章节正文
of the newsboy brightens as he buys a paper from
him, that the porter is all happiness, that
conductor and brakeman are devotedly anxious to
be of aid. Everywhere the man wins love. He
loves humanity and humanity responds to the love.
He has always won the affection of those who
knew him, and Bayard Taylor was one of the
many; he and Bayard Taylor loved each other for
long acquaintance and fellow experiences as world-
wide travelers, back in the years when comparatively
few Americans visited the Nile and the
Orient, or even Europe.
When Taylor died there was a memorial service
in Boston at which Conwell was asked to preside,
and, as he wished for something more than
addresses, he went to Longfellow and asked him to
write and read a poem for the occasion. Longfellow
had not thought of writing anything, and
he was too ill to be present at the services, but,
there always being something contagiously
inspiring about Russell Conwell when he wishes
something to be done, the poet promised to do
what he could. And he wrote and sent the beautiful
lines beginning:
_Dead he lay among his books,
The peace of God was in his looks_.
Many men of letters, including Ralph Waldo
Emerson, were present at the services, and Dr.
Conwell induced Oliver Wendell Holmes to read
the lines, and they were listened to amid profound
silence, to their fine ending.
Conwell, in spite of his widespread hold on
millions of people, has never won fame, recognition,
general renown, compared with many men
of minor achievements. This seems like an
impossibility. Yet it is not an impossibility, but a
fact. Great numbers of men of education and
culture are entirely ignorant of him and his work
in the world--men, these, who deem themselves
in touch with world-affairs and with the ones who
make and move the world. It is inexplicable, this,
except that never was there a man more devoid
of the faculty of self-exploitation, self-advertising,
than Russell Conwell. Nor, in the mere reading
of them, do his words appeal with anything like
the force of the same words uttered by himself,
for always, with his spoken words, is his personality.
Those who have heard Russell Conwell, or
have known him personally, recognize the charm
of the man and his immense forcefulness; but
there are many, and among them those who control
publicity through books and newspapers,
who, though they ought to be the warmest in their
enthusiasm, have never felt drawn to hear him,
and, if they know of him at all, think of him as
one who pleases in a simple way the commoner
folk, forgetting in their pride that every really
great man pleases the common ones, and that
simplicity and directness are attributes of real
greatness.
But Russell Conwell has always won the admiration
of the really great, as well as of the humbler
millions. It is only a supposedly cultured class
in between that is not thoroughly acquainted with
what he has done.
Perhaps, too, this is owing to his having cast
in his lot with the city, of all cities, which,
consciously or unconsciously, looks most closely to
family and place of residence as criterions of
merit--a city with which it is almost impossible
for a stranger to become affiliated--or aphiladelphiated,
as it might be expressed--and Philadelphia,
in spite of all that Dr. Conwell has
done, has been under the thrall of the fact that
he went north of Market Street--that fatal fact
understood by all who know Philadelphia--and
that he made no effort to make friends in Rittenhouse
Square. Such considerations seem absurd
in this twentieth century, but in Philadelphia
they are still potent. Tens of thousands of
Philadelphians love him, and he is honored by its
greatest men, but there is a class of the pseudo-
cultured who do not know him or appreciate him.
And it needs also to be understood that, outside of
his own beloved Temple, he would prefer to go
to a little church or a little hall and to speak to
the forgotten people, in the hope of encouraging
and inspiring them and filling them with hopeful
glow, rather than to speak to the rich and comfortable.
His dearest hope, so one of the few who are
close to him told me, is that no one shall come
into his life without being benefited. He does
not say this publicly, nor does he for a moment
believe that such a hope could be fully realized,
but it is very dear to his heart; and no man
spurred by such a hope, and thus bending all
his thoughts toward the poor, the hard-working,
the unsuccessful, is in a way to win honor from
the Scribes; for we have Scribes now quite as
much as when they were classed with Pharisees.
It is not the first time in the world's history that
Scribes have failed to give their recognition to
one whose work was not among the great and
wealthy.
