n made, modern improvements added, spacious porches
surround it on all sides, and a green, velvety lawn dotted with
shrubbery and flowers has replaced the rocks and stones, the sparse
grass of fifty years ago. If Martin and Miranda Conwell could return
and see the little house now with its artistic furnishings, its walls
hung with pictures from those very lands the mother read her boy
about, they would think miracles had indeed come to pass.

In front of the house where once flashed a little brook that "set the
silences to rhyme" is now a silvery lake framed in rich green foliage.
Up in the hill where swayed the old hemlock with the eagle's nest for
a crown rises an observatory. From the top one gazes in summer into a
billowy sea of green in which the spire of the Methodist church rises
like a far distant white sail.

It is a happy family that gathers in the old homestead during the
summer days. His daughter, now Mrs. Tuttle, comes with her children,
Mr. Turtle, who is a civil engineer, joining them when his work
permits. Dr. Conwell's son Leon, proprietor and editor of the
Somerville (Mass.) "Journal," with his wife and child, always spend as
much of the summer there as possible. One vacant chair there is in the
happy family circle. Agnes, the only child of Dr. and Mrs. Conwell,
died in 1901, in her twenty-sixth year. She was the wife of Alfred
Barker. A remarkably bright and gifted girl, clever with her pen,
charming in her personality, an enthusiastic and successful worker in
the many interests of church, college and hospital, her death was a
sad loss to her family and friends.

Not only the beauty of the place but the associations bring rest and
peace to the tired spirit of the busy preacher and lecturer, and he
returns to his work refreshed, ready to take up with rekindled energy
and enthusiasm the tasks awaiting him.

Thus his busy life goes on, full of unceasing work for the good of
others. Over his bed hangs a gold sheathed sword which to him is a
daily inspiration to do some deed worthy of the sacrifice which it
typifies. "I look at it each morning," said Dr. Conwell to a friend,
"and pray for help to do something that day to make my life worthy of
such a sacrifice." And each, day he prays the prayer his father prayed
for him in boyhood days, "May no person be the worse because I have
lived this day, but may some one be the better."

CHAPTER XXXIII

AS A LECTURER

His Wide Fame as a Lecturer. Dat