EUSSELL H. CONWEIiL 139 in later and busier years to vast audiences ' ' to point a moral or adorn a tale/* BSs journeys abroad were made self-sup- porting by the articles sent home to the Boston Traveller and the New York Tribune. After these journeys he opened a law office in SomerviUe, Massachusetts, and later in Boston. His lecture work, which had never been entirely laid aside, was now taken up more ex- tensively. One of these earliest lectures was entitled Les- sons of Travel. About this time the lecture Acres of Dia- monds that has been given five thousand times to greater numbers of people than any other single lecture that has ever been placed before the public was evolved. While traveling in the Orient he heard many of the wonderful tales of the East, but the tales of the East always have a moraL Two of these tales gave him the themes for his two greatest lectures, Acres of Diamonds, and The Silver Crown. After fifty years Acres of Diamonds is still given on Doctor Conwell's lecture tours four times out of five. While Dr. Conwell was conducting a successful law business in Boston and was lecturing up and down the country, he or- ganized a young men's Bible class in Tremont Temple and made many speeches for the temperance cause. In connec- tion with his Bible class he organized a Young Men's Con- gress modeled on the lines of the United States Congress, where all the leading questions of the day were debated. About this time he also began to write books: Why and How the Chinese Emigrate, The Lives of our Presidents, The Life of James Q. Blaine, The Life of Bayard Taylor, a friend and fellow traveler, and a number of others. It was in con- nection with the Young Men's Congress that Dr. Conwell per- suaded Mr. Longfellow to write one of the sweetest of his elegiac i)oems, the one to Bayard Taylor. Dead he lay among his books; The peace of God was in his looks. ' ' At the great mass meeting held in Tremont Temple by the Young Men's Congress and presided over by Dr. Conwell, Oliver Wendell Holmes read this poem.
