Thus his busy life goes on, full of unceasing work for the good of others.  Over his bed hangs a gold sheathed sword which to him is a daily inspiration to do some deed worthy of the sacrifice which it typifies.  “I look at it each morning,” said Dr. Conwell to a friend, “and pray for help to do something that day to make my life worthy of such a sacrifice.”  And each, day he prays the prayer his father prayed for him in boyhood days, “May no person be the worse because I have lived this day, but may some one be the better.”

CHAPTER XXXIII

AS A LECTURER

His Wide Fame as a Lecturer.  Date of Entrance on Lecture Platform.  Number of Lectures Given.  The Press on His Lectures.  Some Instances of How His Lectures Have Helped People.  Address at Banquet to President McKinley.

In the maze of this church, college and hospital work, Dr. Conwell finds time to lecture from one hundred to two hundred and twenty-five times in a year.  Indeed, he frequently leaves Philadelphia at midnight after a Sunday of hard work, travels and lectures as far as Kansas and is back again for Friday evening prayer meeting and for his duties the following Sunday.

As a lecturer, he is probably known to a greater number of people than he is as a preacher, for his lecturing trips take him from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  Since he began, he has delivered more than six thousand lectures.

He has been on the lecture platform since the year 1862, giving on an average of two hundred lectures in a year.  In addition, he has addressed many of the largest conventions in America and preaches weekly to an audience of more than three thousand.  So that he has undoubtedly addressed more people in America than any man living.  He is to-day one of the most eminent and most popular figures on the lecture platform of this country, the last of the galaxy of such men as Gough, Beecher, Chapin.  “There are but ten real American lecturers on the American platform to-day,” says “Leslie’s Weekly.”  “Russell Conwell is one of the ten and probably the most eminent.”

His lectures, like his sermons, are full of practical help and good sense.  They are profusely illustrated with anecdote and story that fasten the thought of his subject.  He uses no notes, and gives his lecture little thought during the day.  Indeed, he often does not know the subject until he hears the chairman announce it.  If the lecture is new or one that he has not given for many years, he occasionally has a few notes or a brief outline before him.  But usually he is so full of the subject, ideas and illustrations so crowd his mind that he is troubled with the wealth, rather than the dearth, of material.  He rarely gives a lecture twice alike.  The main thought, of course, is the same.  But new experiences suggest new illustrations, and so, no matter how many times one hears it, he always hears something new.  “That’s the third time I’ve heard Acres of Diamonds,” said one delighted auditor, “and every time it grows better.”