That Conwell himself has seldom taken any
part whatever in politics except as a good citizen
standing for good government; that, as he
expresses it, he never held any political office except
that he was once on a school committee, and also
that he does not identify himself with the so-called
``movements'' that from time to time catch
public attention, but aims only and constantly
at the quiet betterment of mankind, may be
mentioned as additional reasons why his name and
fame have not been steadily blazoned.
He knows and will admit that he works hard
and has all his life worked hard. ``Things keep
turning my way because I'm on the job,'' as he
whimsically expressed it one day; but that is
about all, so it seems to him.
And he sincerely believes that his life has in
itself been without interest; that it has been an
essentially commonplace life with nothing of the
interesting or the eventful to tell. He is frankly
surprised that there has ever been the desire to
write about him. He really has no idea of how
fascinating are the things he has done. His entire
life has been of positive interest from the variety
of things accomplished and the unexpectedness
with which he has accomplished them.
Never, for example, was there such an organizer.
In fact, organization and leadership have
always been as the breath of life to him. As a
youth he organized debating societies and, before
the war, a local military company. While on
garrison duty in the Civil War he organized
what is believed to have been the first free school
for colored children in the South. One day
Minneapolis happened to be spoken of, and Conwell
happened to remember that he organized,
when he was a lawyer in that city, what became
the first Y.M.C.A. branch there. Once he even
started a newspaper. And it was natural that the
organizing instinct, as years advanced, should
lead him to greater and greater things, such as
his church, with the numerous associations formed
within itself through his influence, and the
university--the organizing of the university being
in itself an achievement of positive romance.
``A life without interest!'' Why, when I
happened to ask, one day, how many Presidents he
had known since Lincoln, he replied, quite casually,
that he had ``written the lives of most of them in
their own homes''; and by this he meant either
personally or in collaboration with the American
biographer Abbott.
The many-sidedness of Conwell is one of the
things that is always fascinating. After you have
quite got the feeling that he is peculiarly a man
of to-day, lecturing on to-day's possibilities to the
people of to-day, you happen upon some such
fact as that he attracted the attention of the
London _Times_ through a lecture on Italian history
at Cambridge in England; or that on the
evening of the day on which he was admitted to
practice in the Supreme Court of the United States
he gave a lecture in Washington on ``The Curriculum
of the Prophets in Ancient Israel.'' The
man's life is a succession of delightful surprises.
An odd trait of his character is his love for fire.
He could easily have been a veritable fire-
worshiper instead of an orthodox Christian! He
has always loved a blaze, and he says reminiscently
that for no single thing was he punished
so much when he was a child as for building
bonfires. And after securing possession, as he did in
middle age, of the house where he was born and
of a great acreage around about, he had one of
the most enjoyable times of his life in tearing
down old buildings that needed to be destroyed
and in heaping up fallen trees and rubbish and in
piling great heaps of wood and setting the great
piles ablaze. You see, there is one of the secrets
of his strength--he has never lost the capacity for
fiery enthusiasm!
Always, too, in these later years he is showing his
strength and enthusiasm in a positively noble
way. He has for years been a keen sufferer from
rheumatism and neuritis, but he has never permitted
this to interfere with his work or plans.
He makes little of his sufferings, and when he
slowly makes his way, bent and twisted, downstairs,
he does not want to be noticed. ``I'm all
right,'' he will say if any one offers to help, and at
such a time comes his nearest approach to
impatience. He wants his suffering ignored.
Strength has always been to him so precious a
belonging that he will not relinquish it while he
lives. ``I'm all right!'' And he makes himself
believe that he is all right even though the pain
becomes so severe as to demand massage. And
him, that the porter is all happiness, that
conductor and brakeman are devotedly anxious to
be of aid. Everywhere the man wins love. He
loves humanity and humanity responds to the love.
He has always won the affection of those who
knew him, and Bayard Taylor was one of the
many; he and Bayard Taylor loved each other for
long acquaintance and fellow experiences as world-
wide travelers, back in the years when comparatively
few Americans visited the Nile and the
Orient, or even Europe.
