``I want you to
send it to the man I took it from,'' he said. And
he told with a sort of shamefaced pride of how
he had got a good old deacon to give, in all
sincerity, the evidence that exculpated him. ``And,
say, Mr. Conwell--I want to thank you for
getting me off--and I hope you'll excuse my
deceiving you--and--I won't be any worse for not
going to jail.'' And Conwell likes to remember
that thereafter the young man lived up to the
pride of exoneration; and, though Conwell does
not say it or think it, one knows that it was the
Conwell influence that inspired to honesty--for
always he is an inspirer.
Conwell even kept certain hours for consultation
with those too poor to pay any fee; and at
one time, while still an active lawyer, he was
guardian for over sixty children! The man has
always been a marvel, and always one is coming
upon such romantic facts as these.
That is a curious thing about him--how much
there is of romance in his life! Worshiped to the
end by John Ring; left for dead all night at
Kenesaw Mountain; calmly singing ``Nearer, my
God, to Thee,'' to quiet the passengers on a
supposedly sinking ship; saving lives even when a
boy; never disappointing a single audience of the
thousands of audiences he has arranged to address
during all his years of lecturing! He himself takes
a little pride in this last point, and it is characteristic
of him that he has actually forgotten that
just once he did fail to appear: he has quite
forgotten that one evening, on his way to a lecture,
he stopped a runaway horse to save two
women's lives, and went in consequence to a hospital
instead of to the platform! And it is typical
of him to forget that sort of thing.
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