Many a man and many a woman, while continuing to work for some firm or factory, has taken Temple technical courses and thus fitted himself or herself for an advanced position with the same employer. The Temple knows of many such, who have thus won prominent advancement.
And it knows of teachers who, while continuing to teach, have fitted themselves through the Temple courses for professorships. And it knows of many a case of the rise of a Temple student that reads like an Arabian Nights' fancy!--of advance from bookkeeper to editor, from office-boy to bank president, from kitchen maid to school principal, from street-cleaner to mayor!
The Temple University helps them that help themselves.
President Conwell told me personally of one case that especially interested him because it seemed to exhibit, in especial degree, the Temple possibilities; and it particularly interested me because it also showed, in high degree, the methods and personality of Dr. Conwell himself.
One day a young woman came to him and said she earned only three dollars a week and that she desired very much to make more. ``Can you tell me how to do it?'' she said.
He liked her ambition and her directness, but there was something that he felt doubtful about, and that was that her hat looked too expensive for three dollars a week!
Now Dr. Conwell is a man whom you would never suspect of giving a thought to the hat of man or woman! But as a matter of fact there is very little that he does not see.
But though the hat seemed too expensive for three dollars a week, Dr. Conwell is not a man who makes snap-judgments harshly, and in particular he would be the last man to turn away hastily one who had sought him out for help.
He never felt, nor could possibly urge upon any one, contentment with a humble lot; he stands for advancement; he has no sympathy with that dictum of the smug, that has come to us from a nation tight bound for centuries by its gentry and aristocracy, about being contented with the position in which God has placed you, for he points out that the Bible itself holds up advancement and success as things desirable.
And, as to the young woman before him, it developed, through discreet inquiry veiled by frank discussion of her case, that she had made the expensive-looking hat herself! Whereupon not only did all doubtfulness and hesitation vanish, but he saw at once how she could better herself.
He knew that a woman who could make a hat like that for herself could make hats for other people, and so, ``Go into millinery as a business,''
he advised.
``Oh--if I only could!'' she exclaimed. ``But I know that I don't know enough.''
``Take the millinery course in Temple University,''
he responded.
She had not even heard of such a course, and when he went on to explain how she could take it and at the same time continue at her present work until the course was concluded, she was positively ecstatic--it was all so unexpected, this opening of the view of a new and broader life.
``She was an unusual woman,'' concluded Dr.
Conwell, ``and she worked with enthusiasm and tirelessness. She graduated, went to an up-state city that seemed to offer a good field, opened a millinery establishment there, with her own name above the door, and became prosperous. That was only a few years ago. And recently I had a letter from her, telling me that last year she netted a clear profit of three thousand six hundred dollars!''
I remember a man, himself of distinguished position, saying of Dr. Conwell, ``It is difficult to speak in tempered language of what he has achieved.'' And that just expresses it; the temptation is constantly to use superlatives--for superlatives fit! Of course he has succeeded for himself, and succeeded marvelously, in his rise from the rocky hill farm, but he has done so vastly more than that in inspiring such hosts of others to succeed!
A dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions--and what realizations have come! And it interested me profoundly not long ago, when Dr.
Conwell, talking of the university, unexpectedly remarked that he would like to see such institu-tions scattered throughout every state in the Union. ``All carried on at slight expense to the students and at hours to suit all sorts of working men and women,'' he added, after a pause; and then, abruptly, ``I should like to see the possibility of higher education offered to every one in the United States who works for a living.''
