The Book of Courage Part 1

The Book of Courage.

by John Thomson Faris.

_FOREWORD_

A TEACHER has told of the greatest moment of discouragement that ever came to her. At cost of great labor she had fitted up a room for the use of children, placing pictures on the walls, plants in the windows, goldfish on the table, and a canary in a cage. But the night before the day when she planned to welcome the children to the room there was a cold snap, and the janitor let the fire go out. In the morning she looked on broken radiators, frozen goldfish, drooping plants, and what she feared was a dead bird. In her despair she was about to decide that she would never make another effort to have things pleasant for the children, when the bit of fluff in the bird-cage, roused from stupor by the noise made by the discouraged woman, lifted its voice in song.

That song told her that she had reached once again the point that comes to everyone, times without number, the point that separates the life of conquest from the life of defeat, the life of cowardice from the life of courage. She was at the crossroads, and she took the turning to the right. The bird's song marked for her the end of discouragement.

"I can sing, as well as the bird," she said to herself. And at once she began to make plans for her charges.

Everywhere there are people who feel that the odds are against them, that difficulties in the way are unsurmountable, that it is useless to make further effort to conquer. The author of "The Book of Courage"

knows by experience how they feel, and he longs to send to them a message of cheer and death-to-the-blues, a call to go on to the better things that wait for those who face life in the spirit of the gallant General Petain, whose watchword, "They shall not pa.s.s!" put courage into his men and hope into the hearts of millions all over the world.

"Courage!" is the call to these. "Courage" is likewise the word to those who are already struggling in the conquering spirit of Sir Walter Scott who, when both domestic calamity and financial misfortune came, said to a comforter, "The blowing off of my hat on a stormy day has given me more weariness," who called adversity "a tonic and a bracer."

The world needs courage--the high courage that shows itself in a life of daily struggle and conquest, that smiles at obstacles and laughs at difficulties.

How is the needed courage to be secured? What are the springs of courage? What are some of the results of courage? These are questions "The Book of Courage" seeks to answer by telling of men and women who have become courageous.

Glorious provision has been made by the Inspirer of men for giving courage to all, no matter what their difficulties or their hardships.

Among His provisions are home and friends, work and service, will and conscience, the world with all its beauty, and Himself as Companion and Friend.

Thus we are left absolutely without excuse when we are tempted to let down the bars to worry and gloom and discouragement.

Keep up the bars! Don't let the enemies of peace and progress pa.s.s! And always,

"Like the star, That shines afar, Without haste, And without rest, Let each man wheel, with steady sway Round the tasks that rule the day, And do his best."

J. T. F.

PHILADELPHIA, 1920

THE BOOK OF COURAGE

CHAPTER ONE

_THE COURAGE OF SELF-CONQUEST_

THE highest courage is impossible without self-conquest. And self-conquest is never easy. A man may be a marvel of physical courage, and be a coward in matters of self-government. Failure here threatens dire disaster to his entire career.

Alexander the Great conquered most of the world he knew, but he permitted his lower nature to conquer his better self, and he died a disappointed, defeated man.

Before the days of Alexander there was a man named Nehemiah from whom the world-conqueror might have learned a few secrets. He was a poor exile in the service of a foreign ruler. That ruler sent him down to Jerusalem, the capital city of his own home land, with instructions to govern the people there. Now, in those days, it was a common thing for governors of cities to plunder the people unfortunate enough to be in their charge. Thus Nehemiah would have had ample precedent to fill his own coffers by injustice, profiteering and worse: he had the power.

Possibly he was tempted to do something of the sort. But he had the courage to shut up tight all baser pa.s.sions, and then to sit firmly on the lid. In the brief record of his service he referred to some of the self-seeking governors, and told of their rascally deeds. Then he added the significant words, "_So did not I._"

That was certainly courage--the courage of self-conquest.

As a young man Ulysses S. Grant was a brave soldier, but he nearly wrecked his life because of weak yielding to his appet.i.te. His real career began only with self-conquest. When he found the courage to fight himself--and not until then--he became ready for the marvelous life of high courage that never faltered when he was misunderstood by a.s.sociates and maligned by enemies, that pressed steadily onward, in the face of biting disease, until work was done, until honor was satisfied.

I

RESTRAINING SELF

A little girl four years old came trembling to her mother and asked for pencil and paper. Then, teeth set and eyes flashing, she pounced on the paper and began to make all sorts of vicious marks. Asked what she was doing, she said she was writing a letter to a sister who had offended her by an act that had been misunderstood. "She is not a nice girl," the little critic said, "and I'm telling her so. I don't like her any more, and I'm saying that." As she wrote her hand trembled; she was carried away by her unpleasant emotion. After a few moments, unable to go on with her self-appointed task, she flung herself, sobbing, into her mother's arms and for half an hour she could not control herself.

