Arab that I could see it. For it was that mean old Arab's way of going around a thing, like a lawyer, and saying indirectly what he did not dare say directly, that there was a certain young man that day traveling down the Tigris River that might better be at home in America. I didn't tell him I could see it.

I told him his story reminded me of one, and I told it to him quick. I told him about that man out in California, who, in 1847, owned a ranch out there. He read that gold had been discovered in Southern California, and he sold his ranch to Colonel Sutter and started off to hunt for gold. Colonel Sutter put a mill on the little stream in that farm and one day his little girl brought some wet sand from the raceway of the mill into the house and placed it before the fire to dry, and as that sand was falling through the little girl's fingers a visitor saw the first shining scales of real gold that were ever discovered in California; and the man who wanted the gold had sold this ranch and gone away, never to return. I delivered this lecture two years ago in California, in the city that stands near that farm, and they told me that the mine is not exhausted yet, and that a one-third owner of that farm has been getting during these recent years twenty dollars of gold every fifteen minutes of his life, sleeping or waking. Why, you and I would enjoy an income like that!

But the best illustration that I have now of this thought was found here in Pennsylvania. There was a man living in Pennsylvania who owned a farm here and he did what I should do if I had a farm in Pennsylvania—he sold it. But before he sold it he concluded to secure employment collecting coal oil for his cousin in Canada. They first discovered coal oil there. So this farmer in Pennsylvania decided that he would apply for a position with his cousin in Canada. Now, you see, this farmer was not altogether a foolish man. He did net leave his farm until he had something else to do. Of all the simpletons the stars shine on there is none more foolish than a man who leaves one job before he has obtained another. And that has especial reference to gentlemen of my profession, and has no reference to a man seeking a divorce. So I say this old farmer did not leave one job until he had obtained another. He wrote to Canada, but his cousin replied that he could not engage him because he did not know anything about the oil business. "Well, then," said he, "I will understand it." So he set himself at the study of the whole subject. He began at the second day of the creation, he studied the subject from the primitive vegetation to the coal oil stage, until he knew all about it. Then he wrote to his cousin and said, "Now I understand the oil business." And his cousin replied to him, "All right, then, come on." That man, by the record of the county, sold his farm for eight hundred and thirty-three dollars—even money, "no cents." He had scarcely gone from that farm before the man who purchased it went out to arrange for the watering the cattle and he found that the previous owner had arranged the matter very nicely. There is a stream running down the hillside there, and the previous owner had gone out and put a plank across that stream at an angle, extending across the brook and down edgewise a few inches under the surface of the water. The purpose of the plank across that brook was to throw over to the other bank a dreadful-looking scum through which the cattle would not put their noses to drink above the plank, although they would drink the water on one side below it. Thus that man who had gone to Canada had been himself damming back for twenty-three years a flow of coal oil which the State Geologist of Pennsylvania declared officially, as early as 1870, was then worth to our State a hundred millions of dollars. The city of Titusville now stands on that farm and those Pleasantville wells flow on, and that farmer who had studied all about the formation of oil since the second day of God's creation clear down to the present time, sold that farm for $833, no cents—again I say "no sense."

But I need another illustration, and I found that in Massachusetts, and I am sorry I did, because that is my old State. This young man I mention went out of the State to study—went down to Yale College and studied Mines and Mining. They paid him fifteen dollars a week during his last year for training students who were behind their classes in mineralogy, out of hours, of course, while pursuing his own studies. But when he graduated they raised his pay from fifteen dollars to forty-five dollars and offered him a professorship. Then he went straight home to his mother and said, "Mother, I won't work for forty-five dollars a week. What is forty-five dollars a week for a man with a brain like mine! Mother, lets go out to California and stake out gold claims and be immensely rich." "Now" said his mother, "it is just as well to be happy as it is to be rich."

But as he was the only son he had his way—they always do; and they sold out in Massachusetts and went to Wisconsin, where he went into the employ of the Superior Copper Mining Company, and he was lost from sight in the employ of that company at fifteen dollars a week again. He was also to have an interest in any mines that he should discover for that company. But I do not believe that he has ever discovered a mine—I do not know anything about it, but I do not believe he has. I know he had scarcely gone from the old homestead before the farmer who had bought the homestead went out to dig potatoes, and as he was bringing them in in a large basket through the front gateway, the ends of the stone wall came so near together at the gate that the basket hugged very tight. So he set the basket on the ground and pulled, first on one side and then on the other side. Our farms in Massachusetts are mostly stone walls, and the farmers have to be economical with their gateways in order to have some place to put the stones. That basket hugged so tight there that as he was hauling it through he noticed in the upper stone next the gate a block of native silver, eight inches square; and this professor of mines and mining and mineralogy, who would not work for forty-five dollars a week, when he sold that homestead in Massachusetts, sat right on that stone to make the bargain. He was brought up there; he had gone back and forth by that piece of silver, rubbed it with his sleeve, and it seemed to say, "Come now, now, now, here is a hundred thousand dollars. Why not take me?" But he would not take it. There was no silver in Newburyport; it was all away off—well, I don't know where; he didn't, but somewhere else—and he was a professor of mineralogy.

I do not know of anything I would enjoy better than to take the whole time to-night telling of blunders like that I have heard professors make. Yet I wish I knew what that man is doing out there in Wisconsin. I can imagine him out there, as he sits by his fireside, and he is saying to his friends, "Do you know that man Conwell that lives in Philadelphia?" "Oh, yes, I have heard of him." "And do you know that man. Jones that lives in that city?" "Yes, I have heard of him." And then he begins to laugh and laugh and says to his friends, "They have done the same thing I did, precisely." And that spoils the whole joke, because you and I have done it.

Ninety out of every hundred people here have made that mistake this very day. I say you ought to be rich; you have no right to be poor. To live in Philadelphia and not be rich is a misfortune, and it is doubly a misfortune, because you could have been rich just as well as be poor. Philadelphia furnishes so many opportunities. You ought to be rich. But persons with certain religious prejudice will ask, "How can you spend your time advising the rising generation to give their time to getting money—dollars and cents—the commercial spirit?" Yet I must say that you ought to spend time getting rich. You and I know there are some things more valuable than money; of course, we do. Ah, yes! By a heart made unspeakably sad by a grave on which the autumn leaves now fall, I know there are some things higher and grander and sublimer than money. Well does the man know, who has suffered, that there are some things sweeter and holier and more sacred than gold. Nevertheless, the man of common sense also knows that there is not any one of those things that is not greatly enhanced by the use of money. Money is power. Love is the grandest thing on God's earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power; money has powers; and for a man to say, "I do not want money," is to say, "I do not wish to do any good to my fellowmen." It is absurd thus to talk. It is absurd to disconnect them. This is a wonderfully great life, and you ought to spend your time getting money, because of the power there is in money. And yet this religious prejudice is so great that some people think it is a great honor to be one of God's poor. I am looking in the faces of people who think just that way. I heard a man once say in a prayer meeting that he was thankful that he was one of God's poor, and then I silently wondered what his wife would say to that speech, as she took in washing to support the man while he sat and smoked on the veranda. I don't want to see any more of that kind of God's poor. Now, when a man could have been rich just as well, and he is now weak because he is poor, he has done some great wrong; he has been untruthful to himself; he has been unkind to his fellowmen. We ought to get rich if we can by honorable and Christian methods, and these are the only methods that sweep us quickly toward the goal of riches.

