"So when a great man dies, For years beyond our ken, The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men."
The character of Socrates was mightier than the hemlock, and banished the fear and sting of death.
Who can estimate the power of a well-lived life? _Character is power_.
Hang this motto in every school in the land, in every home, in every youth"s room. Mothers, engrave it on every child"s heart.
You cannot destroy one single atom of a Garrison, even though he were hanged. The mighty force of martyrs to truth lives; the candle burns more brilliantly than before it was snuffed. "No varnish or veneer of scholarship, no command of the tricks of logic or rhetoric, can ever make you a positive force in the world;" but your character can.
When the statue of George Peabody, erected in one of the thoroughfares of London, was unveiled, the sculptor Story was asked to speak. Twice he touched the statue with his hand, and said, "That is my speech. That is my speech." What could be more eloquent? Character needs no recommendation. It pleads its own cause.
"Show me," said Omar the Caliph to Amru the warrior, "the sword with which you have fought so many battles and slain so many infidels." "Ah!"
replied Amru, "the sword without the arm of the master is no sharper nor heavier than the sword of Farezdak the poet." So one hundred and fifty pounds of flesh and blood without character is of no great value.
Napoleon was so much impressed with the courage and resources of Marshal Ney, that he said, "I have two hundred millions in my coffers, and I would give them all for Ney."
In Agra, India, stands the Taj Mahal, the acme of Oriental architecture, said to be the most beautiful building in the world. It was planned as a mausoleum for the favorite wife of Shah Jehan. When the latter was deposed by his son Aurungzebe, his daughter Jahanara chose to share his captivity and poverty rather than the guilty glory of her brother. On her tomb in Delhi were cut her dying words: "Let no rich coverlet adorn my grave; this gra.s.s is the best covering for the tomb of the poor in spirit, the humble, the transitory Jahanara, the disciple of the holy men of Christ, the daughter of the Emperor Shah Jehan." Travelers who visit the magnificent Taj linger long by the gra.s.s-green sarcophagus in Delhi, but give only pa.s.sing notice to the beautiful Jamma Masjid, a mausoleum afterwards erected in her honor.
Some writer has well said that David of the throne we cannot always recall with pleasure, but David of the Psalms we never forget. The strong, sweet faith of the latter streams like sunlight through even the closed windows of the soul, long after the wearied eye has turned with disgust from all the gilded pomp and pride of the former.
Robertson says that when you have got to the lowest depths of your heart, you will find there not the mere desire of happiness, but a craving as natural to us as the desire for food,--the craving for n.o.bler, higher life.
"Private Benjamin Owen, ---- Regiment, Vermont Volunteers, was found asleep at his post while on picket duty last night. The court-martial has sentenced him to be shot in twenty-four hours, as the offense occurred at a critical time." "I thought when I gave Bennie to his country," said farmer Owen as he read the above telegram with dimming eyes, "that no other father in all this broad laud made so precious a gift. He only slept a minute,--just one little minute,--at his post, I know that was all, for Bennie never dozed over a duty. How prompt and trustworthy he was! He was as tall as I, and only eighteen! and now they shoot him because he was found asleep when doing sentinel duty!" Just then Bennie"s little sister Blossom answered a tap at the door, and returned with a letter. "It is from him," was all she said.
DEAR FATHER,--For sleeping on sentinel duty I am to be shot. At first, it seemed awful to me; but I have thought about it so much now that it has no terror. They say that they will not bind me, nor blind me; but that I may meet my death like a man. I thought, father, that it might have been on the battlefield, for my country, and that, when I fell, it would be fighting gloriously; but to be shot down like a dog for nearly betraying it,--to die for neglect of duty! Oh, father, I wonder the very thought does not kill me! But I shall not disgrace you. I am going to write you all about it; and when I am gone, you may tell my comrades; I cannot now.
You know I promised Jemmie Carr"s mother I would look after her boy; and, when he fell sick, I did all I could for him. He was not strong when he was ordered back into the ranks, and the day before that night I carried all his baggage, besides my own, on our march. Toward night we went in on double-quick, and the baggage began to feel very heavy. Everybody was tired; and as for Jemmie, if I had not lent him an arm now and then, he would have dropped by the way. I was all tired out when we came into camp; and then it was Jemmie"s turn to be sentry, and I could take his place; but I was too tired, father. I could not have kept awake if a gun had been pointed at my head; but I did not know it until,--well, until it was too late.
