ttle twelve-year-old cabin boy, Jacques, timidly,
"You don't wish to expose the lives of good sailors like these; it does
not matter what becomes of a little cabin boy. Give me a ball of strong
string, which will unroll as I go on; fasten one end around my body, and
I promise you that within an hour the rope shall be well fastened to the
shore or I will perish in the attempt."

Before anyone could stop him he leaped overboard. His head was soon seen
like a black point rising above the waves and then it disappeared in
the distance and mist, and but for the occasional pull upon the ball of
cord all would have thought him dead. At length it fell as if slackened
and the sailors looked at one another in silence, when a quick, violent
pull, followed by a second and a third, told that Jacques had reached
the shore. A strong rope was fastened to the cord and pulled to the
shore, and by its aid many of the sailors were rescued.

In 1833 Miss Prudence Crandall, a Quaker schoolmistress of Canterbury,
Conn., opened her school to negro children as well as to whites. The
whole place was thrown into uproar; town meetings were called to
denounce her; the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to
isolate the school from the support of the townspeople; stores and
churches were closed against teacher and pupils; public conveyances were
denied them; physicians would not attend them; Miss Crandall's own
friends dared not visit her; the house was assailed with rotten eggs and
stones and finally set on fire. Yet the cause was righteous and the
opposition proved vain and fruitless. Public opinion is often radically
wrong.

Staunch old Admiral Farragut--he of the true heart and the iron
will--said to another officer of the navy, "Dupont, do you know why you
didn't get into Charleston with your ironclads?" "Oh, it was because
the channel was so crooked." "No, Dupont, it was not that." "Well, the
rebel fire was perfectly horrible." "Yes, but it wasn't that." "What was
it, then?" "_It was because you didn't believe you could go in._"

"I have tried Lord Howe on most important occasions. He never asked me
_how_ he was to execute any service entrusted to his charge, but always
went straight forward and _did it_." So answered Sir Edward Hawke, when
his appointment of Howe for some peculiarly responsible duty was
criticized on the ground that Howe was the junior admiral in the fleet.

There is a tradition among the Indians that Manitou wa