Acres of Diamonds |
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lectures, and the reminiscences sweep through many years, and at times are really startling in the vivid and homelike pictures they present of the famous folk of the past that he knew.
One Sunday evening he made an almost casual reference to the time when he first met Garfield, then a candidate for the Presidency. "I asked Major McKinley, whom I had met in Washington, and whose home was in northern Ohio, as was that of Mr. Garfield, to go with me to Mr. Garfield's home and introduce me. When we got there, a neighbor had to find him. 'Jim! Jim!' he called. You see, Garfield was just plain Jim to his old neighbors. It's hard to recognize a hero over your back fence!" He paused a moment for the appreciative ripple to subside, and went on:
"We three talked there together"—what a rare talking that must have been-McKinley, Garfield, and Conwell—"we talked together, and after a while we got to the subject of hymns, and those two great men both told me how deeply they loved the old hymn, 'The Old-Time Religion.' Garfield especially loved it, so he told us, because the good old man who brought him up as a boy and to whom he owed such gratitude, used to sing it at the pasture bars outside of the boy's window every morning, and young Jim knew, whenever he heard that old tune, that it meant it was time for him to get up. He said that he had heard the best concerts and the finest operas in the world, but had never heard anything he loved as he still loved 'The Old-Time Religion.' I forget what reason there was for McKinley's especially liking it, but he, as did Garfield, liked it immensely."
What followed was a striking example of Conwell's intentness on losing no chance to fix an impression on his hearers' minds, and at the same time it was a really astonishing proof of his power to move and sway. For a new expression came over his face, and he said, as if the idea had only at that moment occurred to him—as it most probably had—"I think it's in our hymnal!" And in a moment he announced the number, and the great organ struck up, and every person in the great church every man, woman, and child—joined in the swinging rhythm of verse after verse, as if they could never tire, of "The Old-Time Religion." It is a simple [ Continue » ]