unding over these hills."

Conwell believes that his real life dates from a happening of the time
of the Civil War--a happening that still looms vivid and intense before
him, and which undoubtedly did deepen and strengthen his strong and
deep nature. Yet the real Conwell was always essentially the same.
Neighborhood tradition still tells of his bravery as a boy and a youth,
of his reckless coasting, his skill as a swimmer and his saving of
lives, his strength and endurance, his plunging out into the darkness of
a wild winter night to save a neighbor's cattle. His soldiers came home
with tales of his devotion to them, and of how he shared his rations
and his blankets and bravely risked his life; of how he crept off into a
swamp, at imminent peril, to rescue one of his men lost or mired there.
The present Conwell was always Conwell; in fact, he may be traced
through his ancestry, too, for in him are the sturdy virtues, the
bravery, the grim determination, the practicality, of his father; and
romanticism, that comes from his grandmother; and the dreamy qualities
of his mother, who, practical and hardworking New England woman that she
was, was at the same time influenced by an almost startling mysticism.

And Conwell himself is a dreamer: first of all he is a dreamer; it is
the most important fact in regard to him! It is because he is a dreamer
and visualizes his dreams that he can plan the great things that to
other men would seem impossibilities; and then his intensely practical
side his intense efficiency, his power, his skill, his patience, his
fine earnestness, his mastery over others, develop his dreams into
realities. He dreams dreams and sees visions--but his visions are never
visionary and his dreams become facts.

The rocky hills which meant a dogged struggle for very existence, the
fugitive slaves, John Brown--what a school for youth! And the literal
school was a tiny one-room school-house where young Conwell came under
the care of a teacher who realized the boy's unusual capabilities
and was able to give him broad and unusual help. Then a wise country
preacher also recognized the unusual, and urged the parents to give
still more education, whereupon supreme effort was made and young
Russell was sent to Wilbraham Academy. He likes to tell of his life
there, and of the hardships, of which he makes light; and of the joy
with which week-end pies and cakes were received from home!

He tells of how he went out on t