led orders
placed in his hands at his birth, regardless of the world's yes or no,
of its approval or disapproval, the man who has not the courage to
trace the pattern of his own destiny, which no other soul knows but his
own, can never rise to the true dignity of manhood. All the world
loves courage; youth craves it; they want to hear about it, they want
to read about it. The fascination of the "blood and thunder" novels
and of the cheap story papers for youth are based upon this idea of
courage. If the boys cannot get the real article, they will take a
counterfeit.

Don't be like Uriah Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the
liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in
timidity, nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities and are
repulsive. Manly courage is dignified and graceful. The worst manners
in the world are those of persons conscious "of being beneath their
position, and trying to conceal it or make up for it by style."

Bruno, condemned to be burned alive in Rome, said to his judge: "You
are more afraid to pronounce my sentence than I am to receive it."
Anne Askew, racked until her bones were dislocated, never flinched, but
looked her tormentor calmly in the face and refused to abjure her faith.

"We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid
of each other." "Half a man's wisdom goes with his courage," said
Emerson. Physicians used to teach that courage depends on the
circulation of the blood in the arteries, and that during passion,
anger, trials of strength, wrestling or fighting, a large amount of
blood is collected in the arteries, and does not pass to the veins. A
strong pulse is a fortune in itself.

"Rage," said Shaftesbury, "can make a coward forget himself and fight."

"I should have thought fear would have kept you from going so far,"
said a relative who found the little boy Nelson wandering a long
distance from home. "Fear?" said the future admiral, "I don't know
him."

"Doubt indulged becomes doubt realized." To determine to do anything
is half the battle. "To think a thing is impossible is to make it so."
_Courage is victory, timidity is defeat_.

That simple shepherd-lad, David, fresh from his flocks, marching
unattended and unarmed, save with his shepherd's staff and sling, to
confront the colossal Goliath with his massive armor, is the sublimest
audacity the world has ever seen.

"Dent, I wish you would get down, and see