I remember, not many years ago a young theological student who came into my office and said to me that he thought it was his duty to come in and "labor with me." I asked him what had happened, and he said: "I feel it is my duty to come in and speak to you, sir, and say that the Holy Scriptures declare that money is the root of all evil." I asked him where he found that saying, and he said he found it in the Bible. I asked him whether he had made a new Bible, and he said, no, he had not gotten a new Bible, that it was in the old Bible. "Well," I said, "if it is in my Bible, I never saw it. Will you please get the text-book and let me see it?" He left the room and soon came stalking in with his Bible open, with all the bigoted pride of the narrow sectarian, who founds his creed on some misinterpretation of Scripture, and he puts the Bible down on the table before me and fairly squealed into my ear, "There it is. You can read it for yourself." I said to him, "Young man, you will learn, when you get a little older, that you cannot trust another denomination to read the Bible for you." I said, "Now, you belong to another denomination. Please read it to me, and remember that you are taught in a school where emphasis is exegesis." So he took the Bible and read it: "The love of money is the root of all evil." Then he had it right. The Great Book has come back into the esteem and love of the people, and into the respect of the greatest minds of earth, and now you can quote it and rest your life and your death on it without more fear. So, when he quoted right from the Scriptures he quoted the truth. "The love of money is the root of all evil." Oh, that is it. It is the worship of the means instead of the end, though you cannot reach the end without the means. When a man makes an idol of the money instead of the purposes for which it may be used, when he squeezes the dollar until the eagle squeals, then it is made the root of all evil. Think, if you only had the money, what you could do for your wife, your child, and for your home and your city. Think how soon you could endow the Temple College yonder if you only had the money and the disposition to give it; and yet, my friend, people say you and I should not spend the time getting rich. How inconsistent the whole thing is. We ought to be rich, because money has power. I think the best thing for me to do is to illustrate this, for if I say you ought to get rich, I ought, at least, to suggest how it is done. We get a prejudice against rich men because of the lies that are told about them. The lies that are told about Mr. Rockefeller because he has two hundred million dollars—so many believe them; yet how false is the representation of that man to the world. How little we can tell what is true nowadays when newspapers try to sell their papers entirely on some sensation! The way they lie about the rich men is something terrible, and I do not know that there is anything to illustrate this better than what the newspapers now say about the city of Philadelphia. A young man came to me the other day and said, "If Mr. Rockefeller, as you think, is a good man, why is it that everybody says so much against him?" It is because he has gotten ahead of us; that is the whole of it—just gotten ahead of us. Why is it Mr. Carnegie is criticised so sharply by an envious world? Because he has gotten more than we have. If a man knows more than I know, don't I incline to criticise somewhat his learning? Let a man, stand in a pulpit and preach to thousands, and if I have fifteen people in my church, and they're all asleep, don't I criticise him? We always do that to the man who gets ahead of us. Why, the man you are criticising has one hundred millions, and you have fifty cents, and both of you have just what you are worth. One of the richest men in this country came into my home and sat down in my parlor and said: "Did you see all those lies about my family in the paper?" "Certainly I did; I knew they were lies when I saw them." "Why do they lie about me the way they do?" "Well", I said to him, "if you will give me your check for one hundred millions, I will take all the lies along with it" "Well," said he, "I don't see any sense in their thus talking about my family and myself. Conwell, tell me frankly, what do you think the American people think of me?" "Well," said I, "they think you are the blackest-hearted villain that ever trod the soil!" "But what can I do about it?" There is nothing he can do about it, and yet he is one of the sweetest Christian men I ever knew. If you get a hundred millions you will have the lies; you will be lied about, and you can judge your success in any line by the lies that are told about you. I say that you ought to be rich. But there are ever coming to me young men who say, "I would like to go into business, but I cannot." "Why not?" "Because I have no capital to begin on." Capital, capital to begin on! What! young man! Living in Philadelphia and looking at this wealthy generation, all of whom began as poor boys, and you want capital to begin on? It is fortunate for you that you have no capital. I am glad you have no money. I pity a rich man's son. A rich man's son in these days of ours occupies a very difficult position. They are to be pitied. A rich man's son cannot know the very best things in human life. He cannot. The statistics of Massachusetts show us that not one out of seventeen rich men's sons ever die rich. They are raised in luxury, they die in poverty. Even if a rich man's son retains his father's money even then he cannot know the best things of life.

A young man in our college yonder asked me to formulate for him what I thought was the happiest hour in a man's history, and I studied it long and came back convinced that the happiest hour that any man ever sees in any earthly matter is when a young man takes his bride over the threshold of the door, for the first time, of the house he himself has earned and built, when he turns to his bride and with an eloquence greater than any language of mine, he sayeth to his wife, "My loved one, I earned this home myself; I earned it all. It is all mine, and I divide it with thee." That is the grandest moment a human heart may ever see. But a rich man's son cannot know that. He goes into a finer mansion, it may be, but he is obliged to go through the house and say, "Mother gave me this, mother gave me that, my mother gave me that, my mother gave me that," until his wife wishes she had married his mother. Oh, I pity a rich man's son. I do. Until he gets so far along in his dudeism that he gets his arms up like that and can't get them down. Didn't you ever see any of them astray at Atlantic City? I saw one of these scarecrows once and I never tire thinking about it. I was at Niagara Falls lecturing, and after the lecture I went to the hotel, and when I went up to the desk there stood there a millionaire's son from New York. He was an indescribable specimen of anthropologic potency. He carried a gold-headed cane under his arm—more in its head than he had in his. I do not believe I could describe the young man if I should try. But still I must say that he wore an eye-glass he could not see through; patent leather shoes he could not walk in, and pants he could not sit down in—dressed like a grasshopper! Well, this human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I came in. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it's "Hinglish, you know," to lisp: "Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome papah and thome envelopehs!" The clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast them across the counter and turned away to his books. You should have seen that specimen of humanity when the paper and envelopes came across the counter—he whose wants had always been anticipated by servants. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass and he yelled after that clerk: "Come back here thir, come right back here. Now, thir, will you order a thervant to take that papah and thothe envelopes and carry them to yondah dethk." Oh, the poor miserable, contemptible American monkey! He couldn't carry paper and envelopes twenty feet. I suppose he could not get his arms down. I have no pity for such travesties of human nature. If you have no capital, I am glad of it You don't need capital; you need common sense, not copper cents.

A.T. Stewart, the great princely merchant of New York, the richest man in America in his time, was a poor boy; he had a dollar and a half and went into the mercantile business. But he lost eighty-seven and a half cents of his first dollar and a half because he bought some needles and thread and buttons to sell, which people didn't want. Are you poor? It is because you are not wanted and are left on your own hands. There was the great lesson. Apply it whichever way you will it comes to every single person's life, young or old. He did not know what people needed, and consequently bought something they didn't want, and had the goods left on his hands a dead loss. A.T. Stewart earned there the great lesson of his mercantile life and said, "I will never buy anything more until I first learn what the people want; then I'll make the purchase." He went around to the doors and asked them what they did want, and when he found out what they wanted, he invested his sixty-two and a hall cents and began to supply "a known demand." I care not what your profession or occupation in life may be; I care not whether you are a lawyer, a doctor, a housekeeper, teacher or whatever else, the principle is precisely the same. We must know what the world needs first and then invest ourselves to supply that need, and success is almost certain. A.T. Stewart went on until he was worth forty millions. "Well," you will say, "a man can do that in New York, but cannot do it here in Philadelphia." The statistics very carefully gathered in New York in 1889 showed one hundred and seven millionaires in the city worth over ten millions apiece. It was remarkable and people think they must go there to get rich. Out of that one hundred and seven millionaires only seven of them made their money in New York, and the others moved to New York after their fortunes were made, and sixty-seven out of the remaining hundred made their fortunes in towns of less than six thousand people, and the richest man in the country at that time lived in a town of thirty-five hundred inhabitants, and always lived there and never moved away. It is not so much where you are as what you are. But at the same time if the largeness of the city comes into the problem, then remember it is the smaller city that furnishes the great opportunity to make the millions of money. The best illustration that I can give is in reference to John Jacob Astor, who was a poor boy and who made all the money of the Astor family. He made more than his successors have ever earned, and yet he once held a mortgage on a millinery store in New York, and because the people could not make enough money to pay the interest and the rent, he foreclosed the mortgage and took possession of the store and went into partnership with the man who had failed. He kept the same stock did not give them a dollar of capital, and he left them alone and went out and sat down upon a bench in the park. Out there on that bench in the park he had the most important, and to my mind, the pleasantest part of that partnership business. He was watching the ladies as they went by; and where is the man that wouldn't get rich at that business? But when John Jacob Astor saw a lady pass, with her shoulders back and her head up, as if she did not care if the whole world looked on her, he studied her bonnet; and before that bonnet was out of sight he knew the shape of the frame and the color of the trimmings, the curl of the—something on a bonnet Sometimes I try to describe a woman's bonnet, but it is of little use, for it would be out of style to-morrow night. So John Jacob Astor went to the store and said: "Now, put in the show window just such a bonnet as I describe to you because," said he, "I have just seen a lady who likes just such a bonnet. Do not make up any more till I come back." And he went out again and sat on that bench in the park, and another lady of a different form and complexion passed him with a bonnet of different shape and color, of course. "Now," said he, "put such a bonnet as that in the show window." He didn't fill his show window with hats and bonnets which drive people away and then sit in the back of the store and bawl because the people go somewhere else to trade. He didn't put a hat or bonnet in that show window the like of which he had not seen before it was made up.

