known from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, having been on the lecture platform
for forty-three years, speaking from one hundred to two hundred and
twenty-five nights each year.

As an author he has written books that have run into editions of
hundreds of thousands, his "Life of Spurgeon" selling one hundred and
twenty-five thousand copies in four months. He has been around the
globe many times, counted among his intimate friends Garibaldi, Bayard
Taylor, Stanley, Longfellow, Blaine, Henry Ward Beecher, John G.
Whittier, President Garfield, Horace Greeley, Alexander Stevens, John
Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John B. Gough and General Sherman.

He fought in the war of the Rebellion, was left for dead on the
battlefield of Kenesaw mountain--in fact, he has had a career as
picturesque and thrilling as a Scott or Dumas could picture.

Yet the man whose energy has reared enduring monuments of stone, and
more lasting ones in the hearts of thousands whose lives he has made
happier and brighter, fought his way upward alone and single-handed
from a childhood of poverty. He rose by his own efforts, in the face
of great and seemingly insurmountable obstacles and discouragements.
The path he took from that little humble farmhouse to the big church,
the wide-reaching college, the kindly hospital, the head of the
Lecture Platform, it is the purpose of this book to picture, in the
hope that it may be helpful to others, either young or old, who desire
to better their condition, or to do some work of which the inner voice
tells them the world is in need.

Dr. Conwell believes, with George Macdonald, that "The one secret of
life and development is not to devise or plan, but to fall in with the
forces at work--to do every moment's duty aright--that being the part
in the process allotted to us; and let come ... what the Eternal
Thought wills for each of us, has intended in each of us from the
first."

Or in the words of the greatest of Books, "See that thou make it
according to the pattern that was shewed thee in the mount."

Every one at some time in his life has been "in the mount." To follow
and obey the Heavenly Vision means a life of usefulness and happiness.
That obstacles and discouragements can be surmounted, the life of
Russell Conwell shows. For this purpose it is written, that others who
have heard the Voice may go forward with faith and perseverance to
work of which the world stands in need.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

In th