Chapter 47
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 until their effects be tried. Does compet.i.tion trouble you? work away; what is your compet.i.tor but a man? _Conquer your place in the world_, for all things serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain misfortune bravely; endure poverty n.o.bly; encounter disappointment courageously. The influence of the brave man is contagious and creates an epidemic of n.o.ble 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."
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 Thomas More preferred death to dishonor.
His daughter showed 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 soon occurred.
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 ax 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. 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 courage 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 Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, to support Grant and Stanton against the clamor of the politicians and the press.
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 b.u.t.ter 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."
Then to side with Truth is n.o.ble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis 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.
As Salmon P. Chase left the court room after an impa.s.sioned 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 G.o.d, 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 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.
When General Butler
"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!"
The courageous man is an example to the intrepid. His influence is magnetic. Men follow him, even to the death.
Men who have dared have moved the world, often before reaching the prime of life. It is astonis.h.i.+ng 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, defeated three million men, became a great orator and one of the greatest statesmen known, and still was a young man. Was.h.i.+ngton 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. Galileo was but eighteen when he saw the principle of the pendulum in the swing 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. 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. 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.
Gladstone ruled England with a strong hand at eighty-four, and was a marvel of literary and scholarly ability.
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."
Many a bright youth has accomplished nothing of worth to himself or the world simply because he did not dare to commence things.
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.
I dare to do all that may become a man: Who dares do more is none.
SHAKESPEARE.
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.
Quit yourselves like men.--1 SAMUEL iv. 9.
CHAPTER x.x.xVIII
THE WILL AND THE WAY
"I will find a way or make one."
Nothing is impossible to the man who can will.--MIRABEAU.
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.
In the lexicon of youth which fate reserves for a bright manhood there is no such word as fail.--BULWER.
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.
"As well can the Prince of Orange pluck the stars from the sky, as bring the ocean to the wall of Leyden for your relief," was the derisive shout of the Spanish soldiers when told that the Dutch fleet would raise that terrible four months' siege of 1574. But from the parched lips of William, tossing on his bed of fever at Rotterdam, had issued the command: "_Break down the dikes: give Holland back to ocean!_" and the people had replied: "Better a drowned land than a lost land." They began to demolish dike after dike of the strong lines, ranged one within another for fifteen miles to their city of the interior. It was an enormous task; the garrison was starving; and the besiegers laughed in scorn at the slow progress of the puny insects who sought to rule the waves of the sea. But ever, as of old, Heaven aids those who help themselves. On the first and second of October a violent equinoctial gale rolled the ocean inland, and swept the fleet on the rising waters almost to the camp of the Spaniards. The next morning the garrison sallied out to attack their enemies, but the besiegers had fled in terror under cover of the darkness. The next day the wind changed, and a counter tempest brushed the water, with the fleet upon it, from the surface of Holland. The outer dikes were replaced at once, leaving the North Sea within its old bounds. When the flowers bloomed the following spring, a joyous procession marched through the streets to found the University of Leyden, in commemoration of the wonderful deliverance of the city.
At a dinner party given in 1837, at the residence of Chancellor Kent, in New York City, some of the most distinguished men in the country were invited, and among them was a young and rather melancholy and reticent Frenchman. Professor Morse was also one of the guests, and during the evening he drew the attention of Mr. Gallatin, then a prominent statesman, to the stranger, observing that his forehead indicated a great intellect. "Yes," replied Mr. Gallatin, touching his own forehead with his finger, "there is a great deal in that head of his: but he has a strange fancy. Can you believe it? He has the idea that he will one day be the Emperor of France. Can you conceive anything more absurd than that?"
It did seem absurd, for this reserved Frenchman was then a poor adventurer, an exile from his country, without fortune or powerful connections, and yet, fourteen years later, his idea became a fact,--his dream of becoming Napoleon III. was realized. True, before he accomplished his purpose there were long, dreary years of imprisonment, exile, disaster, and patient labor and hope, but he gained his ambition at last. He was not scrupulous as to the means employed to accomplish his ends, yet he is a remarkable example of what pluck and energy can do.
When Mr. Ingram, publisher of the "Ill.u.s.trated London News," began life as a newsdealer at Nottingham, England, he walked ten miles to deliver a single paper rather than disappoint a customer. Does any one wonder that such a youth succeeded? Once he rose at two o'clock in the morning and walked to London to get some papers because there was no post to bring them. He determined that his customers should not be disappointed. This is the kind of will that finds a way.
There is scarcely anything in all biography grander than the saying of young Henry Fawcett, Gladstone's last Postmaster-General, to his grief-stricken father, who had put out both his eyes by birdshot during a game hunt: "Never mind, father, blindness shall not interfere with my success in life." One of the most pathetic sights in London streets, long afterward, was Henry Fawcett, M. P., led everywhere by a faithful daughter, who acted as amanuensis as well as guide to her plucky father. Think of a young man, scarcely on the threshold of active life, suddenly losing the sight of both eyes and yet by mere pluck and almost incomprehensible tenacity of purpose, lifting himself into eminence in any direction, to say nothing of becoming one of the foremost men in a country noted for its great men!
The courageous daughter who was eyes to her father was herself a marvelous example of pluck and determination. For the first time in the history of Oxford College, which reaches back centuries, she succeeded in winning the post which had only been gained before by great men, such as Gladstone,--the post of senior wrangler. This achievement had had no parallel in history up to that date, and attracted the attention of the whole civilized world. Not only had no woman ever held this position before, but with few exceptions it had only been held by men who in after life became highly distinguished.
"Circ.u.mstances," says Milton, "have rarely favored famous men. They have fought their way to triumph through all sorts of opposing obstacles."