DARE
The Spartans did not inquire how many the enemy are, but where they
are.--AGIS II.
What's brave, what's noble, let's do it after the high Roman fashion,
and make death proud to take us.--SHAKESPEARE.
Let me die facing the enemy.--BAYARD.
Who conquers me, shall find a stubborn foe.--BYRON.
No great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.
GEORGE ELIOT.
Fortune befriends the bold.--DRYDEN.
To stand with a smile upon your face against a stake from which you
cannot get away--that, no doubt, is heroic. But the true glory is
resignation to the inevitable. To stand unchained, with perfect
liberty to go away, held only by the higher claims of duty, and let the
fire creep up to the heart,--this is heroism.--F. W. ROBERTSON.
"Steady, men! Every man must die where he stands!" said Colin Campbell
to the Ninety-third Highlanders at Balaklava, as an overwhelming force
of Russian cavalry came sweeping down. "Ay, ay, Sir Colin! we'll do
that!" was the response from men, many of whom had to keep their word
by thus obeying.
"Bring back the colors," shouted a captain at the battle of the Alma,
when an ensign maintained his ground in front, although the men were
retreating. "No," cried the ensign, "bring up the men to the colors."
"To dare, and again to dare, and without end to dare," was Danton's
noble defiance to the enemies of France. "The Commons of France have
resolved to deliberate," said Mirabeau to De Breze, who brought an
order from the king for them to disperse, June 23, 1789. "We have
heard the intentions that have been attributed to the king; and you,
sir, who cannot be recognized as his organ in the National
Assembly,--you, who have neither place, voice, nor right to speak,--you
are not the person to bring to us a message of his. Go, say to those
who sent you that we are here by the power of the people, and that we
will not be driven hence, save by the power of the bayonet."
When the assembled senate of Rome begged Regulus not to return to
Carthage to fulfil an illegal promise, he calmly replied: "Have you
resolved to dishonor me? Torture and death are awaiting me, but what
are these to the shame of an infamous act, or the wounds of a guilty
mind? Slave as I am to Carthage, I still have the spirit of a Roman.
I have sworn to return. It is my duty. Let the gods take care of the
rest."
The courage which Cranmer had shown since the accession of Mary gave
way the moment his final doom was announced. The moral cowardice which
had displayed itself in his miserable compliance with the lust and
despotism of Henry VIII displayed itself again in six successive
recantations by which he hoped to purchase pardon. But pardon was
impossible; and Cranmer's strangely mingled nature found a power in its
very weakness when he was brought into the church of St. Mary at Oxford
on the 21st of March, to repeat his recantation on the way to the
stake. "Now," ended his address to the hushed congregation before
him,--"now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more
than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that is
the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth; which here I now
renounce and refuse as things written by a hand contrary to the truth
which I thought in my heart, and written for fear of death, to save my
life, if it might be. And, forasmuch as my hand offended in writing
contrary to my heart, my hand therefore shall be the first punished;
for if I come to the fire it shall be the first burned." "This was the
hand that wrote it," he again exclaimed at the stake, "therefore it
shall suffer first punishment"; and holding it steadily in the flame,
"he never stirred nor cried till life was gone."
A woman's piercing shriek suddenly startled a party of surveyors at
dinner in a forest of northern Virginia on a calm, sunny day in 1750.
The cries were repeated in quick succession, and the men sprang through
the undergrowth to learn their cause. "Oh, sir," exclaimed the woman
as she caught sight of a youth of eighteen, but a man in stature and
bearing; "you will surely do something for me! Make these friends
release me. My boy,--my poor boy is drowning, and they will not let me
go!" "It would be madness; she will jump into the river," said one of
the men who was holding her; "and the rapids would dash her to pieces
in a moment!" Throwing off his coat, the youth sprang to the edge of
the bank, scanned for a moment the rocks and whirling currents, and
then, at sight of part of the boy's dress, plunged into the roaring
rapids. "Thank God, he will save my child!" cried the mother, and all
rushed to the brink of the precipice; "there he is! Oh, my boy, my
darling boy! How could I leave you?"