They tell me to-day that I have a short reprieve,--given to me by circ.u.mstances,--"time to write to you," our good colonel says. Forgive him, father, he only does his duty; he would gladly save me if he could; and do not lay my death up against Jemmie. The poor boy is broken-hearted, and does nothing but beg and entreat them to let him die in my stead. I can"t bear to think of mother and Blossom. Comfort them, father! Tell them I die as a brave boy should, and that, when the war is over, they will not be ashamed of me, as they must be now. G.o.d help me: it is very hard to bear! Good-by, father. To-night, in the early twilight, I shall see the cows all coming home from pasture, and precious little Blossom standing on the back stoop, waiting for me,--but I shall never, never come! G.o.d bless you all!
"G.o.d be thanked!" said Mr. Owen reverently; "I knew Bennie was not the boy to sleep carelessly."
Late that night a little figure glided out of the house and down the path. Two hours later the conductor of the southward mail lifted her into a car at Mill Depot. Next morning she was in New York, and the next she was admitted to the White House at Washington. "Well, my child,"
said the President in pleasant, cheerful tones, "what do you want so bright and early this morning?" "Bennie"s life, please, sir," faltered Blossom. "Bennie? Who is Bennie?" asked Mr. Lincoln. "My brother, sir.
They are going to shoot him for sleeping at his post," said the little girl. "I remember," said the President; "it was a fatal sleep. You see, child, it was a time of special danger. Thousands of lives might have been lost through his culpable negligence." "So my father said; but poor Bennie was so tired, sir, and Jemmie so weak. He did the work of two, sir, and it was Jemmie"s night, not his; but Jemmie was too tired, and Bennie never thought about himself,--that he was tired, too." "What is that you say, child? Come here; I do not understand." He read Bennie"s letter to his father, which Blossom held out, wrote a few lines, rang his bell, and said to the messenger who appeared, "Send this dispatch at once." Then, turning to Blossom, he continued: "Go home, my child, and tell that father of yours, who could approve his country"s sentence, even when it took the life of a child like that, that Abraham Lincoln thinks the life far too precious to be lost. Go back, or--wait until to-morrow; Bennie will need a change after he has so bravely faced death, he shall go with you." "G.o.d bless you, sir," said Blossom. _Not all the queens are crowned._
Two days later, when the young soldier came with his sister to thank the President, Mr. Lincoln fastened the strap of a lieutenant upon his shoulder, saying, "The soldier that could carry a sick comrade"s baggage, and die for the act without complaining, deserves well of his country."
When telegrams poured in announcing terrible carnage upon battlefields in our late war, and when President Lincoln"s heart-strings were nearly broken over the cruel treatment of our prisoners at Andersonville, Belle Isle, and Libby Prison, he never once departed from his famous motto, "With malice toward none, with charity for all." When it was reported that among those returned at Baltimore from Southern prisons, not one in ten could stand alone from hunger and neglect, and many were so eaten and covered by vermin as to resemble those pitted by smallpox, and so emaciated that they were living skeletons, not even these reports could move the great President to retaliate in kind upon the Southern prisoners.
Among the slain on the battlefield at Fredericksburg was the body of a youth upon which was found next the heart a photograph of Lincoln. Upon the back of it were these words: "G.o.d bless President Lincoln." The youth had been sentenced to death for sleeping at his post, but had been pardoned by the President.
David Dudley Field said he considered Lincoln the greatest man of his day. Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and others were great, each in one way, but Lincoln was great in many ways. There seemed to be hidden springs of greatness in this man that would gush forth in the most unexpected way.
The men about him were at a loss to name the order of his genius. Horace Greeley was almost as many-sided, but was a wonderful combination of goodness and weakness, while Lincoln seemed strong in every way. After Lincoln had signed the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation he said, "The promise must now be kept; I shall never recall one word."
Bishop Hamilton, of Salisbury, bears the following testimony to the influence for good which Gladstone, when a school-fellow at Eton, exercised upon him. "I was a thoroughly idle boy; but I was saved from worse things by getting to know Gladstone." At Oxford we are told the effect of his example was so strong that men who followed him there ten years later declare "that undergraduates drank less in the forties because Gladstone had been so courageously abstemious in the thirties."
The Rev. John Newton said, "I see in this world two heaps of human happiness and misery; now if I can take but the smallest bit from one heap and add it to the other, I carry a point; if as I go home a child has dropped a half-penny, and by giving it another I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something."
