Such a time had come--the ten-thousand-dollar debt was a looming mountain that he had tried in vain to move. He could still pray, and he did, but it was one of the times when he could only think that something had gone wrong.
The dean of the university, who has been closely in touch with all his work for many years, told me of how, in a discouragement which was the more notable through contrast with his usual unfailing courage, he left the executive offices for his home, a couple of blocks away``He went away with everything looking dark before him. It was Christmas-time, but the very fact of its being Christmas only added to his depression--Christmas was such an unnatural time for unhappiness! But in a few minutes he came flying back, radiant, overjoyed, sparkling with happiness, waving a slip of paper in his hand which was a check for precisely ten thousand dollars! For he had just drawn it out of an envelope handed to him, as he reached home, by the mail-carrier.
``And it had come so strangely and so naturally!
For the check was from a woman who was profoundly interested in his work, and who had sent the check knowing that in a general way it was needed, but without the least idea that there was any immediate need. That was eight or nine years ago, but although the donor was told at the time that Dr. Conwell and all of us were most grateful for the gift, it was not until very recently that she was told how opportune it was.
And the change it made in Dr. Conwell! He is a great man for maxims, and all of us who are associated with him know that one of his favorites is that `It will all come out right some time!'
And of course we had a rare opportunity to tell him that he ought never to be discouraged. And it is so seldom that he is!''
When the big new church was building the members of the church were vaguely disturbed by noticing, when the structure reached the second story, that at that height, on the side toward the vacant and unbought land adjoining, there were several doors built that opened literally into nothing but space!
When asked about these doors and their purpose, Dr. Conwell would make some casual reply, generally to the effect that they might be excellent as fire-escapes. To no one, for quite a while, did he broach even a hint of the great plan that was seething in his mind, which was that the buildings of a university were some day to stand on that land immediately adjoining the church!
At that time the university, the Temple University as it is now called, was not even a college, although it was probably called a college. Conwell had organized it, and it consisted of a number of classes and teachers, meeting in highly inadequate quarters in two little houses. But the imagination of Conwell early pictured great new buildings with accommodations for thousands! In time the dream was realized, the imagination became a fact, and now those second-floor doors actually open from the Temple Church into the Temple University!
You see, he always thinks big! He dreams big dreams and wins big success. All his life he has talked and preached success, and it is a real and very practical belief with him that it is just as easy to do a large thing as a small one, and, in fact, a little easier! And so he naturally does not see why one should be satisfied with the small things of life. ``If your rooms are big the people will come and fill them,'' he likes to say. The same effort that wins a small success would, rightly directed, have won a great success. ``Think big things and then do them!''
Most favorite of all maxims with this man of maxims, is ``Let Patience have her perfect work.''
Over and over he loves to say it, and his friends laugh about his love for it, and he knows that they do and laughs about it himself. ``I tire them all,''
he says, ``for they hear me say it every day.''
But he says it every day because it means so much to him. It stands, in his mind, as a constant warning against anger or impatience or over-haste --faults to which his impetuous temperament is prone, though few have ever seen him either angry or impatient or hasty, so well does he exercise self-control. Those who have long known him well have said to me that they have never heard him censure any one; that his forbearance and kindness are wonderful.
He is a sensitive man beneath his composure;he has suffered, and keenly, when he has been unjustly attacked; he feels pain of that sort for a long time, too, for even the passing of years does not entirely deaden it.
``When I have been hurt, or when I have talked with annoying cranks, I have tried to let Patience have her perfect work, for those very people, if you have patience with them, may afterward be of help.''
