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.
Better, like Hector, in the field to die,
Than, like a perfumed Paris, turn and fly.
LONGFELLOW.
Let me die facing the enemy.--BAYARD.
Who conquers me, shall find a stubborn foe.--BYRON.
Courage in danger is half the battle.--PLAUTUS.
No great deed is done
By falterers who ask for certainty.
GEORGE ELIOT.
Fortune befriends the bold.--DRYDEN.
Tender handed stroke a nettle,
And it stings you for your pains;
Grasp it like a man of mettle,
And it soft as silk remains.
AARON HILL.
We make way for the man who boldly pushes past us.--BOVÉE.
Man should dare all things that he knows is right,
And fear to do nothing save what is wrong.
PHEBE CARY.
Soft-heartedness, in times like these,
Shows softness in the upper story.
LOWELL.
O friend, never strike sail to fear. Come into port grandly, or sail
with God the seas.--EMERSON.
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 cordial response from men many of whom had to keep their
word by thus obeying.
* * * * * *
[Illustration: COMMODORE PERRY]
"We have met the enemy and they are ours."
"He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts too small,
That dares not put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all."
* * * * * *
"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 fulfill 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 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."
"Oh, if I were only a man!" exclaimed Rebecca Bates, a girl of
fourteen, as she looked from the window of a lighthouse at Scituate,
Mass., during the War of 1812, and saw a British warship anchor in the
harbor. "What could you do?" asked Sarah Winsor, a young visitor.
"See what a lot of them the boats contain, and look at their guns!" and
she pointed to five large boats, filled with soldiers in scarlet
uniforms, who were coming to burn the vessels in the harbor and destroy
the town. "I don't care, I'd fight," said Rebecca. "I'd use father's
old shotgun--anything. Think of uncle's new boat and the sloop! And
how hard it is to sit here and see it all, and not lift a finger to
help. Father and uncle are in the village and will do all they can.
How still it is in the town! There is not a man to be seen." "Oh,
they are hiding till the soldiers get nearer," said Sarah, "then we'll
hear the shots and the drum." "The drum!" exclaimed Rebecca, "how can
they use it? It is here. Father brought it home last night to mend.
See! the first boat has reached the sloop. Oh! they are going to burn
her. Where is that drum? I've a great mind to go down and beat it.
We could hide behind the sandhills and bushes." As flames began to
rise from the sloop the ardor of the girls increased. They found the
drum and an old fife, and, slipping out of doors unnoticed by Mrs.
Bates, soon stood behind a row of sandhills. "Rub-a-dub-dub,
rub-a-dub-dub," went the drum, and "squeak, squeak, squeak," went the
fife. The Americans in the town thought that help had come from
Boston, and rushed into boats to attack the redcoats. The British
paused in their work of destruction; and, when the fife began to play
"Yankee Doodle," they scrambled into their boats and rowed in haste to
the warship, which weighed anchor and sailed away as fast as the wind
would carry her.
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 on 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 frightfully 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.
In the reverses which followed Napoleon, he met the allies at Arcis. A
live shell having fallen in front of one of his young battalions, which
recoiled and wavered in expectation of an explosion, Napoleon, to
reassure them, spurred his charger toward the instrument of
destruction, made him smell the burning match, waited unshaken for the
explosion, and was blown up. Rolling in the dust with his mutilated
steed, and rising without a wound amid the plaudits of his soldiers, he
calmly called for another horse, and continued to brave the grape-shot,
and to fly into the thickest of the battle.
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 the late 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.
After the battle of Fort Donelson, the wounded were hauled down the
hill in rough board wagons, and most of them died before they reached
St. Louis. One blue-eyed boy of nineteen, with both arms and both legs
shattered, had lain a long time and was neglected. He said, "Why, you
see they couldn't stop to bother with us because they had to take the
fort. When they took it we all forgot our sufferings and shouted for
joy, even to the dying."
Louis IX. of France was captured by the Turks at the battle of
Mansoora, during the Seventh Crusade, and his wife Marguerite, with a
babe at the breast, was in Damietta, many miles away. The Infidels
surrounded the city, and pressed the garrison so hard that it was
decided to capitulate. The queen summoned the knights, and told them
that she at least would die in armor upon the ramparts before the enemy
should become masters of Damietta.
"Before her words they thrilled like leaves
When winds are in the wood;
And a deepening murmur told of men
Roused to a loftier mood."
Grasping lance and shield, they vowed to defend their queen and the
cross to the last. Damietta was saved.
Pyrrhus marched to Sparta to reinstate the deposed Cleonymus, and
quietly pitched his tents before Laconia, not anticipating resistance.