A holy hermit, who had lived for six years in a cave of the Thebaid, fasting, praying, and performing severe penances, spending his whole life in trying to make himself of some account with G.o.d, that he might be sure of a seat in Paradise, prayed to be shown some saint greater than himself, in order that he might pattern after him to reach still greater heights of holiness. The same night an angel came to him and said, "If thou wouldst excel all others in virtue and sanct.i.ty, strive to imitate a certain minstrel who goes begging and singing from door to door." The hermit, much chagrined, sought the minstrel and asked him how he had managed to make himself so acceptable to G.o.d. The minstrel hung down his head and replied, "Do not mock me, holy father; I have performed no good works, and I am not worthy to pray. I only go from door to door to amuse people with my viol and my flute." The hermit insisted that he must have done some good deeds. The minstrel replied, "Nay, I know of nothing good that I have done." "But how hast thou become a beggar? Hast thou spent thy substance in riotous living?" "Nay, not so," replied the minstrel.
"I met a poor woman running hither and thither, distracted, because her husband and children had been sold into slavery to pay a debt. I took her home and protected her from certain sons of Belial, for she was very beautiful. I gave her all I possessed to redeem her family and returned her to her husband and children. Is there any man who would not have done the same?" The hermit shed tears, and said in all his life he had not done as much as the poor minstrel.
"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor than silver or gold."
A gentleman, traveling through West Virginia, went to a house, and procured food for himself and companion and their horses. He wanted to make payment, but the woman was ashamed to take pay for a mere act of kindness. He pressed the money upon her. Finally she said, "If you don"t think I"m mean, I"ll take one quarter of a dollar from you, so as to look at it now and then, for there has been no money in this house for a year."
Do not take the world"s estimate of success. The real height of the Washington Monument is not measured between the capstone and the earth, but includes the fifty feet of solid masonry below. Many of the most successful lives are like the rivers of India which run under ground, unseen and unheard by the millions who tread above them. But have these rivers therefore no influence? Ask the rich harvest fields if they feel the flowing water beneath. The greatest worth is never measured. It is only the nearest stars whose distances we compute. That life whose influence can be measured by the world"s tape-line of dollars and corn is not worth the measuring.
All the forces in nature that are the most powerful are the quietest. We speak of the rolling thunder as powerful; but gravitation, which makes no noise, yet keeps...o...b.. in their orbits, and the whole system in harmony, binding every atom in each planet to the great centre of all attraction, is ten thousand times ten thousand times more powerful. We say the bright lightning is mighty; so it is when it rends the gnarled oak into splinters, or splits solid battlements into fragments; but it is not half so powerful as the gentle light that comes so softly from the skies that we do not feel it, that travels at an inconceivable speed, strikes and yet is not felt, but exercises an influence so great that the earth is clothed with verdure through its influence, and all nature beautified and blessed by its ceaseless action. The things that make no noise, make no pretension, may be really the strongest. The most conclusive logic that a preacher uses in the pulpit will never exercise the influence that the consistent piety of character will exercise over all the earth.
The old Sicilian story relates how Pythias, condemned to death through the hasty anger of Dionysius of Syracuse, asked that he might go to his native Greece, and arrange his affairs, promising to return before the time appointed for his execution. The tyrant laughed his request to scorn, saying that when he was once safe out of Sicily no one would answer for his reappearance. At this juncture, Damon, a friend of the doomed man, offered to become surety for him, and to die in his stead if he did not come back in time. Dionysius was surprised, but accepted the proposition. When the fatal day came, Pythias had not reached Syracuse, but Damon remained firm in his faith that his friend would not fail him.
At the very last hour Pythias appeared and announced himself ready to die. But such touching loyalty moved even the iron heart of Dionysius; accordingly he ordered both to be spared, and asked to be allowed to make a third partner in such a n.o.ble friendship. It is a grander thing to be n.o.bly remembered than to be n.o.bly born.
When Attila, flushed with conquest, appeared with his barbarian horde before the gates of Rome in 452, Pope Leo alone of all the people dared go forth and try to turn his wrath aside. A single magistrate followed him. The Huns were awed by the fearless majesty of the unarmed old man, and led him before their chief, whose respect was so great that he agreed not to enter the city, provided a tribute should be paid to him.
Blackie thinks there is no kind of a sermon so effective as the example of a great man, where we see the thing done before us,--actually done,--the thing of which we were not even dreaming.
It was said that when Washington led the American forces as commanding officer, it "doubled the strength of the army."