But all eyes were bent upon the youth struggling with strong heart and
hope amid the dizzy sweep of the whirling currents far below. Now it
seemed as if he would be dashed against a projecting rock, over which
the water flew in foam, and anon a whirlpool would drag him in, from
whose grasp escape would seem impossible. Twice the boy went out of
sight, but he had reappeared the second time, although terribly near
the most dangerous part of the river. The rush of waters here was
tremendous, and no one had ever dared to approach it, even in a canoe,
lest he should be dashed to pieces. The youth redoubled his exertions.
Three times he was about to grasp the child, when some stronger eddy
would toss it from him. One final effort he makes; the child is held
aloft by his strong right arm; but a cry of horror bursts from the lips
of every spectator as boy and man shoot over the falls and vanish in
the seething waters below.
"There they are!" shouted the mother a moment later, in a delirium of
joy. "See! they are safe! Great God, I thank Thee!" And sure enough,
they emerged unharmed from the boiling vortex, and in a few minutes
reached a low place in the bank and were drawn up by their friends, the
boy senseless, but still alive, and the youth almost exhausted. "God
will give you a reward," solemnly spoke the grateful woman. "He will
do great things for you in return for this day's work, and the
blessings of thousands besides mine will attend you."
The youth was George Washington.
"Your Grace has not the organ of animal courage largely developed,"
said a phrenologist, who was examining Wellington's head. "You are
right," replied the Iron Duke, "and but for my sense of duty I should
have retreated in my first fight." That first fight, on an Indian
field, was one of the most terrible on record.
When General Jackson was a judge and was holding court in a small
settlement, a border ruffian, a murderer and desperado, came into the
court-room with brutal violence and interrupted the court. The judge
ordered him to be arrested. The officer did not dare to approach him.
"Call a posse," said the judge, "and arrest him." But they also shrank
in fear from the ruffian. "Call me, then," said Jackson; "this court
is adjourned for five minutes." He left the bench, walked straight up
to the man, and with his eagle eye actually cowed the ruffian, who
dropped his weapons, afterwards saying, "There was something in his eye
I could not resist."
One of the last official acts of President Carnot, of France, was the
sending of a medal of the French Legion of Honor to a little American
girl who lives in Indiana. While a train on the Pan Handle Railroad,
having on board several distinguished Frenchmen, was bound to Chicago
and the World's Fair, Jennie Carey, who was then ten years old,
discovered that a trestle was on fire, and that if the train, which was
nearly due, entered it a dreadful wreck would take place. Thereupon
she ran out upon the track to a place where she could be seen from some
little distance. Then she took off her red flannel skirt and, when the
train came in view, waved it back and forth across the track. It was
seen, and the train stopped. On board of it were seven hundred people,
many of whom must have suffered death but for Jennie's courage and
presence of mind. When they returned to France, the Frenchmen brought
the occurrence to the notice of President Carnot, and the result was
the sending of the medal of this famous French society, the purpose of
which is the honoring of bravery and merit, wherever they may be found.
It was the heroic devotion of an Indian girl that saved the life of
Captain John Smith, when the powerful King Powhatan had decreed his
death. Ill could the struggling colony spare him at that time.
On May 10, 1796, Napoleon carried the bridge at Lodi, in the face of
the Austrian batteries. Fourteen cannon--some accounts say
thirty--were trained upon the French end of the structure. Behind them
were six thousand troops. Napoleon massed four thousand grenadiers at
the head of the bridge, with a battalion of three hundred carbineers in
front. At the tap of the drum the foremost assailants wheeled from the
cover of the street wall under a terrible hail of grape and canister,
and attempted to pass the gateway to the bridge. The front ranks went
down like stalks of grain before a reaper; the column staggered and
reeled backward, and the valiant grenadiers were appalled by the task
before them. Without a word or a look of reproach, Napoleon placed
himself at their head, and his aides and generals rushed to his side.
