happened to be communicative, he 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