In consternation, the Spartans in council decided to send their women
to Crete for safety. But the women met and asked Queen Archidamia to
remonstrate. She went to the council, sword in hand, and told the men
that their wives did not care to live after Sparta was destroyed.
"We are brave men's mothers, and brave men's wives;
We are ready to do and dare;
We are ready to man your walls with our lives,
And string your bows with our hair."
They hurried to the walls and worked all night, aiding the men in
digging trenches. When Pyrrhus attacked the city next day, his repulse
was so emphatic that he withdrew from Laconia.
Charles V. of Spain passed through Thuringia in 1547, on his return to
Swabia after the battle of Muehlburg. He wrote to Catherine, Countess
Dowager of Schwartzburg, promising that her subjects should not be
molested in their persons or property if they would supply the Spanish
soldiers with provisions at a reasonable price. On approaching
Eudolstadt, General Alva and Prince Henry of Brunswick, with his sons,
invited themselves, by a messenger sent forward, to breakfast with the
Countess, who had no choice but to ratify so delicate a request from
the commander of an army. Just as the guests were seated at a generous
repast, the Countess was called from the hall and told that the
Spaniards were using violence and driving away the cattle of the
peasants.
Quietly arming all her retinue, she bolted and barred all the gates and
doors of the castle, and returned to the banquet to complain of the
breach of faith. General Alva told her that such was the custom of
war, adding that such trifling disorders were not to be heeded. "That
we shall presently see," said Catharine; "my poor subjects must have
their own again, or, as God lives, prince's blood for oxen's blood!"
The doors were opened, and armed men took the places of the waiters
behind the chairs of the guests. Henry changed color; then, as the
best way out of a bad scrape, laughed loudly, and ended by praising the
splendid acting of his hostess, and promising that Alva should order
the cattle restored at once. Not until a courier returned, saying that
the order had been obeyed, and all damages settled satisfactorily, did
the armed waiters leave. The Countess then thanked her guests for the
honor they had done her castle, and they retired with protestations of
their distinguished consideration.
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.
When the consul shouted that the bridge was tottering, Lartius and
Herminius sought safety in flight. But Horatius strode still nearer
the foe, the single champion of his country and liberty, and dared the
ninety thousand to come on. Dead stillness fell upon the Tuscans, so
astonished were they at the audacity of the Roman. He first broke the
awful silence, so deep that his clear, strong voice could be heard by
thousands in both armies, between which rolled the Tiber, as he
denounced the baseness and perfidy of the invaders. Not until his
words were drowned by the loud crash of fiercely disrupturing timbers,
and the sullen splash of the dark river, did his enemies hurl their
showers of arrows and javelins. Then, dexterously warding off the
missiles with his shield, he plunged into the Tiber. Although stabbed
in the hip by a Tuscan spear which lamed him for life, he swam in
safety to Rome.
"It is a bad omen," said Eric the Red, when his horse slipped and fell
on the way to his ship, moored on the coast of Greenland, in readiness
for a voyage of discovery. "Ill-fortune would be mine should I dare
venture now upon the sea." So he returned to his house, but his young
son Leif decided to go, and, with a crew of thirty-five men, sailed
southward in search of the unknown shore upon which Captain Biarni had
been driven by a storm, while sailing in another Viking ship two or
three years before. The first land that they saw was probably
Labrador, a barren, rugged plain. Leif called this country Heluland,
or the land of flat stones. Sailing onward many days, he came to a
low, level coast thickly covered with woods, on account of which he
called the country Markland, probably the modern Nova Scotia. Sailing
onward, they came to an island which they named Vinland on account of
the abundance of delicious wild grapes in the woods. This was in the
year 1000. Here where the city of Newport, R. I., stands, they spent
many months, and then returned to Greenland with their vessel loaded
with grapes and strange kinds of wood. The voyage was successful, and
no doubt Eric was sorry he had been frightened by the bad omen.
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 aids 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 their supports fled in a panic
instead of rushing to the front and meeting the French onslaught. 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."
The great secret of the success of Joan of Arc was the boldness of her
attacks.
When Stephen of Colonna fell into the hands of base assailants, and
they asked him in derision, "Where is now your fortress?" "Here," was
his bold reply, placing his hand upon his heart.
It was after the Mexican War when General McClellan was employed as a
topographical engineer in surveying the Pacific coast. From his
headquarters at Vancouver he had gone south to the Columbia River with
two companions, a soldier and a servant. 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. 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 indispensable. 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. 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
in retaliation for the hanging of the two Indian thieves.
McClellan had said nothing. He had known that argument and pleas for
justice or mercy would be of no avail. He had 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, and to his accurate knowledge of
Indian character.
In 1866, Rufus Choate spoke to an audience of nearly five thousand in
Lowell 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, although he thought it prudent to adjourn to a place
where there would be no risk whatever. 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 several 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 great 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 head-waiter 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.
