was fitting, and
yet how sadly belated recognition which was given them in the noble
monuments at the World's Fair in Chicago, which bore these inscriptions
from the pen of President Eliot:

"To the
Brave Settlers
Who Leveled
Forests
Cleared Fields
Made Paths by
Land and Water
And Planted
Commonwealths."

"To the
Brave Women
Who in
Solitudes
Amid Strange
Dangers and
Heavy Toils
Reared Families
And Made Homes."

Such is the heroism of solitude! But not yet have we reached its purest
and noblest form. These men and women were lonely, it is true; but they
were sustained, after all, by a great hope of the future, by dreams of
prosperity and happiness to come as the fruit of toil, by ambitions for
the children who would survive to better and fuller days. Braver even
than these are the men who have faced loneliness without hope--who have
looked not merely on solitude, but on solitude ending in defeat and
death--and still have lived as those who had no fear. The classic
example of this great heroism has been given to the world by our own
age, in the story of Captain Scott. Whenever my own faint heart begins
to fail under the strain of burdens absurdly light, I take up a copy of
Captain Scott's Journals, as I would take up a copy of holy scripture,
and I read as long as my tear-filled eyes can see the page the items
that he jotted down in his diary on those last terrible days before he
died. Here he is in the midst of the vast solitudes of the arctic
wastes, struggling along with his two half-dead companions, his feet
frozen, food gone, fuel gone, and a hurricane beating him helpless to
the ground. He knows he cannot get through to his goal, he knows there
is no living soul within hundreds of miles to bring him succor. On March
19th he speaks of their "forlorn hope"; on the 22nd he confesses that
"he must be near the end"; on the 29th he speaks of death and says
flatly, "I do not think we can hope for any better things now. * * * We
are getting weaker, and the end cannot be far." But never once, for all
his anguish and solitude, does he give way. "We shall stick it out to
the end," is his word. He can even joke at one time in a grim and
terrible sort of way. "No human being could face (this) storm," he
writes on March 18th, "and we are nearly worn out. My right foot is
gone--two days ago I was the proud possessor of the best feet. These are