rld, suffering
for the barest necessities of life, yet cheerful, buoyant, never
complaining. So sensitive to the sufferings of others that he must do
all in his power to relieve even his comrades in the war when, injured
or ill, what mental anguish must he have endured when his dearly loved
wife was in want and he so powerless to relieve it. She read his heart
with the sure sympathy of love, knew his bitter anguish of spirit, and
suffered the more because he suffered. But bravely she cheered him,
encouraged him, and spent all her own spare minutes doing what she
could to add to the family income.

Thus they pluckily-worked, never repining nor complaining at fate,
though knowing in its bitterest sense what it is to be desperately
poor, to suffer for adequate food and clothing. Colonel Conwell
learned in that hard experience what it is to want for a crust of
bread. No man can come to Dr. Conwell to this day with a tale of
poverty, suffering, sickness, but what the minister's eyes turn
backward to that one little room with its pitiful makeshifts of
furniture, its brave, pale wife, the wee girl baby; and his hand goes
out to help with an earnest and heartfelt sympathy surprising to the
recipient.

But the tide turned ere long. Colonel Conwell's work on the paper soon
began to tell. His salary was raised and raised, until comfort once
more with smiling face took up her abode with them. They moved into a
pretty home in Somerville. Colonel Conwell resumed his law practice
and began, as in the West, to deal in real estate. He also continued
his lecturing.

Busy days these were, but his life had already taught him much of the
art of filling each minute to an exact nicety in order to get the most
out of it. His paper sent him as a special correspondent to write up
the battlefields of the South, and his letters were so graphic and
entertaining as to become a widely known and much discussed feature
of the paper. Soldiers everywhere read them with eager delight and
through them revisited the scenes of the terrible conflict in which
each had played some part. While on this assignment, he invaded a
gambling den in New Orleans, and interfering to save a colored man
from the drunken frenzy of a bully, came near being killed himself.
Coming to the aid of a porter on a Mississippi steamboat, he again
narrowly escaped being shot, striking a revolver from the hand of a
ruffian just as his finger dropped on the trigger. He mixed with all