The best time to learn the courage that proves so effective in the
struggle of life is in youth. More than fifty years ago two boys in
Scotland were hunting rabbits. Tiring of the comparatively easy hunting
on the ground, they looked longingly at a cliff of hard clay several
hundred feet high, in whose precipitous side were many rabbit burrows.
They managed to climb the cliff. At length they were making their way
along an almost perpendicular parapet, cutting their way with their
knives. Then one of the boys fell, with a scream, to the bottom of the
cliff. There was a moment of terror. This was succeeded by a grim
determination to go forward, the only way of escape. Driving his knife
deep in the clay, he rested on this for a moment. That moment, it has
always since seemed to him, marked the first momentous period in his
life, the time when his personality first emerged into consciousness. He
says: "I whispered to myself one word, 'Courage!' Then I went on with my
work." At length he reached the ground.
The lesson learned at such fearful cost told emphatically on the boy's
character. From that day he showed that there was in him the making of a
man who would not be balked by unfavorable circumstances. He did not
understand how or why, but he felt that new will-power had come to him
with the appeal to himself to take courage in the face of death.
A few years later he went to Brazil. A Spaniard told him that moral
deterioration within six months was all but certain to come to every
young man who began life there. But he was determined not to give way to
bad habits. When he reached Santos, his companions urged him to give
himself up to all kinds of vice; they told him that it was either this
or death, or perhaps something worse than death. They emphasized their
words by pointing to a young man who had determined to keep straight,
and had been left to himself until he was demented. But the boy who had
learned courage on the precipice made up his mind that he must live as
God wished him to live, and he turned a deaf ear to all entreaties.
Another book of biography tells of a boy who delighted in playing cards
with his father and mother. But when he united with the Church and
became President of the Christian Endeavor Society he began to wonder if
he was doing right. One night his father took up the cards and called
him to play whist.
"I don't think I'll play whist any more," he said quietly. "I've been
thinking that perhaps it wasn't right for me to play."
"Are you setting yourself up to judge your father and mother, young
man?" his father asked, sternly.
"No, I didn't say it isn't all right for you to play," was the reply.
"But you know I am President of the Christian Endeavor Society and some
of the members don't think it is right to play. So I guess I'd better
not."
His father looked at him thoughtfully for a minute, then picked up the
cards and threw them back into the drawer.
"Charlie," he said, "I want you to understand that I think you have done
a manly thing to-night, and I honor you for your courage."
That was the end of whist in that house.
Courage showed itself in much the same way in the life of J. Marion
Sims, the great surgeon. He used to tell how, when he was a boy at a
South Carolina School, he was able to take a stand that had its effect
on his whole after-life. Many of his fellow students were sons of
wealthy planters, and their habits were not always the best. On several
occasions they tried to lead him into mischief. They were particularly
anxious to make him a companion in their drinking bouts. Twice he gave
way to their pleas, but after sorrowful experience of the results of his
lapses, he decided to make a brave stand. So he said to his tempters:
"See here, boys, you can all drink, and I cannot. You like wine and I do
not. I hate it; its taste is disagreeable, its effects are dreadful,
because it makes me drunk. Now, I hope you all will understand my
position. I don't think it is right for you to ask me to drink wine when
I don't want it, and when it produces such a bad effect on me."
To say this required real courage, but the results were good, not only
in himself, but also, fortunately, in some of his companions.