he reached around for the stone,
and tied that end of the rope to a long broken limb. When he drew the
other end of the rope which had been fastened to his hand, it broke
down the sides of the nest, and an old bird arose with a wild scream.

"Then he loosed the rope which held him to the tree, and pulling
himself up with his hands on the scaling line, digging his bare toes,
heels and knees at times into the ragged bark, he was up in two
minutes to the nest."

"That is a child's ambition," said one of the men, as they both drew a
breath of relief, when he stepped safely to the ground. "Wait until he
has a man's ambition. If that vein of perseverance doesn't run out, he
will do something worth while."

CHAPTER IV

TWO MEN AND THEIR INFLUENCE

John Brown. Fireside Discussions. Runaway Slaves. Fred Douglas. Rev.
Asa Niles. A Runaway Trip to Boston.

Two men entered into Russell Conwell's life in these formative days of
boyhood who unconsciously had much to do with the course of his after
life.

One was John Brown, that man "who would rush through fire though it
burn, through water though it drown, to do the work which his soul
knew that it must do." During his residence in Springfield, this man
"possessed like Socrates with a genius that was too much for him" was
a frequent visitor at the Conwell home. Russell learned to know that
face with "features chiselled, as it were, in granite," the large
clear eyes that seemed fairly to change color with the intensity of
his feelings when he spoke on the one subject that was the very heart
of the man. Tall, straight, lithe, with hair brushed back from a high
forehead, thick, full beard and a wonderful, penetrating voice whose
tones once heard were never forgotten, his arrival was always received
with shouts by the Conwell boys. Had he not lived in the West and
fought real Indians! What surer "open sesame" is there to a boy's
heart? He was not so enrapt in his one great project, but that he
could go out to the barn and pitch down hay from the mow with Russell,
or tell him wonderful stories of the great West where he had lived as
a boy, and of the wilderness through which he had tramped as a mere
child when he cared for his father's cattle. Russell was entirely too
young to grasp the meaning of the earnest discussions that went on
about the fireplace of which this Spartan was then the centre. But in
later years their meaning came to him with a peculiar significance.