The Chippeway herald. [volume], October 01, 1902, Image 1

About The Chippeway herald. [volume] (White Earth, Minn.) 1902-19??

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Fm I N N E SOTA*"I
ZaW 4 H WCAL f t
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VOL. 1.
COURAGE.
o
C. A. Eggert
It is natural to admire acts of cour
age in warfare. Everyone who reads
of Farraguts’s entering the harbor of
Mobile tied to the mast of his flagship
is thrilled with his daring and cour
age. There were the forts and the
hostile ships that sent their leaden
hail of destruction against him. It
was necessary that he, the commander,
should see what was going on in order
that he might give the proper com
mands. He concluded that the surest
way to attain this end was by keeping
himself immovable in a certain posi
tion. He faced the hostile bullets and
balls without flinching. He was cour
ageous in the fulfilment of his duty.
In every war, on sea or on land, ex
amples of courage and daring occur.
During a naval battle with the Turks,
a shell with a burning match attached,
fell on the deck of a man-of-war. A
young ensign rushed up to it, seized it
and threw it overboard before it could
explode.
During the seven years’ war with
France the commander of a little fort
—Vincennes —gave proof of unusual
courage. He was alone with two sol
diers in his fort when the news came
that a body of French regulars and
thousands of Indians, their allies,were
advancing to take it. One of the men
suggested that of course the place must
be surrendered. “Surrendered?”cried
the old commander. “We shall see
about that. ” He had at once the only
gun in the place, an old howitzer, put
in order and loaded and the approaches
to the fort barred as well as he could.
When the hostile force drew before the
fort and demanded its surrender he
discharged his gun and made such a
display of firing as to create the im
pression that the fort was well garri
soned. When he could hold out no
longer he secured the best terms and
the permission to leave the place with
the honors of war.
••Edvicettion, Civilization Citizenship.”
WHITE EARTH, MINN., OCTOBER, 1902.
Great was the astonishment of his
enemies when they beheld the force
that had resisted them so long. But
courage is a virtue of universal appli
cation, if we rightly understand it.
The word courage meant originally
heart. To have a heart was to have
strength and energy. Compared with
the head the heart is the seat of the
feelings. A strong vigorous heart is
full of strong and vigorous feelings.
The head or brain is cool, the heart is
warm; therefore, while the head should
command and govern, the heart must
furnish the power to obey and execute.
Courage may appear in various ways,
principally in two. It may be shown
in the calm bearing up during adver
sity or in the fearless motion forward
to overcome resistance. To sit down,
complaining and bewailing one’s
wretchedness is to be devoid of courage,
to be a coward. To recede and yield,
in the presence of opposition, without
first using all the resources, all the
strength one has in fighting that op
position, is characteristic of a weak
ling-. The example of Columbus has
often been quoted as that of a man in
whom courage was the most conspicu
ous qualitity. There is no better ex
ample on record, and it teaches more
than the obvious lession that persever
ance is the secret of success, for it
teaches that the man who has worked
hard to discover a truth must expect to
meet with enemies among the preju
diced and the ignorant, and that to
give up to them would be to betray the
truth. Columbus was persevering and
he was courageous. He may not have
been altogether a good man. It is
certain that he had some of the vices of
men in general and of the time, when
he lived in particular. But he was a
man who had a profound conviction,
willing and ready to shun no incon
venience or danger in the attempt to
prove the correctness of his views. It
is often by sheer courage that a great
work is carried through, though that
work may have been suggested by pro
found convictions.
When the colony of Massachusetts
defied the power of England at Bunker
Hill and Lexington cool reason may
have shaken her head in disapproval,
but the warm hearts of the “embattled
farmers” urged them on to fire “a shot
that was heard round the world.”
Courage differs from fool-hardiness,
but it is often difficult to draw the line,
and it is not always fair to call an at
tempt foolhardy simply because it did
not succeed in the presence of over
whelming odds. The difference is in
this; courage is the qualitity of the
sober and earnest man; foolhardiness
is .generall} 7 found with people who al
low their passions to get the better of
them. True courage may be united
with prudence; foolhardiness has no
discretion. The former is needed every
day and by every one; the latter is at
best an inexcusable excess though gen
erally a very dangerous fault.
In saying courage is needed every
day we mean that a stout heart is re
quired to bear up pleasantly, or at
least patiently, under the trials that
every day brings. Hence it is a pecu
liarity of the best kind of courage that
it is to be found allied with patience.
It takes courage to resist vice; to re
main truthful, honest, temperate and
just. It takes courage to do the right,
in spite of the disheartening effect of
ridicule; but it also takes patience.
An impatient outbreak will not ad
vance us. True courage is both calm
and persistent. It does not indulge in
fault-finding, still less in ridicule.
But it urges us on to work in the face
of adversity and to push forward in
spite of failures and difficulties.
True courage is found in the hum
blest relations of life. It is that which
enables the hard working father to
keep a bright smile for his wife and
children, in spite of poverty, and
leaves to the mother her girlish buoy
ancy in the midst of toil and trouble.
It is found in the school boy who is not
blessed with a good memory and for
whom acquisition of knowledge is the
Continued on la_st page.
NO. 8.