Forward again, this time over heaps of dead that choked the passage,
and a quick run, counted by seconds only, carried the column across two
hundred yards of clear space, scarcely a shot from the Austrians taking
effect beyond the point where the platoons wheeled for the first leap.
So sudden and so miraculous was it all that the Austrian artillerists
abandoned their guns instantly, and instead of rushing to the front and
meeting the French onslaught, their supports fled in a panic. This
Napoleon had counted on in making the bold attack. The contrast
between Napoleon's slight figure and the massive grenadiers suggested
the nickname "Little Corporal."
When Stephen of Colonna fell into the hands of base assailants, they
asked him in derision, "Where is now your fortress?" "Here," was his
bold reply, placing his hand upon his heart.
After the Mexican War General McClellan was employed as a topographical
engineer in surveying the Pacific coast. From his headquarters at
Vancouver he had gone on an exploring expedition with two companions, a
soldier and a servant, when one evening he received word that the
chiefs of the Columbia River tribes desired to confer with him. From
the messenger's manner he suspected that the Indians meant mischief,
and so he warned his companions that they must be ready to leave camp
at a moment's notice.
Mounting his horse, he rode boldly into the Indian village. About
thirty chiefs were holding council. McClellan was led into the circle,
and placed at the right hand of Saltese. He was familiar with the
Chinook jargon, and could understand every word spoken in the council.
Saltese made known the grievance of the tribes. Two Indians had been
captured by a party of white pioneers and hanged for theft.
Retaliation for this outrage seemed imperative. The chiefs pondered
long, but had little to say. McClellan had been on friendly terms with
them, and was not responsible for the forest executions, but still, he
was a white man, and the chiefs had vowed vengeance against the race.
The council was prolonged for hours before sentence was passed, and
then Saltese, in the name of the head men of the tribes, decreed that
McClellan should immediately be put to death.
McClellan said nothing. He had known that argument and pleas for
justice or mercy would be of no avail. He sat motionless, apparently
indifferent to his fate. By his listlessness he had thrown his captors
off their guard. When the sentence was passed he acted like a flash.
Flinging his left arm around the neck of Saltese, he whipped out his
revolver and held it close to the chief's temple. "Revoke that
sentence, or I shall kill you this instant!" he cried, with his fingers
clicking the trigger. "I revoke it!" exclaimed Saltese, fairly livid
from fear. "I must have your word that I can leave this council in
safety." "You have the word of Saltese," was the quick response.
McClellan knew how sacred was the pledge which he had received. The
revolver was lowered. Saltese was released from the embrace of the
strong arm. McClellan strode out of the tent with his revolver in his
hand. Not a hand was raised against him. He mounted his horse and
rode to his camp, where his two followers were ready to spring into the
saddle and to escape from the villages. He owed his life to his
quickness of perception, his courage, and to his accurate knowledge of
Indian character.
In 1856, Rufus Choate spoke to an audience of nearly five thousand in
Lowell, Mass., in favor of the candidacy of James Buchanan for the
presidency. The floor of the great hall began to sink, settling more
and more as he proceeded with his address, until a sound of cracking
timber below would have precipitated a stampede with fatal results but
for the coolness of B. F. Butler, who presided. Telling the people to
remain quiet, he said that he would see if there were any cause for
alarm. He found the supports of the floor in so bad a condition that
the slightest applause would be likely to bury the audience in the
ruins of the building. Returning rather leisurely to the platform, he
whispered to Choate as he passed, "We shall all be in ---- in five
minutes"; then he told the crowd that there was no immediate danger if
they would slowly disperse. The post of danger, he added, was on the
platform, which was most weakly supported, therefore he and those with
him would be the last to leave. No doubt many lives were saved by his
coolness.
Many distinguished foreign and American statesmen were present at a
fashionable dinner party where wine was freely poured, but Schuyler
Colfax, then vice-president of the United States, declined to drink
from a proffered cup. "Colfax dares not drink," sneered a Senator who
had already taken too much. "You are right," said the Vice-President,
"I dare not."