The sight was pitiful. But far more pitiful is the spectacle of one old enough to know better who yields to vexation and hatred, thereby not only making himself disagreeable, but robbing himself of power to perform the duties of the hour. For there is nothing so exhausting as uncontrolled emotion. There is so much for each one of us to do, and every ounce of strength is needed by those who would play their part in the world. Then what spendthrift folly it is to waste needed power on emotion that is disquieting, disagreeable and disgraceful!

That lesson was never impressed more forcibly than by a French officer of whom a visitor from America asked, "Did I understand that you had lost three sons?" "Yes, sir, and two brothers," was the proud reply.

"How you must hate the Boche," remarked a bystander. "No, no," was the instant reply, "not hate; just pity, sir; pity, but not hate. Hate, you know, is an excessive emotion, sir; and no one can do effective work if he spends his vitality in an excess of emotion. No," he concluded, "we cannot hate; we cannot work if we burn up ourselves inside. Pity, sir; pity. 'They know not what they do.' That's the idea. And they don't."

The same lesson of self-restraint was taught by Marshal Foch in his words to the soldiers of France. He urged them to keep their eyes and ears ready and their mouths "in the safety notch"; and he told them they must obey orders first and kick afterwards if they had been wronged. He said, "Bear in mind that the enemy is your enemy and the enemy of humanity until he is killed or captured; then he is your dear brother or fellow soldier beaten or ashamed, whom you should no further humiliate." He told them that it was necessary to keep their heads clear and cool, to be of good cheer, to suffer in silence, to dread defeat, but not wounds, to fear dishonor, but not death, and to die game.

Because so many of the soldiers under him heeded this wise admonition, they did not waste their precious strength on useless and harmful emotions, but they were ever ready to go to their task, with the motto of their division, "It shall be done."

What a blessing it will be to the world that millions of young men were trained in France to repress hurtful emotion, to exercise self-restraint--which may be defined as the act or process of holding back or hindering oneself from harmful thoughts or actions. And what a wonderful thing it will be if the lesson is pa.s.sed on to us, so that we shall not be like the torrent that wastes its power by rushing and brawling over the stones, all to no purpose, but like the harnessed stream whose energy is made to turn the wheels of factory and mill. For only guarded and guided strength is useful and safe.

II

EFFACING SELF

"Every man that falls must understand beforehand that he is a dead man and nothing can save him. It is useless for him to cry out, and it may, by giving the alarm, cause the enterprise to fail."

This was the message to his men of the officer to whom Napoleon committed the capture of Mt. Cenis.

The historian tells us that at one point in the ascent of a precipitous track, three men fell. "Their bodies were heard bounding from crag to crag, but not a cry was heard, not a moan. The body of one hero was recovered later. There was a smile on his lips."

How that record of the silence succeeded by a smile grips the heart, for it was not the false courage that plays to the grandstand, but the deeper, truer courage that sinks self for the good of others, and does this not merely because it is a part of the game, but with the gladness that transfigures life.

Such courage does not wait for some great occasion for exhibiting itself; it is revealed in the midst of the humdrum routine of daily life--a routine that is especially trying to those who have been looking forward to some great, perhaps dramatic service.

A young man of seventeen entered the navy, with his parents' consent, as an apprentice. When he left home he had dreams of entering at once on a life of thrilling adventure where there would be numberless opportunities for the display of high courage. At the end of a month a friend asked him how he liked life at the navy yard. "Fine!" was the reply. "What are you doing?" was the next query. "They haven't given me anything but window washing to do yet," he replied, with a smile that was an index of character.

A newspaper writer has told of a college student nineteen years old who enlisted in the navy. He was sent to one of our naval stations and told to guard a pile of coal. As the summer pa.s.sed he still guarded that coal pile. He wrote home about it:

"You know, dad, when we were little shavers, you always rubbed it into us that anything that was worth doing at all was worth doing as well as it could be done. I've been standing over that coal pile nearly three months now, and it looks just exactly as small as it did when I first landed on the job."

"He was relieved from the coal pile at last and promoted," said the writer who told of him. "At the same time the government gave him a last chance to return to his college work. He thought it over carefully. He realized that America was going to need trained men as never before, but still, he decided, the best service that he individually could give was the one that he had chosen. He had a few days of leave before going on to his next a.s.signment, and he hurried back to his home. He found that his summer task was a matter of town history, and he had to face a good deal of affectionate raillery about his coal pile. Of course he did not mind that. But his answer revealed his spirit:

"'You may laugh, but that coal pile was all right. I'll admit it got on my nerves for a bit, but I figured it out that while I was taking care of that coal pile I was releasing some other fellow who knew things I didn't know, and who could do things I couldn't do. I'm ready to stand by a coal pile till the war ends, if that's where I can help the most.'"

"That is the spirit that will conquer because it is the spirit that never can be conquered," was the comment made on the incident. "There is no self in it--only consecration to duty; no seeking for large things--only for an opportunity to serve whenever the call comes. That is the spirit that is growing in America to-day--and only through such spirit can we accomplish our great task in the life of the world."