In our city especially there are great opportunities for manufacturing, and the time has come when the line is drawn very sharply between the stockholders of the factory and their employes. Now, friends, there has also come a discouraging gloom upon this country and the laboring men are beginning to feel that they are being held down by a crust over their heads through which they find it impossible to break, and the aristocratic money-owner himself is so far above that he will never descend to their assistance. That is the thought that is in the minds of our people. But, friends, never in the history of our country was there an opportunity so great for the poor man to get rich as there is now and in the city of Philadelphia. The very fact that they get discouraged is what prevents them from getting rich. That is all there is to it. The road is open, and let us keep it open between the poor and the rich. I know that the labor unions have two great problems to contend with, and there is only one way to solve them. The labor unions are doing as much to prevent its solving as are the capitalists to-day, and there are positively two sides to it. The labor union has two difficulties; the first one is that it began to make a labor scale for all classes on a par, and they scale down a man that can earn five dollars a day to two and a half a day, in order to level up to him an imbecile that cannot earn fifty cents a day. That is one of the most dangerous and discouraging things for the working man. He cannot get the results of his work if he do better work or higher work or work longer; that is a dangerous thing, and in order to get every laboring man free and every American equal to every other American, let the laboring man ask what he is worth and get it—not let any capitalist say to him: "You shall work for me for half of what you are worth;" nor let any labor organization say: "You shall work for the capitalist for half your worth." Be a man, be independent, and then shall the laboring man find the road ever open from poverty to wealth. The other difficulty that the labor union has to consider, and this problem they have to solve themselves, is the kind of orators who come and talk to them about the oppressive rich. I can in my dreams recite the oration I have heard again and again under such circumstances. My life has been with the laboring man. I am a laboring man myself. I have often, in their assemblies, heard the speech of the man who has been invited to address the labor union. The man gets up before the assembled company of honest laboring men and he begins by saying: "Oh, ye honest, industrious laboring men, who have furnished all the capital of the world, who have built all the palaces and constructed all the railroads and covered the ocean with her steamships. Oh, you laboring men! You are nothing but slaves; you are ground down in the dust by the capitalist who is gloating over you as he enjoys his beautiful estates and as he has his banks filled with gold, and every dollar he owns is coined out of the hearts' blood of the honest laboring man." Now, that is a lie, and you know it is a lie; and yet that is the kind of speech that they are all the time hearing, representing the capitalists as wicked and the laboring men so enslaved. Why, how wrong it is! Let the man who loves his flag and believes in American principles endeavor with all his soul to bring the capitalist and the laboring man together until they stand side by side, and arm in arm, and work for the common good of humanity.

He is an enemy to his country who sets capital against labor or labor against capital.

Suppose I were to go down through this audience and ask you to introduce me to the great inventors who live here in Philadelphia. "The inventors of Philadelphia," you would say "Why we don't have any in Philadelphia. It is too slow to invent anything." But you do have just as great inventors, and they are here in this audience, as ever invented a machine. But the probability is that the greatest inventor to benefit the world with his discovery is some person, perhaps some lady, who thinks she could not invent anything. Did you ever study the history of invention and see how strange it was that the man who made the greatest discovery did it without any previous idea that he was an inventor? Who are the great inventors? They are persons with plain, straightforward common sense, who saw a need in the world and immediately applied themselves to supply that need. If you want to invent anything, don't try to find it in the wheels in your head nor the wheels in your machine, but first find out what the people need, and then apply yourself to that need, and this leads to invention on the part of people you would not dream of before. The great inventors are simply great men; the greater the man the more simple the man; and the more simple a machine, the more valuable it is. Did you ever know a really great man? His ways are so simple, so common, so plain, that you think any one could do what he is doing. So it is with the great men the world over. If you know a really great man, a neighbor of yours, you can go right up to him and say, "How are you, Jim, good morning, Sam." Of course you can, for they are always so simple.

When I wrote the life of General Garfield, one of his neighbors took me to his back door, and shouted, "Jim, Jim, Jim!" and very soon "Jim" came to the door and General Garfield let me in—one of the grandest men of our century. The great men of the world are ever so. I was down in Virginia and went up to an educational institution and was directed to a man who was setting out a tree. I approached him and said, "Do you think it would be possible for me to see General Robert B. Lee, the President of the University?" He said, "Sir, I am General Lee." Of course, when you meet such a man, so noble a man as that, you will find him a simple, plain man. Greatness is always just so modest and great inventions are simple.

I asked a class in school once who were the great inventors, and a little girl popped up and said, "Columbus." Well, now, she was not so far wrong. Columbus bought a farm and he carried on that farm just as I carried on my father's farm. He took a hoe and went out and sat down on a rock. But Columbus, as he sat upon that shore and looked out upon the ocean, noticed that the ships, as they sailed away, sank deeper into the sea the farther they went. And since that time some other "Spanish ships" have sunk into the sea. But as Columbus noticed that the tops of the masts dropped down out of sight, he said: "That is the way it is with this hoe handle; if you go around this hoe handle, the farther off you go the farther down you go. I can sail around to the East Indies." How plain it all was. How simple the mind—majestic like the simplicity of a mountain in its greatness. Who are the great inventors? They are ever the simple, plain, everyday people who see the need and set about to supply it.

I was once lecturing in North Carolina, and the cashier of the bank sat directly behind a lady who wore a very large hat. I said to that audience, "Your wealth is too near to you; you are looking right over it." He whispered to his friend, "Well, then, my wealth is in that hat." A little later, as he wrote me, I said, "Wherever there is a human need there is a greater fortune than a mine can furnish." He caught my thought, and he drew up his plan for a better hat pin than was in the hat before him, and the pin is now being manufactured. He was offered fifty-five thousand dollars for his patent. That man made his fortune before he got out of that hall. This is the whole question: Do you see a need?

I remember well a man up in my native hills, a poor man, who for twenty years was helped by the town in his poverty, who owned a wide-spreading maple tree that covered the poor man's cottage like a benediction from on high. I remember that tree, for in the spring—there were some roguish boys around that neighborhood when I was young—in the spring of the year the man would put a bucket there and the spouts to catch the maple sap, and I remember where that bucket was; and when I was young the boys were, oh, so mean, that they went to that tree before than man had gotten out of bed in the morning, and after he had gone to bed at night, and drank up that sweet sap. I could swear they did it. He didn't make a great deal of maple sugar from that tree. But one day he made the sugar so white and crystaline that the visitor did not believe it was maple sugar; thought maple sugar must be red or black. He said to the old man: "Why don't you make it that way and sell it for confectionary?" The old man caught his thought and invented the "rock maple crystal," and before that patent expired he had ninety thousand dollars and had built a beautiful palace on the site of that tree. After forty years owning that tree he awoke to find it had fortunes of money indeed in it. And many of us are right by the tree that has a fortune for us, and we own it, possess it, do what we will with it, but we do not learn its value because we do not see the human need, and in these discoveries, and inventions this is one of the most romantic things of life.