A deep sewer at Noyon, France, had been opened for repairs, and
carelessly left at night without covering or lights to warn people of
danger. Late at night four men stumbled in, and lay some time before
their situation was known in the town. No one dared go to the aid of
the men, then unconscious from breathing noxious gases, except
Catherine Vassen, a servant girl of eighteen. She insisted on being
lowered at once. Fastening a rope around two of the men, she aided in
raising them and restoring them to consciousness. Descending again,
she had just tied a rope around a third man, when she felt her breath
failing. Tying another rope to her long, curly hair, she swooned, but
was drawn up with the man, to be quickly revived by fresh air and
stimulants. The fourth man was dead when his body was pulled up, on
account of the delay from the fainting of Catherine.
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 said:
"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."
"Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me," exclaimed Luther at
the Diet of Worms, facing his foes.
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 W. 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 some took him by the hand and thanked him for
displaying courage greater than that required to walk up to the mouth
of a cannon.
It took great courage for the commercial Quaker, John Bright, to
espouse a cause which called down upon his head the derision and scorn
and hatred of the Parliament. For years he rested under a cloud of
obloquy, but Bright was made of stern stuff. It was only his strength
of character and masterly eloquence, which saved him from political
annihilation. To a man who boasted that his ancestors came over with
the Conquerors, he replied, "I never heard that they did anything
else." A Tory lordling said, when Bright was ill, that Providence had
inflicted upon Bright, for the measure of his talents, disease of the
brain. When Bright went back into the Commons he replied: "This may be
so, but it will be some consolation to the friends and family of the
noble lord to know that that disease is one which even Providence
cannot inflict upon him."
"When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the World,
and takes him boldly by the beard," says Holmes, "he is often surprised
to find it come off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare
away timid adventurers."
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."
"There is never wanting a dog to bark at you."
"An honest man is not the worse because a dog barks at him."
"Let any man show the world that he feels
Afraid of its bark, and 'twill fly at his heels.
Let him fearlessly face it, 't will leave him alone,
And 't will fawn at his feet if he fling it a bone."
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:
'Tis he is the hero who stands firm, though alone,
For the truth and the right without flinching or fear."
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 dictates, or your doctor or minister, and they in turn dare
not depart from their schools. Dress, living, servants, carriages,
everything must conform, or be ostracized. Who dares conduct his
household or business affairs in his own way, and snap his fingers at
Dame Grundy?
Many a man has marched up to the cannon's mouth in battle who dared not
face public opinion or oppose Mrs. 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. To espouse an unpopular cause in
Congress requires more courage than to lead a charge in battle. How
much easier for a politician to prevaricate and dodge an issue than to
stand squarely on his feet like a man.
As a rule, eccentricity is a badge of power, but how many women would
not rather strangle their individuality than be tabooed by Mrs. Grundy?
Yet fear is really the only thing to fear.
"Whoever you may be," said Sainte-Beuve, "great genius, distinguished
talent, artist honorable or amiable, the qualities for which you
deserve to be praised will all be turned against you. Were you a
Virgil, the pious and sensible singer _par excellence_, there are
people who will call you an effeminate poet. Were you a Horace, there
are people who will reproach you with the very purity and delicacy of
your taste. If you were a Shakespeare, some one will call you a
drunken savage. If you were a Goethe, more than one Pharisee will
proclaim you the most selfish of egotists."
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.
"I will take the responsibility," said Andrew Jackson, on a memorable
occasion, and his words have become proverbial. Not even Congress
dared to oppose the edicts of John Quincy Adams.
If a man would accomplish anything in this world, he must not be afraid
of assuming responsibilities. Of course it takes courage to run the
risk of failure, to be subjected to criticism for an unpopular cause,
to expose one's self to the shafts of everybody's ridicule, but the man
who is not true to himself, who cannot carry out the sealed orders
placed in his hands at his birth, regardless of the world's yes or no,
of its approval or disapproval, the man who has not the courage to
trace the pattern of his own destiny, which no other soul knows but his
own, can never rise to the true dignity of manhood. All the world
loves courage; youth craves it; they want to hear about it, they want
to read about it. The fascination of the "blood and thunder" novels
and of the cheap story papers for youth are based upon this idea of
courage. If the boys cannot get the real article, they will take a
counterfeit.
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 dignified and graceful. The worst manners
in the world are those of persons conscious "of being beneath their
position, and trying to conceal it or make up for it by style."
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 abjure her faith.
"We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid
of each other." "Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage," said
Emerson. Physicians used to teach that courage depends on the
circulation of the blood in the arteries, and that during passion,
anger, trials of strength, wrestling or fighting, a large amount of
blood is collected in the arteries, and does not pass to the veins. A
strong pulse is a fortune in itself.