When Taylor died there was a memorial service
in Boston at which Conwell was asked to preside,
and, as he wished for something more than
addresses, he went to Longfellow and asked him to
write and read a poem for the occasion. Longfellow
had not thought of writing anything, and
he was too ill to be present at the services, but,
there always being something contagiously
inspiring about Russell Conwell when he wishes
something to be done, the poet promised to do
what he could. And he wrote and sent the beautiful
lines beginning:
_Dead he lay among his books,
The peace of God was in his looks_.
Many men of letters, including Ralph Waldo
Emerson, were present at the services, and Dr.
Conwell induced Oliver Wendell Holmes to read
the lines, and they were listened to amid profound
silence, to their fine ending.
Conwell, in spite of his widespread hold on
millions of people, has never won fame, recognition,
general renown, compared with many men
of minor achievements. This seems like an
impossibility. Yet it is not an impossibility, but a
fact. Great numbers of men of education and
culture are entirely ignorant of him and his work
in the world--men, these, who deem themselves
in touch with world-affairs and with the ones who
make and move the world. It is inexplicable, this,
except that never was there a man more devoid
of the faculty of self-exploitation, self-advertising,
than Russell Conwell. Nor, in the mere reading
of them, do his words appeal with anything like
the force of the same words uttered by himself,
for always, with his spoken words, is his personality.
Those who have heard Russell Conwell, or
have known him personally, recognize the charm
of the man and his immense forcefulness; but
there are many, and among them those who control
publicity through books and newspapers,
who, though they ought to be the warmest in their
enthusiasm, have never felt drawn to hear him,
and, if they know of him at all, think of him as
one who pleases in a simple way the commoner
folk, forgetting in their pride that every really
great man pleases the common ones, and that
simplicity and directness are attributes of real
greatness.
But Russell Conwell has always won the admiration
of the really great, as well as of the humbler
millions. It is only a supposedly cultured class
in between that is not thoroughly acquainted with
what he has done.
Perhaps, too, this is owing to his having cast
in his lot with the city, of all cities, which,
consciously or unconsciously, looks most closely to
family and place of residence as criterions of
merit--a city with which it is almost impossible
for a stranger to become affiliated--or aphiladelphiated,
as it might be expressed--and Philadelphia,
in spite of all that Dr. Conwell has
done, has been under the thrall of the fact that
he went north of Market Street--that fatal fact
understood by all who know Philadelphia--and
that he made no effort to make friends in Rittenhouse
Square. Such considerations seem absurd
in this twentieth century, but in Philadelphia
they are still potent. Tens of thousands of
Philadelphians love him, and he is honored by its
greatest men, but there is a class of the pseudo-
cultured who do not know him or appreciate him.
And it needs also to be understood that, outside of
his own beloved Temple, he would prefer to go
to a little church or a little hall and to speak to
the forgotten people, in the hope of encouraging
and inspiring them and filling them with hopeful
glow, rather than to speak to the rich and comfortable.
His dearest hope, so one of the few who are
close to him told me, is that no one shall come
into his life without being benefited. He does
not say this publicly, nor does he for a moment
believe that such a hope could be fully realized,
but it is very dear to his heart; and no man
spurred by such a hope, and thus bending all
his thoughts toward the poor, the hard-working,
the unsuccessful, is in a way to win honor from
the Scribes; for we have Scribes now quite as
much as when they were classed with Pharisees.
It is not the first time in the world's history that
Scribes have failed to give their recognition to
one whose work was not among the great and
wealthy.
That Conwell himself has seldom taken any
part whatever in politics except as a good citizen
standing for good government; that, as he
expresses it, he never held any political office except
that he was once on a school committee, and also
that he does not identify himself with the so-called
``movements'' that from time to time catch
public attention, but aims only and constantly
at the quiet betterment of mankind, may be
mentioned as additional reasons why his name and
fame have not been steadily blazoned.
He knows and will admit that he works hard
and has all his life worked hard. ``Things keep
turning my way because I'm on the job,'' as he
whimsically expressed it one day; but that is
about all, so it seems to him.
And he sincerely believes that his life has in
itself been without interest; that it has been an
essentially commonplace life with nothing of the
interesting or the eventful to tell. He is frankly
surprised that there has ever been the desire to
write about him. He really has no idea of how
fascinating are the things he has done. His entire
life has been of positive interest from the variety
of things accomplished and the unexpectedness
with which he has accomplished them.
