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                                  Getting at the Inner Man


                                    Millions of Hearers
                                How a University Was Founded
                                Conwell's Splendid Efficiency
                               The Story of "Acres of Diamonds"

                                    By ROBERT SHACKLETON

                                            and

                              Fifty Years on the Lecture Platform

                                    By RUSSELL H. CONWELL


    VOLUME 7

    NATIONAL
    EXTENSION UNIVERSITY

    597 Fifth Avenue, New York

    ACRES OF DIAMONDS

    Copyright, 1915, by Harper & Brothers
    Printed in the United States of America




I

MILLIONS OF HEARERS


That Conwell is not primarily a minister--that he is a minister because
he is a sincere Christian, but that he is first of all an Abou Ben
Adhem, a man who loves his fellow-men, becomes more and more apparent as
the scope of his life-work is recognized. One almost comes to think that
his pastorate of a great church is even a minor matter beside the
combined importance of his educational work, his lecture work, his
hospital work, his work in general as a helper to those who need help.

For my own part, I should say that he is like some of the old-time
prophets, the strong ones who found a great deal to attend to in
addition to matters of religion. The power, the ruggedness, the physical
and mental strength, the positive grandeur of the man--all these are
like the general conceptions of the big Old Testament prophets. The
suggestion is given only because it has often recurred, and therefore
with the feeling that there is something more than fanciful in the
comparison; and yet, after all, the comparison fails in one important
particular, for none of the prophets seems to have had a sense of humor!

It is perhaps better and more accurate to describe him as the last of
the old school of American philosophers, the last of those
sturdy-bodied, high-thinking, achieving men who, in the old days, did
their best to set American humanity in the right path--such men as
Emerson, Alcott, Gough, Wendell Phillips, Garrison, Bayard Taylor,
Beecher;[1] men whom Conwell knew and admired in the long ago, and all
of whom have long since passed away.

[Footnote 1: The life of Henry Ward Beecher parallels that of Russell H.
Conwell in many respects. His Plymouth Church in Brooklyn became the
largest in America with a seating capacity of nearly 3,000. But it was
not to this audience alone that he preached; for, believing as Dean
Conwell did after him, that all things concerning the public welfare are
fit subjects for a minister's attention, his opinions on all questions
were eagerly followed by the public at large. He was, perhaps, the most
popular lecturer in the country of his day, and was an unrivaled
after-dinner speaker. He allied himself with the Republican party as
soon as it was formed, lent his pen and pulpit to further its aims, and
during the canvass of 1856 traveled far and wide to speak at mass
meetings.

Beecher visited Europe in 1863 for his health and when in Great Britain
he addressed vast audiences on the purpose and issues of the Civil War,
speaking in one instance for three hours consecutively, and changing
materially the state of public opinion. He was a strong advocate of free
trade and of woman suffrage. His last public speech was in favor of high
license, at Chickering Hall, New York, Feb. 25, 1887.

It was as a speaker that Beecher was seen at his best. His mastery of
the English tongue, his dramatic power, his instinctive art of
impersonation which had become a second nature, his vivid imagination,
his breadth of intellectual view, the catholicity of his sympathies, and
his passionate enthusiasm made him a preacher without a peer in his own
time and country. Later, like Beecher, Conwell was without peer in his
day and the description which characterizes the former applies with
equal force to Conwell himself.]

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.

Conwell himself is amused to remember that he wanted to talk in public
from his boyhood, and that very early he began to yield to the