I have received letters from all over the country and from England, where I have lectured, saying that they have discovered this and that, and one man out in Ohio took me through his great factories last spring, and said that they cost him $680,000, and said he, "I was not worth a cent in the world when I heard your lecture "Acres of Diamonds"; but I made up my mind to stop right here and make my fortune here, and here it is." He showed me through his unmortgaged possessions. And this is a continual experience now as I travel through the country, after these many years. I mention this incident, not to boast, but to show you that you can do the same if you will.

Who are the great inventors? I remember a good illustration in a man who used to live in East Brookfield, Mass. He was a shoemaker, and he was out of work, and he sat around the house until his wife told him "to go out doors." And he did what every husband is compelled by law to do—he obeyed his wife. And he went out and sat down on an ash barrel in his back yard. Think of it! Stranded on an ash barrel and the enemy in possession of the house! As he sat on that ash barrel, he looked down into that little brook which ran through that back yard into the meadows, and he saw a little trout go flashing up the stream and hiding under the bank. I do not suppose he thought of Tennyson's beautiful poem:

"Chatter, chatter, as I flow, To join the brimming river, Men may come, and men may go, But I go on forever."

But as this man looked into the brook, he leaped off that ash barrel and managed to catch the trout with his fingers, and sent it to Worcester. They wrote back that they would give him a five dollar bill for another such trout as that, not that it was worth that much, but he wished to help the poor man. So this shoemaker and his wife, now perfectly united, that five dollar bill in prospect went out to get another trout They went up the stream to its source and down to the brimming river, but not another trout could they find in the whole stream; and so they came home disconsolate and went to the minister. The minister didn't know how trout grew, but he pointed the way. Said he, "Get Seth Green's book, and that will give you the information you want." They did so, and found all about the culture of trout. They found that a trout lays thirty-six hundred eggs every year and every trout gains a quarter of a pound every year, so that in four years a little trout will furnish four tons per annum to sell to the market at fifty cents a pound. When they found that, they said they didn't believe any such story as that, but if they could get five dollars a piece they could make something. And right in that same back yard with the coal sifter up stream and window screen down the stream, they began the culture of trout. They afterwards moved to the Hudson, and since then he has become the authority in the United States upon the raising of fish, and he has been next to the highest on the United States Fish Commission in Washington. My lesson is that man's wealth was out there in his back yard for twenty years, but he didn't see it until his wife drove him out with a mop stick.

I remember meeting personally a poor carpenter of Hingham, Massachusetts, who was out of work and in poverty. His wife also drove him out of doors. He sat down on the shore and whittled a soaked shingle into a wooden chain. His children quarreled over it in the evening, and while he was whittling a second one, a neighbor came along and said, "Why don't you whittle toys if you can carve like that?" He said, "I don't know what to make!" There is the whole thing. His neighbor said to him: "Why don't you ask your own children?" Said he, "What is the use of doing that? My children are different from other people's children." I used to see people like that when I taught school. The next morning when his boy came down the stairway, he said, "Sam, what do you want for a toy?" "I want a wheel-barrow." When his little girl came down he asked her what she wanted, and she said, "I want a little doll's washstand, a little doll's carriage, a little doll's umbrella," and went on with a whole lot of things that would have taken his lifetime to supply. He consulted his own children right there in his own house and began to whittle out toys to please them. He began with his jack-knife, and made those unpainted Hingham toys. He is the richest man in the entire New England States, if Mr. Lawson is to be trusted in his statement concerning such things, and yet that man's fortune was made by consulting his own children in his own house. You don't need to go out of your own house to find out what to invent or what to make. I always talk too long on this subject.

I would like to meet the great men who are here to-night. The great men! We don't have any great men in Philadelphia. Great men! You say that they all come from London, or San Francisco, or Rome, or Manayunk, or anywhere else but here—anywhere else but Philadelphia—and yet, in fact, there are just as great men in Philadelphia as in any city of its size. There are great men and women in this audience. Great men, I have said, are very simple men. Just as many great men here as are to be found anywhere. The greatest error in judging great men is that we think that they always hold an office. The world knows nothing of its greatest men. Who are the great men of the world? The young man and young woman may well ask the question. It is not necessary that they should hold an office, and yet that is the popular idea. That is the idea we teach now in our high schools and common schools, that the great men of the world are those who hold some high office, and unless we change that very soon and do away with that prejudice, we are going to change to an empire. There is no question about it. We must teach that men are great only on their intrinsic value, and not on the position that they may incidentally happen to occupy. And yet, don't blame the young men saying that they are going to be great when they get into some official position. I ask this audience again who of you are going to be great? Says a young man: "I am going to be great" "When are you going to be great?" "When I am elected to some political office," Won't you learn the lesson, young man; that it is prima facie evidence of littleness to hold public office under our form of government? Think of it. This is a government of the people, and by the people, and for the people, and not for the office-holder, and if the people in this country rule as they always should rule, an officeholder is only the servant of the people, and the Bible says that "the servant cannot be greater than his master," The Bible says that "he that is sent cannot be greater than him who sent him." In this country the people are the masters, and the office-holders can never be greater than the people; they should be honest servants of the people, but they are not our greatest men. Young man, remember that you never heard of a great man holding any political office in this country unless he took that office at an expense to himself. It is a loss to every great man to take a public office in our country. Bear this in mind, young man, that you cannot be made great by a political election. Another young man says, "I am going to be a great man in Philadelphia some time." "Is that so? When are you going to be great?" "When there comes another war! When we get into difficulty with Mexico, or England, or Russia, or Japan, or with Spain again over Cuba, or with New Jersey, I will march up to the cannon's mouth, and amid the glistening bayonets I will tear down their flag from its staff, and I will come home with stars on my shoulders, and hold every office in the gift of the government, and I will be great." "No, you won't! No, you won't; that is no evidence of true greatness, young man." But don't blame that young man for thinking that way; that is the way he is taught in the high school. That is the way history is taught in college. He is taught that the men who held the office did all the fighting.

I remember we had a Peace Jubilee here in Philadelphia soon after the Spanish war. Perhaps some of those visitors think we should not have had it until now in Philadelphia, and as the great procession was going up Broad street I was told that the tally-ho coach stopped right in front of my house, and on the coach was Hobson, and all the people threw up their hats and swung their handkerchiefs, and shouted "Hurrah for Hobson!" I would have yelled too, because he deserves much more of his country than he has ever received. But suppose I go into the High School to-morrow and ask, "Boys, who sunk the Merrimac?" If they answer me "Hobson," they tell me seven-eighths of a lie—seven-eighths of a lie, because there were eight men who sunk the Merrimac. The other seven men, by virtue of their position, were continually exposed to the Spanish fire, while Hobson, as an officer, might reasonably be behind the smoke-stack. Why, my friends, in this intelligent audience gathered here to-night I do not believe I could find a single person that can name the other seven men who were with Hobson. Why do we teach history in that way? We ought to teach that however humble the station a man may occupy, if he does his full duty in his place, he is just as much entitled to the American peopled honor as is a king upon a throne. We do teach it as a mother did her little boy in Now York when he said, "Mamma, what great building is that?" "That is General Grant's tomb." "Who was General Grant?" "He was the man who put down the rebellion." Is that the way to teach history?

Do you think we would have gained a victory if it had depended on General Grant alone? Oh, no. Then why is there a tomb on the Hudson at all? Why, not simply because General Grant was personally a great man himself, but that tomb is there because he was a representative man and represented two hundred thousand men who went down to death for their nation and many of them as great as General Grant. That is why that beautiful tomb stands on the heights over the Hudson.

