heard exaggerated tales of cruelty that set even his young blood to tingling with a mighty desire to right their wrongs.  Then the next night, the wagon wheels were heard again and the slave was hurried away to the house of a cousin of William Cullen Bryant, at Cummington.  As the wheels died in the distance up the mountain road, the boyish imagination pictured the flight, on, on, into the far north till the Canada border was reached and the slave free.  Little wonder that when the war broke out, this boy, older grown, spoke as with a tongue of fire and swept men up by the hundreds with his impassioned eloquence, to sign the muster roll.

One of these slaves thus helped to freedom is now Rev. J.G.  Ramage, of Atlanta, Ga.  In 1905, he applied to Temple College for the degree of LL.D.  Noticing on the letter sent in reply to his request, the name of Russell Conwell, President of the College, he wrote Dr. Conwell, telling him that in 1856 when a runaway slave he had stopped at a farmhouse at South Worthington, Mass., and remembered the name of Conwell.  Undoubtedly Martin Conwell was one of the men who had helped him to freedom.

John Brown brought Fred Douglas, the colored orator, with him on one of his visits.  When Russell was told by his father that this was “a celebrated colored speaker and statesman,” the boyish eyes opened wide with amazement, and not able to control himself, he burst out in a fit of laughter, saying, “Why, he’s not black,” much to the amusement of Douglas, who afterwards told him of his life as a slave.

The other man who so helped Russell in his younger days was the Rev. Asa Niles, a cousin of his father’s who lived on a neighboring farm.  He had heard of Russell’s various exploits and saw that he was a boy far above the average, that he had talents worth training.  Himself a scholar and a Methodist minister, he knew the value of an education, and the worth to the world of a brilliant, forceful character with clear ideas of right, and high ideals of duty.  He was a man far ahead of his times, broad-minded, spiritual in its best sense, and with a winning personality, just the man to attract a clear-sighted, keen-witted boy who quickly saw through shams and despised affectations.  Russell at that plastic period could have fallen into no better hands.  With loving interest in the boy’s welfare, Asa Niles inspired him to get the broadest education in order to make the most of himself, yet ever held before him the highest ideals of life and manhood.  Out of the stores of his own knowledge he told him what to read, helped, encouraged, talked over his studies with him, and in every way possible not only made them real and vital to him, but at every step aided him to see their worth.