When General Lee was in conversation with one of his officers in regard to a movement of his army, a plain farmer"s boy overheard the general"s remark that he had decided to march upon Gettysburg instead of Harrisburg. The boy telegraphed this fact to Governor Curtin. A special engine was sent for the boy. "I would give my right hand," said the governor, "to know if this boy tells the truth." A corporal replied, "Governor, I know that boy; it is impossible for him to lie; there is not a drop of false blood in his veins." In fifteen minutes the Union troops were marching to Gettysburg, where they gained a victory. Character is power. The great thing is to be a man, to have a high purpose, a n.o.ble aim, to be dead in earnest, to yearn for the good and the true.
"Your lordships," said Wellington in Parliament, "must all feel the high and honorable character of the late Sir Robert Peel. I was long connected with him in public life. We were both in the councils of our sovereign together, and I had long the honor to enjoy his private friendship. In all the course of my acquaintance with him, I never knew a man in whose truth and justice I had greater confidence, or in whom I saw a more invariable desire to promote the public service. In the whole course of my communication with him, I never knew an instance in which he did not show the strongest attachment to truth; and I never saw in the whole course of my life the smallest reason for suspecting that he stated anything which he did not firmly believe to be the fact."
"The Secretary stood alone," said Grattan of the elder Pitt. "Modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious politics, sunk him to the level of the vulgar great; but, overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition, fame. A character so exalted, so unsullied, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the Treasury trembled at the name of Pitt through all the cla.s.ses of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his policy, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy answered and refuted her. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence to summon mankind to united exertion, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm an empire, and strike a blow in the world that would resound through the universe."
Pitt was Paymaster-General for George II. When a subsidy was voted a foreign office, it was customary for the office to claim one half per cent. for honorarium. Pitt astonished the King of Sardinia by sending him the sum without any deduction, and further astonished him by refusing a present as a compliment to his integrity. He was a poor man.
Washington would take no pay as commander-in-chief of the Continental armies. He would keep a strict account of his expenses; and these, he doubted not, would be discharged.
Remember, the main business of life is not to do, but to become; an action itself has its finest and most enduring fruit in character.
In 1837, after George Peabody moved to London, there came a commercial crisis in the United States. Many banks suspended specie payments. Many mercantile houses went to the wall, and thousands more were in great distress. Edward Everett said, "The great sympathetic nerve of the commercial world, credit, as far as the United States were concerned, was for the time paralyzed." Probably not a half dozen men in Europe would have been listened to for a moment in the Bank of England upon the subject of American securities, but George Peabody was one of them. His name was already a tower of strength in the commercial world. In those dark days his integrity stood four-square in every business panic.
Peabody retrieved the credit of the State of Maryland, and, it might almost be said, of the United States. His character was the magic wand which in many a case changed almost worthless paper into gold. Merchants on both sides of the Atlantic procured large advances from him, even before the goods consigned to him had been sold.
Thackeray says, "Nature has written a letter of credit upon some men"s faces which is honored wherever presented. You cannot help trusting such men; their very presence gives confidence. There is a "promise to pay"
in their very faces which gives confidence, and you prefer it to another man"s indors.e.m.e.nt." _Character is credit._
With most people, as with most nations, "things are worth what they will sell for," and the dollar is mightier than the sword. As good as gold has become a proverb--as though it were the highest standard of comparison.
Themistocles, having conceived the design of transferring the government of Greece from the hands of the Lacedaemonians into those of the Athenians, kept his thoughts continually fixed on this great project.
Being at no time very nice or scrupulous in the choice of his measures, he thought anything which could tend to the accomplishment of the end he had in view just and lawful. Accordingly in an a.s.sembly of the people one day, he intimated 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 a.s.sembly, 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 a.s.suredly become mistress of all Greece. Aristides returned to the a.s.sembly, 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 a.s.sembly unanimously declared that, since such was the case, Themistocles should wholly abandon his project.
A tragedy by Aeschylus was once represented before the Athenians, in which it was said of one of the characters, "that he cared not more to be just than to appear so." At these words all eyes were instantly turned upon Aristides as the man who, of all the Greeks, most merited that distinguished reputation. Ever after he received, by universal consent, the surname of the Just,--a t.i.tle, says Plutarch, truly royal, or rather truly divine. This remarkable distinction roused envy, and envy prevailed so far as to procure his banishment for years, upon the unjust suspicion that his influence with the people was dangerous to their freedom. When the sentence was pa.s.sed by his countrymen, Aristides himself was present in the midst of them, and a stranger who stood near, and could not write, applied to him to write for him on his sh.e.l.l-ballot.
"What name?" asked the philosopher. "Aristides," replied the stranger.