WILL BE FOUND MUCH THAT IS PHILOSOPHICAL.

Having skinned the leopard and cut off as much of the buffalo meat as we
could carry, we started for the negro village at a round pace, for we
had already lost much time in our last adventure. As we walked along I
could not help meditating on the uncertainty of this life, and the
terrible suddenness with which we might at any unexpected moment be cut
off. These thoughts led me naturally to reflect how important a matter
it is that every one, no matter how young, should be in a state of
preparedness to quit this world.

I also reflected, and not without a feeling of shame, on my want of
nerve, and was deeply impressed with the importance of boys being inured
from childhood to trifling risks and light dangers of every possible
description, such as tumbling into ponds and off trees, etcetera, in
order to strengthen their nervous system. I do not, of course, mean to
say that boys ought deliberately to tumble into ponds or climb trees
until they fall off; but they ought not to avoid the risk of such
mishaps. They ought to encounter such risks and many others
perpetually. They ought to practise leaping off heights into deep
water. They ought never to hesitate to cross a stream on a narrow
unsafe plank _for fear of a ducking_. They ought never to decline to
climb up a tree to pull fruit merely because there is a _possibility_ of
their falling off and breaking their necks. I firmly believe that boys
were intended to encounter all kinds of risks, in order to prepare them
to meet and grapple with the risks and dangers incident to man's career
with cool, cautious self-possession--a self-possession founded on
experimental knowledge of the character and powers of their own spirits
and muscles. I also concluded that this reasoning applies to some
extent to girls as well as boys, for they too are liable through life to
occasional encounters with danger--such as meeting with mad bulls, being
run away with on horseback, being upset in boats, being set on fire by
means of crinoline; in all of which cases those who have been trained to
risk slight mishaps during early life will find their nerves equal to
the shock, and their minds cool and collected enough to look around and
take hasty advantage of any opportunity of escape that may exist; while
those who have been unhappily nurtured in excessive delicacy, and
advised from the earliest childhood to "take care of themselves and
carefull