The Book of Courage Part 7

But the rocking chair was empty for months, when a breakdown sent him South for a long period of recuperation.

When he returned home he plunged into work with all his might. "He worked late at night; vacations and holidays were unknown; of recreation and general society he had almost nothing," his biographer says. For years his office hours began before noon and continued until one or two in the morning. Finally the strain became too great, and loss of sight was feared. Still he forced himself to work, and the injury to his brain was begun that was later to cause his death. He would take a bottle of cold tea to the office, that by its use he might aid his will to work when nature said, "Stop!" For a long time his only sleep--and it was sadly broken sleep--was on a lounge in the office, from two to six or seven in the morning. Then he would set to work again. "By his unceasing mental activity he wore himself out," the comment was made on his career. "For the last twenty years of his life his nerves and stomach were in chronic rebellion. Heavy clouds of dyspepsia, sciatica, sleeplessness, exhaustion, came often and staid long."

The intemperate worker knew what he was doing. Once he wrote to a friend, "You can't burn the candle at both ends, and make anything by it in the long run; and it is the long pull that you are to rely on, and whereby you are to gain glory." Persistent headaches, "nature's sharp signal that the engine had been overdriven," added to the warning. At last, when he was thirty-seven, he wrote: "My will has carried me for years beyond my mental and physical power; that has been the offending rock. And now, beyond that desirable in keeping my temper, and forcing me up to proper exercise and cheerfulness through light occupation, I mean to call upon it not at all, if I can help it, and to do only what comes freely and spontaneously from the overflow of power and life. This will make me a light reader, a small worker."

Well for him if he had kept his resolution. Still he drove himself to work beyond what his body and brain could stand. Then came paralysis.

"Nothing is the matter with me but thirty-five years of hard work," he said. At the time of his death he was not fifty-one years old.

His friends could not but admire him for strength of will, for achievement in the face of ill health, for triumph, by sheer will-power, over every obstacle except the will that drove him to his death. He accomplished much, but how much more he might have accomplished if he had been temperate in his use of the wonderful powers of mind and body which G.o.d had given him!

In connection with this glimpse of the life of one who ill.u.s.trates the disaster brought by the will to be intemperate, it is helpful to think of the life of another American man of letters whose will to be temperate in his treatment of a body weak and frail prolonged life and usefulness.

Francis Parkman, the historian, was never a well man after his trip that resulted in the writing of _The Oregon Trail_. In fact, he was a physical wreck at twenty-five years of age. He could not even write his own name, until he first closed his eyes; he was unable to fix his mind on a subject, except for very brief intervals, and his nervous system was so exhausted that any effort was a burden. However, in spite of this limitation, which became worse, if possible, instead of better, he managed to accomplish an immense amount of the finest literary work by doing what he could and stopping when this was wise. His will to take care of himself was given the mastery of his will to work. For forty-four years after the completion of _The Oregon Trail_ he labored on, preparing history after history. He was seventy years old when he died, leaving behind him achievements that would have been a tremendous task for a man in perfect health.

To everyone is given the marvelous equipment of body and brain, as well as the will which makes possible their judicious investment or their prodigal waste in the struggle to make life count.

CHAPTER FOUR

_THE COURAGE OF FACING CONSEQUENCES_

YOUNG people sometimes play the game of "Consequences." The sport increases in proportion to the strangeness of the results.

Perhaps the reason the game has so many attractions is the fact that life is a long story of consequences.

There are people who do not like to play the game of life seriously because they say the consequences of self-denial and self-sacrifice are too uncertain; they prefer the cowardice of inaction to the courage of purposeful living.

The folks worth while are those who, refusing to be troubled by what may or may not be the consequences of their acts, still have the pluck to go on with what they know is right. Let the results be what they may, they propose to be straightforward and true. This is the courage that counts.

There may be uncertainty as to the specific form the results of their stand may take, yet that result is sure to be pleasing and helpful.

I

VENTURING

When Washington Irving was about to return to America from Madrid, where he had been minister of the United States to the court of Spain, the Philadelphia house that had been publishing his books, discouraged by the decreasing sales, sent word to him that the public was not able to appreciate his books, and they would have to allow them to go out of print. The books had been printed directly from the type, so there were no plates which another publisher might use to bring out further editions at small expense.

The author, who was then sixty-five years of age, sorrowfully accepted the verdict of his publisher, and planned to take desk-room in the New York office of his brother, John Treat Irving, where he hoped to make a living by the practice of law.

But this was not to be. In New York was a young publisher who believed that Washington Irving's works were cla.s.sics, and that the American public would buy them eagerly if properly approached. Friends told him that he might make a mistake, but he had the courage to go ahead. So he wrote to the discouraged author what must have seemed to other publishers a daring letter; he proposed to publish new editions of all Irving's old books, on condition that new books, also, be given to him; and he promised that royalties for the first year should be at least one thousand dollars, for the second year two thousand dollars, and for the third year three thousand dollars.

When Irving received the letter, he kicked over the desk in front of him, at the same time saying to his brother:

"There is no necessity, John, for my bothering with the law. Here is a fool of a publisher going to give me a thousand dollars a year for doing nothing."

