that every listener was given an
impulse toward doing something for himself and for others, and that with
at least some of them the impulse would materialize in acts. Over and
over one realizes what a power such a man wields.

And what an unselfishness! For, far on in years as he is, and suffering
pain, he does not chop down his lecture to a definite length; he does
not talk for just an hour or go on grudgingly for an hour and a half. He
sees that the people are fascinated and inspired, and he forgets pain,
ignores time, forgets that the night is late and that he has a long
journey to go to get home, and keeps on generously for two hours! And
every one wishes it were four.

Always he talks with ease and sympathy. There are geniality, composure,
humor, simple and homely jests--yet never does the audience forget that
he is every moment in tremendous earnest. They bubble with responsive
laughter or are silent in riveted attention. A stir can be seen to sweep
over an audience, of earnestness or surprise or amusement or resolve.
When he is grave and sober or fervid the people feel that he is himself
a fervidly earnest man, and when he is telling something humorous there
is on his part almost a repressed chuckle, a genial appreciation of the
fun of it, not in the least as if he were laughing at his own humor, but
as if he and his hearers were laughing together at something of which
they were all humorously cognizant.

Myriad successes in life have come through the direct inspiration of
this single lecture. One hears of so many that there must be vastly
more that are never told. A few of the most recent were told me by Dr.
Conwell himself, one being of a farmer boy who walked a long distance
to hear him. On his way home, so the boy, now a man, has written him, he
thought over and over of what he could do to advance himself, and
before he reached home he learned that a teacher was wanted at a certain
country school. He knew he did not know enough to teach, but was sure
he could learn, so he bravely asked for the place. And something in his
earnestness made him win a temporary appointment. Thereupon he worked
and studied so hard and so devotedly, while he daily taught, that within
a few months he was regularly employed there. "And now," says Conwell,
abruptly, with his characteristic skim-ming over of the intermediate
details between the important beginning of a thing and the satisfactory
end, "and now that young man is one o