Never, for example, was there such an organizer.
In fact, organization and leadership have
always been as the breath of life to him. As a
youth he organized debating societies and, before
the war, a local military company. While on
garrison duty in the Civil War he organized
what is believed to have been the first free school
for colored children in the South. One day
Minneapolis happened to be spoken of, and Conwell
happened to remember that he organized,
when he was a lawyer in that city, what became
the first Y.M.C.A. branch there. Once he even
started a newspaper. And it was natural that the
organizing instinct, as years advanced, should
lead him to greater and greater things, such as
his church, with the numerous associations formed
within itself through his influence, and the
university--the organizing of the university being
in itself an achievement of positive romance.
``A life without interest!'' Why, when I
happened to ask, one day, how many Presidents he
had known since Lincoln, he replied, quite casually,
that he had ``written the lives of most of them in
their own homes''; and by this he meant either
personally or in collaboration with the American
biographer Abbott.
The many-sidedness of Conwell is one of the
things that is always fascinating. After you have
quite got the feeling that he is peculiarly a man
of to-day, lecturing on to-day's possibilities to the
people of to-day, you happen upon some such
fact as that he attracted the attention of the
London _Times_ through a lecture on Italian history
at Cambridge in England; or that on the
evening of the day on which he was admitted to
practice in the Supreme Court of the United States
he gave a lecture in Washington on ``The Curriculum
of the Prophets in Ancient Israel.'' The
man's life is a succession of delightful surprises.
An odd trait of his character is his love for fire.
He could easily have been a veritable fire-
worshiper instead of an orthodox Christian! He
has always loved a blaze, and he says reminiscently
that for no single thing was he punished
so much when he was a child as for building
bonfires. And after securing possession, as he did in
middle age, of the house where he was born and
of a great acreage around about, he had one of
the most enjoyable times of his life in tearing
down old buildings that needed to be destroyed
and in heaping up fallen trees and rubbish and in
piling great heaps of wood and setting the great
piles ablaze. You see, there is one of the secrets
of his strength--he has never lost the capacity for
fiery enthusiasm!
Always, too, in these later years he is showing his
strength and enthusiasm in a positively noble
way. He has for years been a keen sufferer from
rheumatism and neuritis, but he has never permitted
this to interfere with his work or plans.
He makes little of his sufferings, and when he
slowly makes his way, bent and twisted, downstairs,
he does not want to be noticed. ``I'm all
right,'' he will say if any one offers to help, and at
such a time comes his nearest approach to
impatience. He wants his suffering ignored.
Strength has always been to him so precious a
