Page:Famous Living Americans, with Portraits.djvu/154

 EUSSELL H. CONWELL 135 their ordinary calm serenity. His father *s pew bore for half a century the marks of his restless activity daring an overlong sermon. These artistic efforts were rewarded, it is tmei with a spanking, but this did not destroy the morn- ing's achievement. The formal education of this child began at three years of age when he was sent trudging by the side of his older brother a mile away across the narrow valley to a little schoolhouse perched on an opposite hill. But his real education began when the wise Methodist preacher, who understood boy na- ture and its need of right outlets for expression, gathered in his kitchen by the great open fire, this boy, his own boy, after- wards a learned professor in two of our greatest colleges, and several other boys of the village, for a class in oratory. The village church seems to have been the social center where the results of the fireside class were tried out on public audiences. We hear of this boy of the hills speaking a piece in the village church as early as seven years of age. About this time spiritualism was sweeping over New Eng- land, even reaching into these hill towns where it still Ungers in the more isolated districts. The whole community in which he lived was deeply affected by it, and we hear of the child being used as a medium while still very young. The impres- sions made upon an imaginative child at the most receptive period could never be obliterated. While extreme reaction necessarily follows any such over-stimulation, there were seed thoughts planted that all the after experiences of a varied life could not obliterate. The spirit world, for which this life is only a preparation and from which we are separated only for so short a period of time, was so real a thing to him that from earliest youth he felt the vital importance of an educa- tion as a preparation for big living here and as a preparation for better living in the great spirit world to which we are so soon going. So even back in these early days we see the boy the true father of the man. We find very early the embryo orator and the embryo teacher. As soon as the boy could hold the reins over the back of the staid old farm horses of his father, he was sent to the larger