the all-beholding sun,
That wrong is also done to us,
And they are slaves most base
Whose love of right is for themselves,
And not for all their race.
Lowell
Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues!
George Eliot
In arming the Christian soldier Paul puts sincerity before everything. Not, How much do you believe? but, How much do you believe it? He is less concerned with the article than with the ardor of my faith: he is content it should be half formed, if it be whole hearted. –Mattheson
La Tour d”Auvergne, alone in the besieged castle, multiplied himself, in effect, by shooting first from one window, then from another. When the terms of surrender were arranged the “garrison” was allowed to march out with the honors of war. To the astonishment of all, one man, the “First Grenadier of France,” came forth, and stacked arms. “But the garrison must abandon the castle!” expostulated the Austrian chief. “Where is the garrison?” “I am the garrison,” replied La Tour proudly.
Garibaldi’s power over his men amounted to fascination. In Rome he called for forty volunteers to go where half of them would be killed and the others wounded. The whole battalion rushed forward; and they had to draw lots, so eager were all to obey.
What is every man but a magnet, to attract, or to be attracted? Every man ultimately falls into the company with which he affiliates. And he is the strongest who draws men to himself, who creates the company; and this is through having a positive quality—moral courage and physical prowess.
There was “Gentleman George,” a young officer, of whom one of our war writers has told us. He spent all his spare hours in study, and daily he read his Bible. Camp life is never private, but George took the jeers of his comrades good-naturedly. He made an exact map of the country about the camp, much to his credit with the colone of the regiment. When an insane soldier sprang into quarters George seized him. In the day of battle George ran in between the firing-lines and brought off a wounded lieutenant. And after such exhibitions of the stuff he was made of no one joked further whenever Gentleman George sat down to read his Bible.
“The greatest man,” says a recent writer, “is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully’ who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menaces and frowns; whose reliance on truth, and virtue, and on God is most unfaltering.”
Such a man was Aristide the Just. When Themistocles sought to transfer the government of Greece from the hands of the Lacedaemonians into those of the Athenians, he intimated one day in the popular assembly that he had a very important design to propose; but he could not communicate it to the public at large, because the greatest secrecy was necessary to its success, and he therefore desired that they would appoint a person to whom he might explain himself on the subject. Aristides was unanimously selected by the assembly, which deferred entirely to his opinion. Themistocles, taking him aside, told him that the design he had conceived was to burn the fleet belonging to the rest of the Grecian States, which then lay in a neighboring port, when Athens would assuredly become mistress of all Greece. Aristides returned to the assembly, and declared to them that nothing could be more advantageous to the Commonwealth than the project of Themistocles, but that, at the same time, nothing in the world could be more unfair. The assembly unanimously declared that, since such was the case, Themistocles should wholly abandon his project.
Is not moral courage always quick to rebuke a wrong? When Bishop Coleridge Patterson was a boy at Eton he was captain of the eleven; and he had the courage to declare that he would resign his captaincy, and take no part in the rowing, if coarse songs were sung at the annual supper. An objectionable song was sung, and he, with others, at once rose and left the room. It was not until an apology was offered that he resumed his post. So, too, Gladstone, as a boy at Eton, turned down his glass when an improper toast was proposed. As a schoolboy, the Bishop of Salisbury was kept by Gladstone from evil ways. And the student generations drank less in the years following Gladstone’s abstemious courage.
“A heart unspotted is not easily daunted.”
This is true always and everywhere. In Harvard University the idea of what was the manly thing was definitely changed when Arthur Cumnock threw his athletic influence in favor of temperance in all things, fair play, courtesy, and modesty. Moral courage always tells.
Is not intrepidity of spirit as requisite in the tent as on the battlefield? “I was sitting with General Grant one day,” said Clinton B. Fisk, “when a major-general in full uniform appeared, saying: ‘Boys, I have a good story to tell. There are no ladies present.’ ‘No, but there are gentlemen present,’ replied the commander-in-chief.”
When God calls a man to be upright and pure and generous, he also calls him to be intelligent and skillful, and strong and brave.
“I will call this Luther a true great man,” says Carlyle, “great in intellect, in courage, affection, and integrity, one of our most lovable and precious men,--great, not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain, so simple, spontaneous, honest, not setting up to be great at all; there for quite another purpose than being great. Ah, yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into the heavens; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green, beautiful valleys with flowers!”
Chapter VI.
“A Fragment of the Rock of Ages”
“One ruddy drop of manly blood the surging sea outweighs.”
Last summer two young Creek braves, Watka and Deer, met at a dance; they were suitors for the same maiden, who was present. Trouble arose; there was a short fight, resulting in the death of Deer. For this homicide Watka was tried under the laws of his tribe, was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to be shot at a date early in August. Immediately on conviction the condemned man was released on parole, as others in the same circumstances had been,--it not being an infrequent tribal custom. No bond, no surety of any kind, nothing but his pledge to report for execution was required.
Watka could kill his rival in love in the heat of passion; but he would not violate his promise, to save his life. He married the girl on whose account he had fought and killed Deer, and when the day of execution approached, he made preparations to die, making every possible provision for his widow.
But he was not to die at the first time appointed. He was a member of a famous Indian baseball team, and a number of games in which