I remember an incident that will illustrate this, the only one that I can give to-night. I am ashamed of it, but I don't dare leave it out. I close my eyes now; I look back through the years to 1863; I can see my native town in the Berkshire Hills, I can see that cattle-show ground filled with people; I can see the church there and the town hall crowded, and hear bands playing, and see flags flying and handkerchiefs steaming—well do I recall at this moment that day. The people had turned out to receive a company of soldiers, and that company came marching up on the Common. They had served out one term in the Civil War and had re-enlisted, and they were being received by their native townsmen. I was but a boy, but I was captain of that company, puffed out with pride on that day—why, a cambric needle would have burst me all to pieces. As I marched on the Common at the head of my company, there was not a man more proud than I. We marched into the town hall and then they seated my soldiers down in the center of the house and I took my place down on the front seat, and then the town officers filed through the great throng of people, who stood close and packed in that little hall. They came up on the platform, formed a half circle around it, and the mayor of the town, the "chairman of the Select men" in Kew England, took his seat in the middle of that half circle, He was an old man, his hair was gray; he never held an office before in his life. He thought that an office was all he needed to be a truly great man, and when he came up he adjusted his powerful spectacles and glanced calmly around the audience with amazing dignity. Suddenly his eyes fell upon me, and then the good old man came right forward and invited me to come up on the stand with the town officers. Invited me up on the stand! No town officer ever took notice of me before I went to war. Now, I should not say that. One town officer was there who advised the teacher to "whale" me, but I mean no "honorable mention." So I was invited up on the stand with the town officers. I took my seat and let my sword fall on the floor, and folded my arms across my breast and waited to be received. Napoleon the Fifth! Pride goeth before destruction and a fall. When I had gotten my seat and all became silent through the hall, the chairman of the Select men arose and came forward with great dignity to the table, and we all supposed he would introduce the Congregational minister, who was the only orator in the town, and who would give the oration to the returning soldiers. But, friends, you should have seen the surprise that ran over that audience when they discovered that this old farmer was going to deliver that oration himself. He had never made a speech in his life before, but he fell into the same error that others have fallen into, he seemed to think that the office would make him an orator. So he had written out a speech and walked up and down the pasture until he had learned it by heart and frightened the cattle, and he brought that manuscript with him, and taking it from his pocket, he spread it carefully upon the table. Then he adjusted his spectacles to be sure that he might see it, and walked far back on the platform and then stepped forward like this. He must have studied the subject much, for he assumed an elocutionary attitude; he rested heavily upon his left heel, slightly advanced the right foot, threw back his shoulders, opened the organs of speech, and advanced his right hand at an angle of forty-five. As he stood in that elocutionary attitude this is just the way that speech went, this is it precisely. Some of my friends have asked me if I do not exaggerate it, but I could not exaggerate it. Impossible! This is the way it went; although I am not here for the story but the lesson that is back of it:

"Fellow citizens." As soon as he heard his voice, his hand began to shake like that, his knees began to tremble, and then he shook all over. He coughed and choked and finally came around to look at his manuscript. Then he began again: "Fellow citizens: We—are—we are—we are—we are—We are very happy—we are very happy—we are very happy—to welcome back to their native town these soldiers who have fought and bled—and come back again to their native town. We are especially—we are especially—we are especially—we are especially pleased to see with us to-day this young hero (that meant me)—this young hero who in imagination (friends, remember, he said "imagination," for if he had not said that, I would not be egotistical enough to refer to it)—this young hero who, in imagination, we have seen leading his troops—leading—we have seen leading—we have seen leading his troops on to the deadly breach. We have seen his shining—his shining—we have seen his shining—we have seen his shining—his shining sword—flashing in the sunlight as he shouted to his troops, 'Come on!'"

Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear! How little that good, old man knew about war. If he had known anything about war, he ought to have known what any soldier in this audience knows is true, that it is next to a crime for an officer of infantry ever in time of danger to go ahead of his men. I, with my shining sword flashing in the sunlight, shouting to my troops: "Come on." I never did it. Do you suppose I would go ahead of my men to be shot in the front by the enemy and in the back by my own men? That is no place for an officer. The place for the officer is behind the private soldier in actual fighting. How often, as a staff officer, I rode down the line when the Rebel cry and yell was coming out of the woods, sweeping along over the fields, and shouted, "Officers to the rear! Officers to the rear!" and then every officer goes behind the line of battle, and the higher the officer's rank, the farther behind he goes. Not because he is any the less brave, but because the laws of war require that to be done. If the general came up on the front line and were killed you would lose your battle anyhow, because he has the plan of the battle in his brain, and must be kept in comparative safety. I, with my "shining sword flashing in the sunlight." Ah! There sat in the hall that day men who had given that boy their last hardtack, who had carried him on their backs through deep rivers. But some were not there; they had gone down to death for their country. The speaker mentioned them, but they were but little noticed, and yet they had gone down to death for their country, gone down for a cause they believed was right and still believe was right, though I grant to the other side the same that I ask for myself. Yet these men who had actually died for their country were little noticed, and the hero of the hour was this boy. Why was he the hero? Simply because that man fell into that same foolishness. This boy was an officer, and those were only private soldiers. I learned a lesson that I will never forget. Greatness consists not in holding some office; greatness really consists in doing some great deed with little means, in the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks of life; that is true greatness. He who can give to this people better streets, better homes, better schools, better churches, more religion, more of happiness, more of God, he that can be a blessing to the community in which he lives to-night will be great anywhere, but he who cannot be a blessing where he now lives will never be great anywhere on the face of God's earth. "We live in deeds, not years, in feeling, not in figures on a dial; in thoughts, not breaths; we should count time by heart throbs, in the cause of right." Bailey says: "He most lives who thinks most."

If you forget everything I have said to you, do not forget this, because it contains more in two lines than all I have said. Bailey says: "He most lives who thinks most, who feels the noblest, and who acts the best."



"PERSONAL GLIMPSES OF CELEBRATED MEN AND WOMEN."[A]

[Footnote A: Stenographic report by A. Russell Smith, Sec'y.]

When I had been lecturing forty years, which is now four years ago, the Lecture Bureau suggested that before I retire from the public platform, that I should prepare one subject and deliver it through the country. For I had told the Bureau thirty years ago that when I had lectured forty years, I would retire. They therefore suggested a talk on this topic, "Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women." But a death in our family which destroyed the homeness of our house produced such an effect upon us that after the forty years came we found that we would rather wander than stay at home, and consequently we are traveling still, and will do so until the end. This explanation will show why many of these things are said. For I must necessarily bring myself often into this topic, sometimes unpleasantly to myself. Mark Twain says, that the trouble with an old man is that he "remembers so many things that ain't so," and with Mark Twain's caution in my ears, I will try to give you these "Personal Glimpses of Celebrated Men and Women."

I do not claim to be a very intimate friend of great men. But a fly may look at an elephant, and for this reason we may glance at the great men and women whom I have seen through the many years of public life. Sometimes those glimpses give us a better idea of the real man or woman than an entire biography written while he was living would do; and to-night as a grandfather would bring his grandchildren to his knee and tell them of his little experiences, so let me tell to you these incidents in a life now so largely lived out.