"Rage," said Shaftesbury, "can make a coward forget himself and fight."
"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."
"Doubt indulged becomes doubt realized." To determine to do anything
is half the battle. "To think a thing is impossible is to make it so."
_Courage is victory, timidity is 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 an 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 smouldering 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 Kees
volunteered to examine the fuse. Through the long subterranean
galleries they hurried in silence, not knowing but 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
Nelson 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 till
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 a magnetism which
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." The brave, cheerful man will survive his blighted hopes
and disappointments, take them for just what they are, lessons and
perhaps blessings in disguise, and will march boldly and cheerfully
forward in the battle of life. Or, if necessary, he will bear his ills
with a patience and calm endurance deeper than ever plummet sounded.
He is the true hero.
Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is 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.
Our doubts are traitors,
And make us lose the good we oft might win,
By fearing to attempt.
SHAKESPEARE.
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 he preferred death to
dishonor. His daughter allowed 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 occurred soon.
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 axe 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. Don't fool with a nettle!
Grasp with firmness if you would rob it of its sting. 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 daring 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; and through it all to do the right as God
gave him to see the right.
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."
As Salmon P. Chase left the court room after making 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.
"Storms may howl around thee,
Foes may hunt and hound thee:
Shall they overpower thee?
Never, never, never."
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 more than one man
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 blood-stained 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!" Napoleon went to the edge of
his possibility.
Grant never knew when he was beaten. When told that he was surrounded
by the enemy at Belmont, he quietly replied: "Well, then we must cut
our way out."
The courageous man is an example to the intrepid. His influence is
magnetic. He creates an epidemic of nobleness. Men follow him, even
to the death.
The spirit of courage will transform the whole temper of your life.
"The wise and active conquer difficulties by daring to attempt them.
Sloth and folly shiver and sicken at the sight of trial and hazard, and
make the impossibility they fear."
"The hero," says Emerson, "is the man who is immovably centred."
Emin Pasha, the explorer of Africa, was left behind by his exploring
party under circumstances that were thought certainly fatal, and his
death was reported with great assurance. Early the next winter, as his
troop was on its toilsome but exciting way through Central Africa, it
came upon a most wretched sight. A party of natives had been kidnapped
by the slave-hunters, and dragged in chains thus far toward the land of
bondage. But small-pox had set in, and the miserable company had been
abandoned to their fate. Emin sent his men ahead, and stayed behind in
this camp of death to act as physician and nurse. How many lives he
saved is not known, though it is known that he nearly lost his own.
The age of chivalry is not gone by. This is as knightly a deed as poet
ever chronicled.
A mouse that dwelt near the abode of a great magician was kept in such
constant distress by its fear of a cat, that the magician, taking pity
on it, turned it into a cat itself. Immediately it began to suffer
from its fear of a dog, so the magician turned it into a dog. Then it
began to suffer from fear of a tiger. The magician therefore turned it
into a tiger. Then it began to suffer from fear of hunters, and the
magician said in disgust: "Be a mouse again. As you have only the
heart of a mouse, it is impossible to help you by giving you the body
of a nobler animal."
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, and 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. Condé was only twenty-two when he conquered at
Rocroi. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the
pendulum in the swinging 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. N. P. Willis won lasting fame as a poet before
leaving college. Macaulay was a celebrated author before he was
twenty-three. 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. Charles the
Twelfth was only nineteen when he gained the battle of Narva; 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.
George Bancroft wrote some of his best historical work when he was
eighty-five. Gladstone ruled England with a strong hand at
eighty-four, and was a marvel of literary and scholarly ability.
"Not every vessel that sails from Tarshish will bring back the gold of
Ophir. But shall it therefore rot in the harbor? No! Give its sails
to the wind!"
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."
The inscription on the gates of Busyrane: "Be bold." On the second
gate: "Be bold, be bold, and ever more be bold;" the third gate: "Be
not too bold."
Many a bright youth has accomplished nothing of worth simply because he
did not dare to commence.
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.
Fear makes man a slave to others. This is the tyrant's chain. Anxiety
is a form of cowardice embittering life.--CHANNING.
Courage is generosity of the highest order, for the brave are prodigal
of the most precious things. Our blood is nearer and dearer to us than
our money, and our life than our estate. Women are more taken with
courage than with generosity.--COLTON.
Who chooses me must give and hazard all he hath.
_Merchant of Venice_, Inscription on Leaden Casket.
I dare to do all that may become a man:
Who dares do more is none.
SHAKESPEAKE.
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.
Who waits until the wind shall silent keep,
Who never finds the ready hour to sow,
Who watcheth clouds, will have no time to reap.
HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
Quit yourselves like men.--1 SAMUEL iv. 9.