When Grant was in Houston many years ago, he was given a rousing
reception. Naturally hospitable, and naturally inclined to like a man
of Grant's make-up, the Houstonites determined to go beyond any other
Southern city in the way of a banquet and other manifestations of their
good-will and hospitality. They made lavish preparations for the
dinner, the committee taking great pains to have the finest wines that
could be procured for the table that night. When the time came to
serve the wine, the headwaiter went first to Grant. Without a word the
general quietly turned down all the glasses at his plate. This
movement was a great surprise to the Texans, but they were equal to the
occasion. Without a single word being spoken, every man along the line
of the long tables turned his glasses down, and there was not a drop of
wine taken that night.
Two French officers at Waterloo were advancing to charge a greatly
superior force. One, observing that the other showed signs of fear,
said, "Sir, I believe you are frightened." "Yes, I am," was the reply,
"and if you were half as much frightened, you would run away."
"That's a brave man," said Wellington, when he saw a soldier turn pale
as he marched against a battery; "he knows his danger, and faces it."
"There are many cardinals and bishops at Worms," said a friend to
Luther, "and they will burn your body to ashes as they did that of John
Huss." Luther replied: "Although they should make a fire that should
reach from Worms to Wittenberg, and that should flame up to heaven, in
the Lord's name I would pass through it and appear before them." He
said to another: "I would enter Worms though there were as many devils
there as there are tiles upon the roofs of the houses." Another man
said to him: "Duke George will surely arrest you." He replied: "It is
my duty to go, and I will go, though it rain Duke Georges for nine days
together."
A Western paper recently invited the surviving Union and Confederate
officers to give an account of the bravest act observed by each during
the Civil War. Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson said that at a
dinner at Beaufort, S. C., where wine flowed freely and ribald jests
were bandied, Dr. Miner, a slight, boyish fellow who did not drink, was
told that he could not go until he had drunk a toast, told a story, or
sung a song. He replied: "I cannot sing, but I will give a toast,
although I must drink it in water. It is 'Our Mothers.'" The men were
so affected and ashamed that they took him by the hand and thanked him
for displaying such admirable moral courage.
It takes courage for a young man to stand firmly erect while others are
bowing and fawning for praise and power. It takes courage to wear
threadbare clothes while your comrades dress in broadcloth. It takes
courage to remain in honest poverty when others grow rich by fraud. It
takes courage to say "No" squarely when those around you say "Yes." It
takes courage to do your duty in silence and obscurity while others
prosper and grow famous although neglecting sacred obligations. It
takes courage to unmask your true self, to show your blemishes to a
condemning world, and to pass for what you really are.
It takes courage and pluck to be outvoted, beaten, laughed at, scoffed,
ridiculed, derided, misunderstood, misjudged, to stand alone with all
the world against you, but
"They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three."
"An honest man is not the worse because a dog barks at him."
We live ridiculously for fear of being thought ridiculous.
"Tis he is the coward who proves false to his vows,
To his manhood, his honor, for a laugh or a sneer."
The youth who starts out by being afraid to speak what he thinks will
usually end by being afraid to think what he wishes.
How we shrink from an act of our own! We live as others live. Custom
or fashion, or your doctor or minister, dictates, and they in turn dare
not depart from their schools. Dress, living, servants, carriages,
everything must conform, or we are ostracized. Who dares conduct his
household or business affairs in his own way, and snap his fingers at
Dame Grundy?
It takes courage for a public man not to bend the knee to popular
prejudice. It takes courage to refuse to follow custom when it is
injurious to his health and morals. How much easier for a politician
to prevaricate and dodge an issue than to stand squarely on his feet
like a man!
As the strongest man has a weakness somewhere, so the greatest hero is
a coward somewhere. Peter was courageous enough to draw his sword to
defend his Master, but he could not stand the ridicule and the finger
of scorn of the maidens in the high priest's hall, and he actually
denied even the acquaintance of the Master he had declared he would die
for.
Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the
liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in
timidity, nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are
repulsive. Manly courage is always dignified and graceful.
Bruno, condemned to be burned alive in Rome, said to his judge: "You
are more afraid to pronounce my sentence than I am to receive it."
Anne Askew, racked until her bones were dislocated, never flinched, but
looked her tormentor calmly in the face and refused to adjure her faith.
"I should have thought fear would have kept you from going so far,"
said a relative who found the little boy Nelson wandering a long
distance from home. "Fear?" said the future admiral, "I don't know
him."
"To think a thing is impossible is to make it so." _Courage is
victory, timidity's defeat_.
That simple shepherd-lad, David, fresh from his flocks, marching
unattended and unarmed, save with his shepherd's staff and sling, to
confront the colossal Goliath with his massive armor, is the sublimest
audacity the world has ever seen.
"Dent, I wish you would get down and see what is the matter with that
leg there," said Grant, when he and Colonel Dent were riding through
the thickest of a fire that had become so concentrated and murderous
that his troops had all been driven back. "I guess looking after your
horse's legs can wait," said Dent; "it is simply murder for us to sit
here." "All right," said Grant; "if you don't want to see to it, I
will." He dismounted, untwisted a piece of telegraph wire which had
begun to cut the horse's leg, examined it deliberately, and climbed
into his saddle. "Dent," said he, "when you've got a horse that you
think a great deal of, you should never take any chances with him. If
that wire had been left there for a little time longer he would have
gone dead lame, and would perhaps have been ruined for life."
Wellington said that at Waterloo the hottest of the battle raged round
a farmhouse, with an orchard surrounded by a thick hedge, which was so
important a point in the British position that orders were given to
hold it at any hazard or sacrifice. At last the powder and ball ran
short and the hedges took fire, surrounding the orchard with a wall of
flame. A messenger had been sent for ammunition, and soon two loaded
wagons came galloping toward the farmhouse. "The driver of the first
wagon, with the reckless daring of an English boy, spurred his
struggling and terrified horses through the burning heap; but the
flames rose fiercely round, and caught the powder, which exploded in an
instant, sending wagon, horses, and rider in fragments into the air.
For a instant the driver of the second wagon paused, appalled by his
comrade's fate; the next, observing that the flames, beaten back for
the moment by the explosion, afforded him one desperate chance, sent
his horses at the smoldering breach and, amid the deafening cheers of
the garrison, landed his terrible cargo safely within. Behind him the
flames closed up, and raged more fiercely than ever."
At the battle of Friedland a cannon-ball came over the heads of the
French soldiers, and a young soldier instinctively dodged. Napoleon
looked at him and smilingly said: "My friend, if that ball were
destined for you, though you were to burrow a hundred feet under ground
it would be sure to find you there."
When the mine in front of Petersburg was finished the fuse was lighted
and the Union troops were drawn up ready to charge the enemy's works as
soon as the explosion should make a breach. But seconds, minutes, and
tens of minutes passed, without a sound from the mine, and the suspense
became painful. Lieutenant Doughty and Sergeant Rees volunteered to
examine the fuse. Through the long subterranean galleries they hurried
in silence, not knowing but that they were advancing to a horrible
death. They found the defect, fired the train anew, and soon a
terrible upheaval of earth gave the signal to march to victory.
At the battle of Copenhagen, as Nelson walked the deck slippery with
blood and covered with the dead, he said: "This is warm work, and this
day may be the last to any of us in a moment. But, mark me, I would
not be elsewhere for thousands." At the battle of Trafalgar, when he
was shot and was being carried below, he covered his face, that those
fighting might not know their chief had fallen.
In a skirmish at Salamanca, while the enemy's guns were pouring shot
into his regiment, Sir William Napier's men became disobedient. He at
once ordered a halt, and flogged four of the ringleaders under fire.
The men yielded at once, and then marched three miles under a heavy
cannonade as coolly as if it were a review.
Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams until
their effects be tried. Does competition trouble you? work away; what
is your competitor but a man? _Conquer your place in the world_, for
all things serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain
misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment
courageously. The influence of the brave man is contagious and creates
an epidemic of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to the
grave obscure men who have only remained in obscurity because their
timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who, if
they could have been induced to begin, would in all probability have
gone great lengths in the career of usefulness and fame. "No great
deed is done," says George Eliot, "by falterers who ask for certainty."
After the great inward struggle was over, and he had determined to
remain loyal to his principles, Thomas More walked cheerfully to the
block. His wife called him a fool for staying in a dark, damp, filthy
prison when he might have his liberty by merely renouncing his
doctrines, as some of the bishops had done. But Thomas More preferred
death to dishonor.
His daughter showed the power of love to drive away fear. She remained
true to her father when all others, even her mother, had forsaken him.
After his head had been cut off and exhibited on a pole on London
Bridge, the poor girl begged it of the authorities, and requested that
it be buried in the coffin with her. Her request was granted, for her
death soon occurred.
When Sir Walter Raleigh came to the scaffold he was very faint, and
began his speech to the crowd by saying that during the last two days
he had been visited by two ague fits. "If, therefore, you perceive any
weakness in me, I beseech you ascribe it to my sickness rather than to
myself." He took the ax and kissed the blade, and said to the sheriff:
"'T is a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases."
Don't waste time dreaming of obstacles you may never encounter, or in
crossing bridges you have not reached. To half will and to hang
forever in the balance is to lose your grip on life.
Abraham Lincoln's boyhood was one long struggle with poverty, with
little education, and no influential friends. When at last he had
begun the practice of law, it required no little courage to cast his
fortune with the weaker side in politics, and thus imperil what small
reputation he had gained. Only the most sublime moral courage could
have sustained him as President to hold his ground against hostile
criticism and a long train of disaster; to issue the Emancipation
Proclamation, to support Grant and Stanton against the clamor of the
politicians and the press.
Lincoln never shrank from espousing an unpopular cause when he believed
it to be right. At the time when it almost cost a young lawyer his
bread and butter to defend the fugitive slave, and when other lawyers
had refused, Lincoln would always plead the cause of the unfortunate
whenever an opportunity presented. "Go to Lincoln," people would say,
when these hounded fugitives were seeking protection; "he's not afraid
of any cause, if it's right."
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just:
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.
LOWELL.
As Salmon P. Chase left the court room after an impassioned plea for
the runaway slave girl Matilda, a man looked at him in surprise and
said: "There goes a fine young fellow who has just ruined himself."
But in thus ruining himself Chase had taken the first important step in
a career in which he became Governor of Ohio, United States Senator
from Ohio, Secretary of the United States Treasury, and Chief Justice
of the United States Supreme Court.
At the trial of William Penn for having spoken at a Quaker meeting, the
recorder, not satisfied with the first verdict, said to the jury: "We
will have a verdict by the help of God, or you shall starve for it."
"You are Englishmen," said Penn; "mind your privileges, give not away
your right." At last the jury, after two days and two nights without
food, returned a verdict of "Not guilty." The recorder fined them
forty marks apiece for their independence.
What cared Christ for the jeers of the crowd? The palsied hand moved,
the blind saw, the leper was made whole, the dead spake, despite the
ridicule and scoffs of the spectators.
What cared Wendell Phillips for rotten eggs, derisive scorn, and
hisses? In him "at last the scornful world had met its match." Were
Beecher and Gough to be silenced by the rude English mobs that came to
extinguish them? No! they held their ground and compelled unwilling
thousands to hear and to heed. Did Anna Dickinson leave the platform
when the pistol bullets of the Molly Maguires flew about her head? She
silenced those pistols by her courage and her arguments.
What the world wants is a Knox, who dares to preach on with a musket
leveled at his head; a Garrison, who is not afraid of a jail, or a mob,
or a scaffold erected in front of his door.
