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 d.i.c.kinson 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 h.e.l.l, 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 n.o.bleness. 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 circ.u.mstances that were thought certainly fatal, and his death was reported with great a.s.surance. 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 n.o.bler 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 amba.s.sador 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. Conde 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.ble 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.
CHAPTER III.
THE WILL AND THE WAY.
"The "way" will be found by a resolute will."
"I will find a way or make one."
Nothing is impossible to the man who can will.--MIRABEAU.
A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.--E. P. WHIPPLE.
The iron will of one stout heart shall make a thousand quail; A feeble dwarf, dauntlessly resolved, will turn the tide of battle, And rally to a n.o.bler strife the giants that had fled.
TUPPER.
"Man alone can perform the impossible. They can who think they can.
Character is a perfectly educated will."
The education of the will is the object of our existence. For the resolute and determined there is time and opportunity.--EMERSON.
Invincible determination, and a right nature, are the levers that move the world.--PRESIDENT PORTER.
In the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a bright manhood there is no such word as fail.--BULWER.
Perpetual pushing and a.s.surance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty give way.--JEREMY COLLIER.
When a firm and decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the s.p.a.ce clears around a man and leaves him room and freedom.--JOHN FOSTER.