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Updated: June 1, 2025
But like the organizations of the church, the need for them was strongly felt before they took form. While officiating at the funeral of a fireman who had lost his life by the falling walls of a burning building and who had left three small children uncared for, Dr. Conwell was impressed with the need of a home for the orphans of men who risked their lives for the city's good.
Whatever your station in life, rich or poor, educated or unlettered, discouraged and hopeless, or determined and resolute, I send you a message of hope, a message which, in the words of Dr. Russell R. Conwell, "has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the thousands of lives I have been privileged to watch.
He was forever inventing improvements for the fishing apparatus, oars, boats, coasting sleds, household and farm utensils, often forgetting the tasks his father had given him while doing it. Naturally, this exasperated Martin Conwell, who had no help on the farm but the boys, and the rod would again be brought into active service.
Quite by chance, and only yesterday, literally yesterday and by chance, and with no thought at the moment of Conwell although he had been much in my mind for some time past, I picked up a thin little book of description by William Dean Howells, and, turning the pages of a chapter on Lexington, old Lexington of the Revolution, written, so Howells had set down, in 1882, I noticed, after he had written of the town itself, and of the long-past fight there, and of the present-day aspect, that he mentioned the church life of the place and remarked on the striking advances made by the Baptists, who had lately, as he expressed it, been reconstituted out of very perishing fragments and made strong and flourishing, under the ministrations of a lay preacher, formerly a colonel in the Union army.
Hope that clockwork train for the Urchin will arrive soon; we were hoping to have three happy evenings playing with it before he sees it. Fine to have children; lots of fun playing with their presents. We are sure that life after death is really so, because children always kick the blankets off at night. Fine bit of symbolism that; put it in a sermon, unless Doctor Conwell gets there first.
"The man laughed, in intense enjoyment of the absurdity of the whole crazy business." "'I'll bet five dollars to one, he said, with easy confidence of a man who knows his bet will not be taken up, 'that you won't get the money in this town." "Mr. Conwell brought the axe down with a crashing sweep, and the splinters flew out into the air like a cloud of witnesses to the efficacy of the blow."
Conwell had a heart of olive-wood built into the front of the pulpit, for the wood was from an olive-tree in the Garden of Gethsemane. And the amber-colored tiles in the inner walls of the church bear, under the glaze, the names of thousands of his people; for every one, young or old, who helped in the building, even to the giving of a single dollar, has his name inscribed there. For Dr.
Conwell has been to its spiritual growth, and next to their pastor himself, it is doubtful if any man is so endeared to the Grace Church membership as is Professor Wood, their blind organist. He came to them in May, 1885, the regular organist being sick. His connection with the church came about in the most simple manner and yet it has been invaluable to the work of The Temple.
Unconscious of it at the time, some day a great event suddenly crystalizes it like a wonderful chemical change, and the beauty of it shines evermore from his life. Miranda Conwell built better than she knew when in the every-day little things of her life, she let her faith shine. Not a usual couple, by any means, for the early 40's in rugged New England.
And Conwell, in his going up and down the country, inspiring his thousands and thousands, is the survivor of that old-time group who used to travel about, dispensing wit and wisdom and philosophy and courage to the crowded benches of country lyceums, and the chairs of school-houses and town halls, or the larger and more pretentious gathering-places of the cities.
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