But the publisher was not so foolish as he seemed. His promises were more than made good. Sales were large. Other authors were attracted, until the publishing house became one of the leaders among American publishers.

Nine years later Washington Irving had an opportunity to show his grat.i.tude. Just before the panic of 1857 a young man whom the generous publisher had taken into partnership, involved him seriously. The defalcations were not discovered until the accidental death of the partner. Thus weakened, the firm was unable to survive the panic; its affairs were put in the hands of a receiver, and all accounts were sold. At the age of forty-two, the head of the firm bravely faced the necessity of beginning life over.

At the receiver's sale Washington Irving bought the plates of all his books. A number of publishers offered him fancy terms if he would permit them to bring out new editions, but he turned a deaf ear to their entreaties and offered the plates to their former owner, to be paid for in annual installments. Touched by the grat.i.tude of his friend, the publisher accepted the offer.

The author never had cause to regret his action. During the years that elapsed before his death the results of the new venture were more satisfactory than ever. The courageous action of both publisher and author had been amply vindicated by results.

II

FORMING CHARACTER

The best time to learn the courage that proves so effective in the struggle of life is in youth. More than fifty years ago two boys in Scotland were hunting rabbits. Tiring of the comparatively easy hunting on the ground, they looked longingly at a cliff of hard clay several hundred feet high, in whose precipitous side were many rabbit burrows.

They managed to climb the cliff. At length they were making their way along an almost perpendicular parapet, cutting their way with their knives. Then one of the boys fell, with a scream, to the bottom of the cliff. There was a moment of terror. This was succeeded by a grim determination to go forward, the only way of escape. Driving his knife deep in the clay, he rested on this for a moment. That moment, it has always since seemed to him, marked the first momentous period in his life, the time when his personality first emerged into consciousness. He says: "I whispered to myself one word, 'Courage!' Then I went on with my work." At length he reached the ground.

The lesson learned at such fearful cost told emphatically on the boy's character. From that day he showed that there was in him the making of a man who would not be balked by unfavorable circ.u.mstances. He did not understand how or why, but he felt that new will-power had come to him with the appeal to himself to take courage in the face of death.

A few years later he went to Brazil. A Spaniard told him that moral deterioration within six months was all but certain to come to every young man who began life there. But he was determined not to give way to bad habits. When he reached Santos, his companions urged him to give himself up to all kinds of vice; they told him that it was either this or death, or perhaps something worse than death. They emphasized their words by pointing to a young man who had determined to keep straight, and had been left to himself until he was demented. But the boy who had learned courage on the precipice made up his mind that he must live as G.o.d wished him to live, and he turned a deaf ear to all entreaties.

Another book of biography tells of a boy who delighted in playing cards with his father and mother. But when he united with the Church and became President of the Christian Endeavor Society he began to wonder if he was doing right. One night his father took up the cards and called him to play whist.

"I don't think I'll play whist any more," he said quietly. "I've been thinking that perhaps it wasn't right for me to play."

"Are you setting yourself up to judge your father and mother, young man?" his father asked, sternly.

"No, I didn't say it isn't all right for you to play," was the reply.

"But you know I am President of the Christian Endeavor Society and some of the members don't think it is right to play. So I guess I'd better not."

His father looked at him thoughtfully for a minute, then picked up the cards and threw them back into the drawer.

"Charlie," he said, "I want you to understand that I think you have done a manly thing to-night, and I honor you for your courage."

That was the end of whist in that house.

Courage showed itself in much the same way in the life of J. Marion Sims, the great surgeon. He used to tell how, when he was a boy at a South Carolina School, he was able to take a stand that had its effect on his whole after-life. Many of his fellow students were sons of wealthy planters, and their habits were not always the best. On several occasions they tried to lead him into mischief. They were particularly anxious to make him a companion in their drinking bouts. Twice he gave way to their pleas, but after sorrowful experience of the results of his lapses, he decided to make a brave stand. So he said to his tempters:

"See here, boys, you can all drink, and I cannot. You like wine and I do not. I hate it; its taste is disagreeable, its effects are dreadful, because it makes me drunk. Now, I hope you all will understand my position. I don't think it is right for you to ask me to drink wine when I don't want it, and when it produces such a bad effect on me."

To say this required real courage, but the results were good, not only in himself, but also, fortunately, in some of his companions.

III

TRUTH TELLING

Those who, in early life, learn to be courageous in the face of difficult tasks will be ready for the temptation that is apt to come to most young people to compromise with what they know to be right and true, to allow an exception "just this once!" in the straightforward course they have marked out for themselves. And the worst of it is that such a temptation is apt to come without the slightest warning and to present itself in such a light that it is easy to find an excuse for yielding, and to deem it quixotic and unreasonable not to yield.

Once a young teacher who later became famous at Harvard, had occasion to censure a student who had given, as he believed, the wrong solution of a problem. On thinking the matter over at home, he found that the pupil was right and the teacher wrong. It was late at night and in the depth of winter, but he immediately started for the young man's room, at some distance from his own home, and asked for the man he had wronged. The delinquent, answering with some trepidation the untimely summons, found himself the recipient of a frank apology.