As I glance back to the Hampshire Highlands of the dear old Berkshire Hills in Massachusetts, where my father worked as a farmer among the rooks for twenty years to pay off a mortgage of twelve hundred dollars upon his little farm, my elder brother and myself slept in the attic which had one window in the gable end, composed of four lights and those very small. I remember that attic so distinctly now, with the ears of corn hung by the husks on the bare rafters, the rats running over the floor and sometimes over the faces of the boys; the patter of the rain upon the roof, and the whistle of the wind around that gable end, the sifting of the snows through the hole in the window over the pillow on our bed. While these things may appear very simple and homely before this great audience, yet I mention them because in this house I had a glimpse of the first great man I ever saw. It was far in the country, far from the railroad, far from the city, yet into that region there came occasionally a man or woman whose name is a household word in the world. In those mountains of my boyhood there was then an "underground railroad" running from Virginia to Canada. It was called an "underground railroad," although it was a system by which the escaped slaves from Virginia came into Delaware, from Delaware into Philadelphia, then to New York, then to Springfield, and from Springfield my father took the slaves by night to Worthington, Mass., and they were sent on by St. Albans, over the Canada line into liberty. This "underground railroad" system was composed of a chain of men of whom my father was one link. One night my father drove up in the dark, and my elder brother and I looked out to see who it was he had! brought home with him. We supposed he had brought a slave whom he was helping to escape. Oh, those dreary, dark days, when we were in continual dread lest the United States Marshal should arrest my father, throw him into prison for thus assisting these fugitive slaves. The gloomy memory of those early years chills me now. But as we gazed out that dark night, we saw that it was a white man with father and who helped unhitch the horses and put them in the barn. In the morning this white man sat at the breakfast table and my father introduced him to us, saying: "Boys, this is Frederick Douglass, the great colored orator," While I looked at him, giggling as boys will do, Mr. Douglass turned to us and said, "Yes, boys, I am a colored man; my mother was a colored woman and my father a white man," and said he, "I have never seen my father, and I do not know much about my mother. I remember her once when she interfered between me and the overseer, who was whipping me, and she received the lash upon her cheek and shoulder, and her blood ran across my face. I remember washing her blood from my face and clothes." That story made a deep impression on us boys, stamped indelibly on our memories. Frederick Douglass is thus mentioned to illustrate the subject that I have come to teach to-night. He frequently came to our house after that and my mother often said to him, "Mr. Douglass, you will work yourself to death," but he replied that until the slaves were free, and that would be very soon, he must devote his life to them. But after that, said he, "I will retire to Rochester, New York, where I have some land and will build a house." He told us how many rooms it would have, what decorations would be there, but when the war had been over several years, he came to the house again and my father asked him about the house in Rochester. "Well," he said, "I have not built that one yet, but I have my plans for it. I have some work yet to do; I must take care of the freedmen in the South, and look after their financial prosperity, then I will build my cottage." You all remember that he never built his house, but suddenly went on into the unknown of the greatest work of his life.

I remember that in 1852, my father came with another man who was put for the night into the northwest bedroom—this is the room where those New Englanders always put their friends, because, perhaps, pneumonia comes there first—that awful, cold, dismal, northwest bedroom. Thinking a favorite uncle had come, I went to the door early in the morning. The door was shut—one of those doors which, if you lift the latch, the door immediately swings open. I lifted the latch and prepared to leap in to awaken my uncle and astonish him by my early morning greeting. But when the door swung back, I glanced toward the bed. The astonishment chills me at this moment, for in that bed was not my uncle; but a giant, whose toes stood up at the foot-board, and whose long hair was spread out over the pillow and his long gray whiskers lay on the bed clothes, and oh, that snore—it sounded like some steam horn. That giant figure frightened me and I rushed out into the kitchen and said, "Mother, who is that strange man in the northwest bed room?" and she said, "Why, that is John Brown." I had never seen John Brown before, although my father had been with him in the wool business in Springfield. I had heard some strange things about John Brown, and the figure of the man made them seem doubly terrible. I hid beside my mother, where I said I would stay until the man was through his breakfast, but father came out and demanded that the boys should come in, and he set me right under the wing of that awful giant. But when John Brown saw us coming in so timidly, he turned to us with a smile so benign and beautiful and so greatly in contrast to what we had pictured him, that it was a transition. He became to us boys one of the loveliest men we ever knew. He would go to the barn with us and milk the cows, pitch the hay from the hay-mow; he drove the cattle to water for us, and told us many a story, until the dear, good old man became one of the treasurers of our life. It is true that my mother thought he was half crazy, and consequently she and father did not always agree about him, and did not discuss him before the children. But nevertheless, be he a crank, or a fanatic, or what he may, one thing is sure, the richest milk of human kindness flowed from that heart and devoted itself sincerely to the uplift of humanity. I remember him with love, love deep and sacred, up to this present time. However great an extremist John Brown was, there were many of them in New England. Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown never could agree. John Brown used to criticise Wendell Phillips severely. He said that Wendell Phillips could not see to read the clearest signs of revolution, and he was reminded by the husband who bought a grave-stone that had been carved for another woman, but the stone-cutter said "That has the name of another person." "Oh," said the widower, "that makes no difference; my wife couldn't read." John Brown once said of Wm. Lloyd Garrison that he couldn't see the point and was like the woman who never could see a joke. One morning, seated at the breakfast table, her husband cracked a joke, but she did not smile, when he said, "Mary, you could not see a joke if it were fired at you from a Dalgreen gun," whereupon she remarked: "Now John, you know they do not fire jokes out of a gun." Well do I recall that December 2d of 1859. Only a few weeks before John Brown came to our house and my father subscribed to the purchase of rifles to aid in the attempt to raise the insurrection among the slaves. The last time I saw John Brown he was in the wagon with my father. Father gave him the reins and came back as though he had forgotten something. John Brown said, "Boys, stay at home; stay at home! Now, remember, you may never see me again," and then in a lower voice, "And I do not think you ever will see me again," but "Remember the advice of your Uncle Brown (as we called him), and stay at home with the old folks, and remember that you will be more blessed here than anywhere else on earth." The happiest place on earth for me is still at my old home in Litchfield, Connecticut. I did not understand him then, but on December 2d at eleven o'clock my father called us all into the house and all that hour from eleven to twelve o'clock we sat there in perfect silence. As the old clock in that kitchen struck eleven, I heard the bell, ring from the Methodist Church, its peal coming up the valley, from hill to hill, and echoing its sad tone as the hour wore on. The peal of that bell remains with me now; it has ever been a source of inspiration to me. Sixty times struck that old bell. Once a minute, and when the long sad hour was over, father put his Bible upon the mantel and went slowly out, and we all solemnly followed, going to our various duties. That solemn hour had a voice in the coming great Civil War of 1861-65. At that hour John Brown was hanged in Virginia. All through New England, they kept that hour with the same solemn services which characterized my father's family. When the call came for volunteers the young men of New England enlisted in the army, and sang again and again, that old song, "John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on." His soul is still marching on. And while I am one of those who would be the first to resist any attempt to mar the sweet fraternity that now characterises the feeling between the North and South, as I believe that the Southern soldier fought for what he believed to be right, and consequently is entitled to our fraternal respect, and while I believe that John Brown was sometimes a fanatic, yet this illustration teaches us this great lesson and that John Brown's advice was true. His happiest days were passed far back in the quiet of his old home.

Near to our home, in the town of Cummington, lived William Cullen Bryant, one of the great poets of New England. He came back there to spend his summers among the mountains he so clearly loved. He promised the people of Cummington that he would again make his permanent home there. I remember asking him if he would come clown to the stream where he wrote "Thanatopsis" and recite it for us. The good, old neighbor, white haired and trembling, came down to the banks of that little stream and stood in the shade of the same old maple where he had written that beautiful poem, and read from the wonderful creation that made his name famous.

"So live that when thy summons comes, to join The innumerable caravan which moves To that mysterious realm where each must take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams."

"Yes," he said, "I will come back to Cummington." So he went to Europe but came not back to occupy that home. He loved the old home. We were driving by his place one day when we saw him planting apple trees in July. We all know that apple trees won't grow when planted in July, so my father, knowing him well, called to him and said, "Mr. Bryant, what are you doing there? They won't grow." Mr. Bryant paused a moment and looked at us, and then said half playfully: "Conwell, drive on, you have no part nor lot in this matter. I do not expect these trees to grow; I am setting them out because I want to live over again the days when my father used to set trees when they would grow. I want to renew that memory." He was wise, for in his work on "The Transmigration of Races" he used that experience wonderfully.

