The Book of Heroes should never be separated from the Book of
Heroines; they are the two parts of that story of courage, service and
achievement which is the most interesting and inspiring chapter in the
history of human kind in this wonderful world of ours. Whenever and
wherever there has appeared a hero, a heroine has almost always worked
with or for him; for heroic and noble deeds are rarely done without
some kind of cooperation. Now and then, it is true, single acts of
daring stand out alone; but, as a rule, the hero gains his end because
other men or women stand beside him in times of great peril. William
the Silent could not have made his heroic defence of the Low Countries
against the armies of Spain if men of heroic temper and women of
indomitable courage had not been about him in those terrible years;
Washington could not have converted a body of farmers into an
organized and disciplined army if he had not been aided by the skill
of drill masters like Steuben; nor could Lieutenant Peary make
brilliant dashes for the North Pole if other men did not join him in
his perilous expeditions. The hero is generally a leader of heroes, as
a great general is a leader of soldiers who carry out his plans in
hourly jeopardy of limb and life.
It is a mistake to think of heroes as rare and exceptional men; the
world is full of those who take their lives in their hands every day
and think nothing about it; or, if they think of it at all, think of
it, as Mr. Kipling would say, as part of the day's work. It is almost
impossible to open a daily newspaper without coming upon some story of
daring by some obscure man or woman. The record of a fire department
is usually a continuous register of the brave deeds done by those who
receive very small pay for a very dangerous service to their fellows.
It is not necessary to go back to the days of chivalry or to open the
histories of great wars to find a hero; he lives in every street,
works in every profession and never thinks that he is doing anything
unusual or impressive. There are many stories of heroic deeds and men,
but these are as nothing compared with the unwritten stories of brave
and chivalrous people whose lives are full of courage, self-denial and
sacrifice, but of whom no public reports are ever made.
It has taken three centuries to explore and settle this country, and
there are still parts of it in which those who live face the perils
and hardships of pioneers. Ever since the war of the Revolution the
skirmish line of civilisation has moved steadily forward from the
Atlantic to the Pacific; and every man who has carried a rifle or an
axe, who has defended his home against Indians or cut down trees, made
a clearing, built a rude house and turned the prairie or the land
taken from the forest into a farm, has had something of the hero in
him. He has often been selfish, harsh and unjust; but he has been
daring, full of endurance and with a capacity for heroic work; But he
has never been alone; we see him always as he faces his foes or bears
the strain of his work: we often forget that there was as much courage
in the log house as on the firing line at the edge of the forest, and
that the work indoors was harder in many ways than the work out of
doors and far less varied and inspiriting. If we could get at the
facts we should find that there have been more heroines than heroes in
the long warfare of the race against foes within and without, and that
the courage of women has had far less to stimulate it in dramatic or
picturesque conditions or crises. It is much easier to make a perilous
charge in full daylight, with flying banners and the music of bugles
ringing across the field, than to hold a lonely post, in solitude at
midnight, against a stealthy and unseen enemy.
Boys do not need to be taught to admire the bold rush on the enemies'
position, the brilliant and audacious passage through the narrow
channel under the guns of masked batteries, the lonely march into
Central Africa, the dash to the North Pole; they do need to be taught
the heroism of those who give the hero his sword and then go home
to wait for his return; who leave the stockade unarmed and, under a
fire of poisoned arrows, run to the springs for water for a thirsting
garrison; who quietly stay at their posts and as quietly die
without the inspiration of dramatic achievement or of the heart-felt
applause of spectators; who bear heavy burdens without a chance to
drop or change them; who are heroically patient under blighting
disappointments and are loyal to those who are disloyal to them; who
bear terrible wrongs in silence, and conceal the cowardice of those
they love and cover their retreat with a smiling courage which is the
very soul of the pathos of unavailing heroism and undeserved failure.
From the days of Esther, Judith and Antigone to those of Florence
Nightingale, women have shown every kind of courage that men have
shown, faced every kind of peril that men have braved, divided with
men the dangers and hardships of heroism but have never had an equal
share of recognition and applause. So far as they are concerned this
lack of equal public reward has been of small consequence; the best of
them have not only not cared for it, but have shunned it. It is well
to remember that the noblest heroes have never sought applause; and
that popularity is much more dangerous to heroes than the foes they
faced or the savage conditions they mastered in the splendid hour of
daring achievement. Many heroes have been betrayed by popularity into
vanity and folly and have lost at home the glory they won abroad.
Heroic women have not cared for public recognition and do not need it;
but it is of immense importance to society that the ideals of heroism
should be high and true, and that the soldier and the explorer should
not be placed above those whose achievements have been less dramatic,
but of a finer quality. The women who have shown heroic courage,
heroic patience, heroic purity and heroic devotion outrank the men
whose deeds have had their inspiration in physical bravery, who have
led splendid charges in full view of the world, who have achieved
miracles of material construction in canal or railroad, or the
reclaiming of barbarous lands to the uses of civilization. In a true
scale of heroic living and doing women must be counted more heroic
than men.
A writer of varied and brilliant talent and of a generous and gallant
spirit was asked at a dinner table, one evening not many years ago,
why no women appeared in his stories. He promptly replied that he
admired pluck above all other qualities, that he was timid by nature
and had won courage at the point of danger, and cared for it as the
most splendid of manly qualities. There happened to be a woman present
who bore the name of one of the most daring men of the time, and who
knew army life intimately. She made no comment and offered no
objection to the implication of the eminent writer's incautious
statement; but presently she began, in a very quiet tone, to describe
the incidents of her experience in army posts and on the march, and
every body listened intently as she went on narrating story after
story of the pluck and indifference to danger of women on the frontier
posts and, in some instances, on the march. The eminent writer
remained silent, but the moment the woman withdrew from the table he
was eager to know who the teller of these stories of heroism was and
how she had happened upon such remarkable experiences; and it was
noted that a woman appeared in his next novel!
The stories in this volume have been collected from many sources in
the endeavour to illustrate the wide range of heroism in the lives of
brave and noble women, and with the hope that these records of
splendid or quiet courage will open the eyes of young readers to the
many forms which heroism wears, and furnish a more spiritual scale of
heroic qualities.