When General Butler was sent with nine thousand men to quell the New
York riots, he arrived in advance of his troops, and found the streets
thronged with an angry mob, which had already hanged several men to
lamp-posts. Without waiting for his men, Butler went to the place
where the crowd was most dense, overturned an ash barrel, stood upon
it, and began: "Delegates from Five Points, fiends from hell, you have
murdered your superiors," and the bloodstained crowd quailed before the
courageous words of a single man in a city which Mayor Fernando Wood
could not restrain with the aid of police and militia.
"Our enemies are before us," exclaimed the Spartans at Thermopylae.
"And we are before them." was the cool reply of Leonidas. "Deliver
your arms," came the message from Xerxes. "Come and take them," was
the answer Leonidas sent back. A Persian soldier said: "You will not
be able to see the sun for flying javelins and arrows." "Then we will
fight in the shade," replied a Lacedemonian. What wonder that a
handful of such men checked the march of the greatest host that ever
trod the earth!
"It is impossible," said a staff officer, when Napoleon gave directions
for a daring plan. "Impossible!" thundered the great commander,
"_impossible_ is the adjective of fools!"
The courageous man is an example to the intrepid. His influence is
magnetic. Men follow him, even to the death.
Men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the
prime of life. It is astonishing what daring to begin and perseverance
have enabled even youths to achieve. Alexander, who ascended the
throne at twenty, had conquered the known world before dying at
thirty-three. Julius Caesar captured eight hundred cities, conquered
three hundred nations, defeated three million men, became a great
orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young
man. Washington was appointed adjutant-general at nineteen, was sent
at twenty-one as an ambassador to treat with the French, and won his
first battle as a colonel at twenty-two. Lafayette was made general of
the whole French Army at twenty. Charlemagne was master of France and
Germany at thirty. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle
of the pendulum in the swing lamp in the cathedral at Pisa. Peel was
in Parliament at twenty-one. Gladstone was in Parliament before he was
twenty-two, and at twenty-four he was Lord of the Treasury. Elizabeth
Barrett Browning was proficient in Greek and Latin at twelve; De
Quincey at eleven. Robert Browning wrote at eleven poetry of no mean
order. Cowley, who sleeps in Westminster Abbey, published a volume of
poems at fifteen. Luther was but twenty-nine when he nailed his famous
thesis to the door of the bishop and defied the pope. Nelson was a
lieutenant in the British Navy before he was twenty. He was but
forty-seven when he received his death wound at Trafalgar. At
thirty-six, Cortez was the conqueror of Mexico; at thirty-two, Clive
had established the British power in India. Hannibal, the greatest of
military commanders, was only thirty when, at Cannae, he dealt an
almost annihilating blow at the republic of Rome, and Napoleon was only
twenty-seven when, on the plains of Italy, he outgeneraled and
defeated, one after another, the veteran marshals of Austria.
Equal courage and resolution are often shown by men who have passed the
allotted limit of life. Victor Hugo and Wellington were both in their
prime after they had reached the age of threescore years and ten.
Gladstone ruled England with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a
marvel of literary and scholarly ability.
Shakespeare says: "He is not worthy of the honeycomb that shuns the
hive because the bees have stings."
"The brave man is not he who feels no fear,
For that were stupid and irrational;
But he whose noble soul its fear subdues
And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."
Many a bright youth has accomplished nothing of worth to himself or the
world simply because he did not dare to commence things.
Begin! Begin! Begin!!!
Whatever people may think of you, do that which you believe to be
right. Be alike indifferent to censure or praise.--PYTHAGORAS.
I dare to do all that may become a man:
Who dares do more is none.
SHAKESPEARE.
For man's great actions are performed in minor struggles. There are
obstinate and unknown braves who defend themselves inch by inch in the
shadows against the fatal invasion of want and turpitude. There are
noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees, no renown rewards, and
no flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation,
abandonment, and poverty are battlefields which have their
heroes.--VICTOR HUGO.
Quit yourselves like men.--1 SAMUEL iv. 9.