In 1860, when we were teaching school, my elder brother and myself, in Blanchford, Massachusetts, were asked to go to Brooklyn with the body of a lady who died near our schools. We went to Brooklyn on Saturday and after the funeral, our friends asked us to stay over Sunday, saying that they would take us to hear Henry Ward Beecher! That was a great inducement, because my father read the "Tribune" every Sunday morning after his Bible (and sometimes before it) and what Henry Ward Beecher said, my father thought, "was law and Gospel." Sunday night, we went to Plymouth Church, and there was a crowd an hour before the service, and when the doors were opened we were crowded up the stairs. We boys were thrust back into a dirty corner where we could not see. Oh, yes, that is the way they treat the boys, put them any place—they're only boys! I remember the disappointment of that night, when we went there more to see than hear. But finally Mr. Beecher came out and gave out his text. I remember that I did not pay very much attention to it. In the middle of the sermon Mr. Beecher began in the strangest way to auction off a woman: "How much am I offered for the woman?" he yelled, and while in his biographies, they have said that this woman was sold in the Broadway Tabernacle, but I afterwards asked Mrs. Beecher and she said that Mr. Beecher had not sold this woman twice, so far as she knew, but that she recalled distinctly the sale in the Plymouth Church. I remember standing up on tip-toes to look for that woman that was being sold. After he had finished, after the singing of the hymn, he said "Brethren, be seated," and then said, "Sam, come here." A colored boy came up tremblingly and stood beside him. "This boy is offered for $770.00; he is owned in South Carolina and has run away. His master offers him to me for $770.00, and now if the officers of the church will pass the plates the boy shall be set free," and when the plates were returned over $1700.00 came in. As we went our way home I said to my elder brother: "Oh, what a grand thing it must be to preach to a congregation of fifteen hundred people." But my elder brother very wisely said: "You don't know anything about it; you do not know whether he is happy or not." "Well," I suggested, "wasn't it a strange thing to introduce a public auction in the middle of a sermon," and my elder brother again said that if they did more of that in a country church they would have a larger congregation. Afterwards I was quite fortunate to know Mr. Beecher and frequently reported his sermons. I often heard him say that the happiest years he ever knew were back in Lawrenceville, Ohio, in that little church where there were no lamps and he had to borrow them himself, light them himself, and prepare the church for the first service. He told how he swept the church, lighted the fire in the stove, and how it smoked; then how he sawed the wood to heat the church, and how he went into carpenter work to earn money to pay his own salary, yet he said that was the happiest time of his life. Mrs. Beecher told me afterwards that Mr. Beecher often talked about those days and said that bye and bye he would retire and they would again go back to the simple life they had enjoyed so much.

When he had built his new home near the Hudson, Robert Collier and I visited him. We found in the rear of an addition that clap-boards had been put up in all sorts of adjustment. Mr. Collier asked him: "Where did you find a carpenter to do such poor work as that?" and Mr. Beecher said humorously: "You could not hire that carpenter on your house." Then he said: "Mr. Collier, I put those boards on that house myself. I insisted that they leave that work for me to do. I have been happy putting on these boards and driving these nails. They took me back to the old days at Lawrenceville, where we lived over a store and our pantry was a dry goods box. But there we were so happy. I am hoping sometime to be as happy again, but it is not possible to do it while I am in the service of the public." He had promised himself and his wife some day to go back to that simple life. But his sudden death taught the same great lesson with all the examples I give of great men and women. Rev. Robt. Collier always enjoyed the circus—the circus was the great place of enjoyment outside, perhaps, of his pulpit work. It was Robert Collier who used to tell the story of the boy whose aunt always made him go to church, but after going to a circus he wrote to his aunt: "Auntie, if you had ever been to a circus, you wouldn't go to another prayer-meeting as long as you live." The love of Collier for the circus only shows the simplicity of the great man's mind. Mr. Collier is said to have paid a dollar for a fifty cent ticket to the circus, only making it conditional that he was to have the privilege of going 'round to the rear and crawling under the tent, showing what he must have done when a boy. The fact of Mr. Collier's love for the circus was one of the strange things in the eccentricities of a great man's life. Once Mr. Barnum came into Mr. Collier's church and Mr. Collier said to the usher: "Please show Mr. Barnum to a front seat for he always gives me one in his circus." These simplicities often show that somewhere back in each man's life there is a point where happiness and love are one, and when, that point is passed, we go on longing to the return.

The night after he went to hear Henry Ward Beecher's great sermon they persuaded us to stay until the following Monday night, because there was to be a lecture at the Cooper Institute and there was to be a parade of political clubs, and fire works, so as country boys, easily influenced, we decided that the school could wait for another day, and staid for the procession. We went to Cooper's Institute and there was a crowd as there was at Beecher's church. We finally got on the stairway and far in the rear of the great crowd, but my brother stood on the floor, and I sat on the ledge of the window sill, with my feet on his shoulders, so he held me while I told him down there what was going on over yonder. The first man that came on the platform, and presided at that meeting, was William Cullent Bryant, our dear old neighbor. When we boys in a strange city saw that familiar face, oh, the emotions that arose in our hearts! How proud we were at that hour, that he, our neighbor, was presiding on that occasion. He took his seat on the stage, the right of which was left vacant for some one yet to come. Next came a very heavy man, but immediately following him a tall, lean man. Mr. Bryant arose and went toward him, bowing and smiling. He was an awkward specimen of a man and all about me people were asking "Who is that?" but no man seemed to know. I asked a gentleman who that man was, but he said he didn't know. He was an awkward specimen indeed; one of the legs of his trousers was up about two inches above his shoe; his hair was dishevelled and stuck out like rooster's feathers; his coat was altogether too large for him in the back, his arms much longer than the sleeves, and with his legs twisted around the rungs of the chair, was the picture of embarrassment. When Mr. Bryant arose to introduce the speaker of that evening, he was known seemingly to few in that great hall. Mr. Bryant said: "Gentlemen of New York, you have your favorite son in Mr. Seward and if he were to be President of the United States, every one of us would be proud of him." Then came great applause. "Ohio has her favorite son in Judge Wade; and the nation would prosper under his administration, but Gentlemen of New York, it is a great honor that is conferred upon me to-night, for I can introduce to you the next President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln." Then through that audience flew the query as to whom Abraham Lincoln was. There was but weak applause. Mr. Lincoln had in his hand a manuscript. He had written it with great care and exactness and the speech which you read in his biography is the one that he wrote, not the one that he delivered as I recall it, and it is fortunate for the country that they did print the one that he wrote. I think the one he wrote had already been set up in type that afternoon from his manuscript, and consequently they did not go over it to see whether it had been changed or not. He had read three pages and had gone on to the fourth when he lost his place and then he began to tremble and stammer. He then turned it over two or three times, threw the manuscript upon the table, and, as they say in the west, "let himself go." Now the stammering man who had created only silent derision up to that point, suddenly flashed out into an angel of oratory and the awkward arms and dishevelled hair were lost sight of entirely in the wonderful beauty and lofty inspiration of that magnificent address. The great audience immediately began to follow his thought, and when he uttered that quotation from Douglass, "It is written on the sky of America that the slaves shall some day be free," he had settled the question that he was to be the next President of the United States. The applause was so-great that the building trembled and I felt the windows shake behind me. Afterward, as we walked home, I said to my elder brother again, "Wasn't it a great thing to be introduced to all those people as the next President of the United States?" and my elder brother very wisely said: "You do not know whether he was really happy or not." Afterwards, in 1864, when one of my soldiers was unjustly sentenced and his gray-haired mother plead with me to use what influence I would have with the President, I went to Washington and told the story to the President. He said he had heard something about it from Mr. Stanton, and he said he would investigate the matter, and he did afterward decide that the man should not be put to death. At the close of that interview I said to the President: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Lincoln, but is it not a most exhausting thing to sit here hearing all these appeals and have all of this business on your hands?" He laid his head on his hand, and in a somewhat wearied manner, said, with a deep sigh: "Yes, yes; no man ought to be ambitious to be President of the United States," and said he, "When this war is over, and that won't be very long, I tell my "Tad" that we will go back to the farm where I was happier as a boy when I dug potatoes at twenty-five cents a day than I am now; I tell him I will buy him a mule and a pony and he shall have a little cart and he shall make a little garden in a field all his own," and the President's face beamed as he arose from his chair in the delight of excitement as he said: "Yes, I will be far happier than I have ever been here." The next time I looked in the face of Abraham Lincoln was in the east room of the White House at Washington as he lay in his coffin. Not long ago at a Chautauqua lecture I was on the very farm which he bought at Salem, Illinois, and looked around the place where he had resolved to build a mansion, but which was never constructed.