belonging that he will not relinquish it while he
lives. ``I'm all right!'' And he makes himself
believe that he is all right even though the pain
becomes so severe as to demand massage. And
- anxious [´æŋkʃəs]
a.担忧的；渴望的 (初中英语单词) - humanity [hju:´mæniti] n.人类；人性；仁慈 (初中英语单词)
- affection [ə´fekʃən] n.友爱；慈爱 (初中英语单词)
- acquaintance [ə´kweintəns] n.相识；熟人，相识的人 (初中英语单词)
- writing [´raitiŋ] n.书写；写作；书法 (初中英语单词)
- ignorant [´ignərənt] a.无知的，愚昧的 (初中英语单词)
- faculty [´fækəlti] n.才干；天赋；院，系 (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- immense [i´mens] a.广大的，无限的 (初中英语单词)
- thoroughly [´θʌrəli] ad.完全地，彻底地 (初中英语单词)
- residence [´rezidəns] n.居住(期间)；住宅 (初中英语单词)
- appreciate [ə´pri:ʃieit] v.评价；珍惜；感激 (初中英语单词)
- beloved [bi´lʌvd] a.为....所爱的 n.爱人 (初中英语单词)
- temple [´tempəl] n.庙宇；寺院；太阳穴 (初中英语单词)
- recognition [,rekəg´niʃən] n.认出；认识；承认 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- politics [´pɔlitiks] n.政治(学)；政治活动 (初中英语单词)
- identify [ai´dentifai] vt.认出；鉴定；验明 (初中英语单词)
- additional [ə´diʃənəl] a.附加的，额外的 (初中英语单词)
- steadily [´stedili] ad.坚定地；不断地 (初中英语单词)
- breath [breθ] n.呼吸；气息 (初中英语单词)
- lawyer [´lɔ:jə] n.律师；法学家 (初中英语单词)
- instinct [´instiŋkt] n.本能；直觉；天资 (初中英语单词)
- advanced [əd´vɑ:nst] a.先进的；高级的 (初中英语单词)
- achievement [ə´tʃi:vmənt] n.完成；成就，成绩 (初中英语单词)
- fascinating [´fæsineitiŋ] a.迷人，使神魂颠倒的 (初中英语单词)
- italian [i´tæliən] a.意大利 n.意大利人 (初中英语单词)
- supreme [su:´pri:m, sju:-] a.最高的，无上的 (初中英语单词)
- succession [sək´seʃən] n.继任；继承(权) (初中英语单词)
- delightful [di´laitful] a.讨人喜欢的 (初中英语单词)
- character [´kæriktə] n.特性；性质；人物；字 (初中英语单词)
- capacity [kə´pæsiti] n.容量；智能；能力 (初中英语单词)
- enthusiasm [in´θju:ziæzəm] n.热心；狂热；爱好 (初中英语单词)
- interfere [,intə´fiə] vi.干涉；妨碍；打扰 (初中英语单词)
- suffering [´sʌfəriŋ] n.痛苦；灾害 (初中英语单词)
- severe [si´viə] a.严厉的；苛刻的 (初中英语单词)
- porter [´pɔ:tə] n.守门人；勤杂工人 (高中英语单词)
- memorial [mi´mɔ:riəl] a.纪念的 n.纪念物 (高中英语单词)
- renown [ri´naun] n.名望 vt.使有名望 (高中英语单词)
- appeal [ə´pi:l] vi.&n.请求；呼吁；上诉 (高中英语单词)
- personally [´pə:sənəli] ad.亲自；就个人来说 (高中英语单词)
- sincerely [sin´siəli] ad.真诚地；诚恳地 (高中英语单词)
- positive [´pɔzətiv] a.确定的 (高中英语单词)
- leadership [´li:dəʃip] n.领导(能力) (高中英语单词)
- cambridge [´keimbridʒ] n.剑桥 (高中英语单词)
- positively [´pɔzətivli] ad.确实；断然；绝对 (高中英语单词)
- widespread [´waidspred] a.广布的；普遍的 (英语四级单词)
- unconsciously [ʌn´kɔʃəsli] ad.无意识地；不觉察地 (英语四级单词)
- potent [´pəutənt] a.有(势)力的；烈性的 (英语四级单词)
- unsuccessful [,ʌnsək´sesful] a.不成功的，失败的 (英语四级单词)
- commonplace [´kɔmənpleis] a.平凡的；常见的 (英语四级单词)
- accomplished [ə´kʌmpliʃt] a.完成了的；熟练的 (英语四级单词)
- lincoln [´liŋkən] n.林肯 (英语四级单词)
- peculiarly [pi´kju:liəli] ad.特有地；古怪地 (英语四级单词)
- rubbish [´rʌbiʃ] n.垃圾；碎屑；废话 (英语四级单词)
- setting [´setiŋ] n.安装；排字；布景 (英语四级单词)
- sufferer [´sʌfərə] n.受苦的人；患者 (英语四级单词)
- impossibility [impɔsi´biliti] n.不可能办到的事 (英语六级单词)
- inexplicable [,inik´splikəbəl] a.难以理解的 (英语六级单词)
- thrall [θrɔ:l] n.奴隶，奴役 (英语六级单词)
- publicly [´pʌblikli] ad.公然；公众所有地 (英语六级单词)
- veritable [´veritəbəl] a.真正的；确实的 (英语六级单词)
- orthodox [´ɔ:θədɔks] a.正统的；正统的；习惯的 (英语六级单词)
- acreage [´eikəridʒ] n.英亩数；土地的面积 (英语六级单词)
- relinquish [ri´liŋkwiʃ] vt.放弃；撤回；停止 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
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