The Project Gutenberg eBook, One of the 28th, by G. A. Henty

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Title: One of the 28th

Author: G. A. Henty

Release Date: December 9, 2004 [eBook #14313]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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ONE OF THE 28TH

A Tale of Waterloo

by

G. A. HENTY

Author of _Bonnie Prince Charlie_, _With Clive in India_, _The Dragon
and the Raven_, _The Young Carthaginian_, _The Lion of the North_

Illustrated

A.L. Burt Company
Publishers, New York

PREFACE

Although in the present story a boy plays the principal part, and
encounters many adventures by land and sea, a woman is the real
heroine, and the part she played demanded an amount of nerve and
courage fully equal to that necessary for those who take part in
active warfare. Boys are rather apt to think, mistakenly, that their
sex has a monopoly of courage, but I believe that in moments of great
peril women are to the full as brave and as collected as men. Indeed,
my own somewhat extensive experience leads me to go even further, and
to assert that among a civil population, untrained to arms, the
average woman is cooler and more courageous than the average man.
Women are nervous about little matters; they may be frightened at a
mouse or at a spider; but in the presence of real danger, when shells
are bursting in the streets, and rifle bullets flying thickly, I have
seen them standing kitting at their doors and talking to their friends
across the street when not a single man was to be seen.

There is no greater mistake than to think women cowards because they
are sometimes nervous over trifles. Were it necessary, innumerable
cases could be quoted from history to prove that women can, upon
occasion, fight as courageously as men. Caesar found that the women of
the German tribes could fight bravely side by side with the men, and
the Amazons of the King of Dahomey are more feared by the neighboring
tribes than are his male soldiers. Almost every siege has its female
heroines, and in the Dutch War of Independen