Near my home in the Berkshires, Charles Dudley Warner was born. When he had accomplished great things in literature and had written "My Summer in a Garden," that popular work which attracted the attention of his newspaper friends, he went to Hartford, where the latter gave him a banquet. I was invited to attend and report it for the public press. They lauded him and said how beautiful it was to be so elevated above his fellow men, and how great he was in the estimation of the world But he in his answer to the toast said, "Gentlemen, I wish for no fame, I desire no glory and you have made a mistake if you think I enjoy any such notoriety. I envy the Hartford teacher whose smile threw sunshine along her pathway." Then he told us the story of a poor little boy, cold and barefooted, standing on the street on a terribly cold day. A lady came along, and looking kindly at him, said, "Little boy, are you cold?" The little fellow, looking up into her face, said, "Yes Ma'am, I was cold till you smiled." He would rather have a smile like that and the simple love of his fellow men than to have all the fame of the earth. He was honored in all parts of the world by the greatest of the great, yet he was a sad man when he wrote "My Summer in a Garden," and it all seems a mystery how he could in such grief have written that remarkable little tale. This sadness is often associated with humorists. Mr. Shaw was one of the saddest men I ever met. Why, he cried on the slightest occasion. I went one day to interview him in Boston, and Mr. Shepard, his publisher, said "Please don't trouble Josh Billings now." "What is the matter?" "Oh, he is crying again," said Mr. Shepard. I asked him how Mr. Shaw could write such funny things as he did. He then showed me the manuscript (which Mr. Shaw had just placed on his desk and which he had just written), in which he says, "I do not know any cure for laziness, but I have known a second wife to hurry it up some." Artemus Ward wrote the most laughable things while his heart was in the deepest wretchedness. Often these glimpses of the funny men whose profession would seem to show them to be the happiest of earth's people, prove that they are sometimes the most gloomy and miserable.

John B. Gough, the great temperance orator, the greatest the world has ever seen, said to me one evening at his home that he would lecture for forty years, and then would stop. But his wife said, "Now, John, you know you won't give it up." He assented, "Yes, I will." But his wife said, "No you won't. You men when you drink of public life find it like a drink of whiskey, and you are just like the rest of the men." "No," said he. Then Mr. Gough told again his familiar story of the minister who was preaching in his pulpit in Boston when he saw the Governor of the State coming up the aisle. Immediately he began to stammer, and finally said: "I see the Governor coming in, and as I know you will want to hear an exhortation from him, I think that I had better stop." Then one of the old officials leaped up from one of the front seats and said, "I insist upon your going on with your sermon, sir; you ought not be embarrassed by the Governor's coming in. We are all worms! All worms! nothing but worms!" Then the minister was angry and shouted: "Sir, I would have you understand that there is a difference in worms." Mr. Gough said he was different from other people yet the years came and went, and he stayed on the public platform. One night a committee from Frankford, Philadelphia, asked me to write him and ask him to lecture for them. I wrote and whether my influence had anything to do with it or not, I do not know, but he came from New York and when he was in about the middle of his lecture, he came to that sentence, "Young man, keep your record clear, for a single glass of intoxicating liquor may somewhere, in after years, change into a horrid monster that shall carry you down to woe." And when he had uttered that wonderful sentence of advice, he slopped to get breath, reached for a drink of water, swung forward and fell over. The doctor said he was too late for any earthly aid, and John B. Gough, with his armor on, went on into Glory. He never found that earthly rest he had promised himself. His garden never showed its flowers, and his fields were never strewn with grain.

When our regiment was encamped in Faneuil Hall at Boston before embarking for the war in 1863, Mr. Wendell Phillips sent an invitation to the officers of the regiment to visit his home. But when we reached his house we found that he had been called to Worcester suddenly to make a speech. But we found his wife there in her rolling chair, for she was a permanent invalid. Our evening was spent very pleasantly, but I said to her: "Are you not very lonesome when Mr. Phillips is away so much?" "Yes," she said, "I am very lonesome; he is father, mother, brother, sister, husband and child to me," and said she, "he cares for me with the tenderness of a mother; he waits upon me, he takes me out, and brings me in; he dresses me, and it now seems so strange that he is not by my side. If it were not for him, I should die, but he says that as soon as the slaves are free that he will come back and be the same husband he was before." The officers standing around me smiled as they heard of his promise to retire, but said she, "Oh, yes, he will do as he promised." When the war was over and the slaves were free, and he had scolded General Grant all he wished, he did do as he promised, and did retire. He sold his house in the city and bought one in Waverly, Massachusetts. He did prove the exception and went back to the private life that he had promised himself and his wife. Every Sunday morning as I drove by his home I could see him swinging on his gate. It was a double gate over the driveway, and he would pull that gate far in, get on it and then swing way out over the side-walk and then in again. Well, he used to swing on that gate every Sunday morning, and my family wondered why it was that he always did it on that particular morning. One Sunday morning when I drove by, I found Mr. Phillips swinging on his gate over the side-walk, and I said, "Mr. Phillips, my family wish me to ask you why you swing on this gate every Sunday morning." Mr. Phillips, who had a very deep sense of humour, stepped off the gate, stood back, and assuming a dignified, ministerial air, "I am requested to discourse to-day upon the text 'Why I swing upon this gate on Sunday morning,' and I will, therefore, divide my text into two heads." I quickly told him that I must get to church some time that day. "Then," said he, with a smile, "just one word more: Why do I swing on a gate? Because the first time I saw my wife she was swinging on the gate, and the second time I saw her, we kissed each other over the top of the gate, and when I swing it reminds me of other happy days long gone by. That, sir, is the reason I swing upon this gate." Then his humor all disappeared and he said: "I really swing upon this gate on Sunday morning because I think the next thing to the love of God is love of man for a true woman—as you cannot say you love God and hate your brother, neither can you say you love God unless you have first loved a human being, and I swing on this gate on Sunday morning because to me it is next to life's highest worship." And then, in a majestic manner, he said, "Conwell, all within this gate is PARADISE and all without it MARTYRDOM." In that wonderful sentence, which I feel sure I recall accurately, he uttered the most glorious expression that could ever come from uninspired lips.

I had a glimpse of James G. Elaine when I went to his home in Augusta, Maine, to write his biography for the committee. A day or two after it was finished a distinguished Senator from Washington came to see me in Philadelphia and asked if Mr. Blaine had seen the book, and I told him that he certainly had. "Did he see that second chapter?" "Of course he did," said I; "he corrected it." Then he wanted to know how much money it would take to get the book out of circulation. "Why, what is the matter with the book," said I, but he would not tell me, and said that he would pay me well if I would only keep the book from circulation. He did not tell me what was the matter. I told him that the publishers owned the copyright, having bought it from me. He said, "Is it not possible for you to take a trip to Europe to-morrow morning?" "But why take a trip to Europe?" "The committee will pay all of your expenses, all your family's expenses, and of any servants you wish lo take with you—only get out of the country." "Well," I said, "I am not going to leave the country for my country's good, unless I know what I am going for." I never could find out what the trouble with that second chapter was, and I afterwards asked Mrs. Blaine if she knew what was the matter. She then broke out in a paroxysm of grief and said that if he had stayed in Washington, Pennsylvania, where he was a teacher, "he would be living yet." She said "he had given thirty years of his life to the public service, and now they have so ungratefully disgraced his name, sent him to an early grave, and all in consequence of what he has done for the public. He is a stranger to his country—a stranger to his friends," and then she said, "O would to God he had stayed in Pennsylvania!" I left her then, but I have never known what was in that second chapter that caused the disturbance. But I do know the second chapter was concerning their early and happy life in Washington, Pennsylvania, where he taught in the college.