Thus the years rolled by much as they do with any boy on a farm.  Of work there was plenty, but he found time to become a proficient skater, and a strong, sturdy swimmer, to learn and take delight in outdoor sports, all of which helped to build a constitution like iron, and to give him an interest in such things which he has never lost.  The boys of Temple College find in him not only a pastor and president, but a sympathetic and understanding friend in all forms of healthy, honorable sport.

Attending a Fourth of July parade in Springfield, he was so impressed with the marching and manoeuvres of the troops that he returned home, formed a company of his schoolmates, drilled and marched them as if they were already an important part of the G.A.R.  He secured a book on tactics and studied it with his usual thoroughness and perseverance.  He presented his company with badges, and one of the relics of his childhood days is a wooden sword he made himself out of a piece of board.  Little did any one dream that this childish pastime would in later years become the serious work of a man.

In all the school and church entertainments he took an active part.  His talent for organizing and managing showed itself early, while his magnetism and enthusiasm swept his companions with him, eager only to do his bidding.  Many were the entertainments he planned and carried through.  Recitations, dialogues, little plays all were presented under his management to the people of South Worthington.  It was these that gave him the first taste of the fascination of the stage and set him to thinking of the dazzling career of an actor.  He is not the only country boy that has dreamed of winning undying fame on the boards, but not every one received such a speedy and permanent cure.

“One day in the height of the maple sugar season,” says Burdette, in his excellent life of Mr. Conwell, “The Modern Temple and Templars,” “Russell was sent by his father with a load of the sugar to Huntington.  The ancient farm wagon complicated, doubtless, with sundry Conwell improvements, drawn by a venerable horse, was so well loaded that the seat had to be left out, and the youthful driver was forced to stand.  Down deep in the valley, the road runs through a dense woodland which veiled the way in solitude and silence.  The very place, thought Russell, for a rehearsal of the part he had in a play to be given shortly at school; a beautiful grade, thought the horse, to trot a little and make up time.  Russell had been cast for a part of a crazy man—­a character admirably adapted for the entire cast of the average amateur dramatic performer.  He had very little to say, a sort of ‘The-carriage-waits-my-lord’ declamation, but he had to say it with thrilling and startling earnestness.  He was to rush in on a love scene bubbling like a mush-pot with billing and cooing, and paralyze the lovers by shrieking ‘Woe!  Woe! unto ye all, ye children of men!’ Throwing up his arms, after the manner of the Fourth of July orator’s justly celebrated windmill gesture, he roared, in his thunderous voice:  ‘Woe!  Woe! unto ye—­’