wn's growth and
strengthened with his strength until he came to manhood with a single
purpose dominating his life, and a will to do it that could neither be
broken nor bent. He pictured him in Kansas when son after son was laid
on the altar of liberty as unflinchingly as Abraham held the knife at
his own son's breast at God's behest. Then the first "blow at Harper's
Ferry in the cause of liberty for all men--the capture of the town
of three thousand by twenty-two men, and now this--the public
execution--the fearless spirit that looked only to God for guidance,
that feared neither man nor man's laws, stopped on the very threshold
of the supreme effort for which he had planned his life. Stopped? It
was the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment of Infantry that was the first to
sing on its way South, that song, afterward sung by the armies of a
nation to the steady tramp of feet,

"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on."

CHAPTER VII

WAR'S ALARMS

College Days at Yale. The Outbreak of the Civil War. Patriotic
Speechmaking. New York and Henry Ward Beecher.

School days at Wilbraham ended, Russell determined to climb higher. As
yet, he scarcely knew the purpose of his studying. Ambitions seethed
in him to know, to be able to do. He only realized that he must have
the tools ready when the work came. Not daunted, therefore, by the
bitter experiences at Wilbraham, Russell determined to go to Yale.
This meant a stern fight indeed, one that would call out all his
reserves of determination, perseverance and indifference to the jeers
and jibes of unthinking and unfeeling classmates. But he did not
flinch at the prospect. His brother Charles went with him, and in
the fall of '60 they entered Yale College. If poverty was bitter at
Wilbraham, it was bitterer here. They were utter strangers among
hundreds of boys from all parts of the country, the majority of them
coming from homes of luxury and with money for all their needs. At
Wilbraham, there had been a certain number of boys from their own
section, many of them poor, though few so poor as themselves. They had
not felt so altogether alone as they did at Yale. It is perhaps for
this reason that so little is known of Russell Conwell's career at
Yale. He was as unobtrusive as possible. "Silent as the Sphinx," some
describe him. His sensitive nature withdrew into itself, and since he
could not mingle with his classmates on a ground