re really honored?
Not those who are so eagerly and vainly striving in their narrow,
conventional circle, heedful merely of the rules of their own little
game. But those who actually fill an honorable place in life. How much
acknowledged dignity is there in that man who just accepts his station
and makes the most of it, filling it with patience and self-sacrifice
and achieving the victory of principle and affection! How much genuine
nobleness in the quiet, unconscious discharge of duty! The field for
precedence is it not a broad one, and close at hand? And is there no
alternative between a frivolous and outside distinction, and some great
theatre of action large enough to fill and dazzle the world's eye?
Daily, right around us, there are occasions that summon up all the
energies of manhood as with a trumpet-peal. See yonder! where the
conflagration, bursting through marble walls, casts a terrible splendor
down the street and reddens the midnight sky. What an enemy has broken
loose among us, devouring the achievements of human skill and the hopes
of enterprise! What shall stay it? With a triumphant shout it snaps the
fetters of stone; it roars with victory; it bends its flaming crest
towards peaceful homes where men and mothers and babes lie in
unconscious slumber. The bell beats; and what old bugle-strain, what
pibroch, what rattling drum, ever sounded a more perilous call? And on
what battle-field that you have read of was there ever displayed a
loftier heroism, a more dauntless energy, than that man displays who,
with the unconscious courage of duty, plunges into the furnace, mounts
the quivering walls, and, making his own body a barrier between his
fellow-men and the flame, stands there scorched, bruised, bleeding, and
beats the red terror back and beats it down, with that irresistible
energy which always springs from the human will bent upon a noble
purpose?

And so, in other forms, more quiet and more sacred, where the
anticipation of public applause does not furnish its motive, men are
exercising a heroism, and working achievements, that make dim and pale
the trophies that are plucked from fields of war and in lists of
glittering renown. And when these things are known the hearts of men
render a spontaneous honor, and admit the genuine titles of supremacy.
Yet, if this true achievement in life is not known or confessed by the
world, its results really exist, and impart their inalienable strength
and blessing to t