CHAPTER III

THE HEROISM OF PEACE

the Quak

eress,

p. 117.

THOUGH Wars have sometimes been a moral necessity, as Hannah Miss Clarke implies in her stirring ballad of our American Revolution, and though, in Douglas Jerrold's words, "There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive to his material body," yet honorable peace is man's noblest achievement. When blood is up and thirst for revenge is hot, it is easy to go on fighting to the death. There are nations that live in eternal war with each other. Even in civilized lands, there are families between which exist feuds of centuries' standing. It is distinctly heroic, therefore, to be quickly reconciled with Reconciliation, p. 120. an enemy. Walt Whitman, as he pictures a soldier gazing upon the dead face of his foe, declares Reconciliation to be the most beautiful word in the world.

Consider the

It is hard for the victor to refrain from unheroic exultation over his enemy, and harder for the vanquished to take up his broken life and make the most of it. case of the Southern soldier, whom Mr. Grady, in a brilliant speech, sketched as returning to his ruined home. Northern youth of to-day cannot appreciate what it has cost the Southerners to reconstruct the South.

It

It is a great thing to save a state by force of arms. is a greater thing to save it afterward from dishonesty and corruption. The soldiers who fought the battles of the Civil War found another fight to wage when they got home. Military heroes, both Northern and Southern, had now to

The Confederate

Soldier

after the War, p.121.

The Arsenal at Springfield, p. 123.

The Three

Fishers, p. 125.

A Sea Story, P. 126.

Patroling
Barnegat,

p. 127.

protect the nation from greedy office-seeking and traitorous office-using. The poet Bayard Taylor told the Union veterans, as long ago as 1877, that their hardest work was yet to do. He declared that to the soldier of peace each true man is a friend, each false man a foe. Longfellow hated war almost as much as he hated slavery. In one of his strongest short poems he declared that half the money spent on camps and forts could be so spent as to remove all need of camps and forts.

Peace hath her victories,

No less renowned than war,

sings Milton. Yet few of the individuals who win the vic-
tories of peace can be renowned. Homer says of a particu-
lar hour's fight that it were hard for him, though he were a
god, to tell of all the deeds. Many a gallant fellow dies in
battle without hope of the poet's praise, but more suffer a
similar fate in time of peace. It is the unsung courage of
nameless men that keeps the world moving. The fisherman
on the winter ocean, the patrolman on the coast, the miner
in the fire-damp, the engineer at the throttle, the fireman
in the burning house, the nurse and the doctor in the
plague, all these are splendidly intrepid. Of a thousand
such heroes but few have passed into literature.
The duty
of all fishermen stands out sternly in Kingsley's song of the
three who lay dead on the shining sands. A young sailor
relaxing his hold on the tiny raft, to save his friend who
has a family, is the theme of Miss Hickey's A Sea Story.
In Whitman's Patroling Barnegat, the life-saver struggles
steadily through the blinding night on his humane mission.
The self-sacrifice of a rough miner is honored in one of
Bret Harte's poems (In the Tunnel), and in another
(Guild's Signal) that of the engineer who disdains to jump
from his engine. The fidelity of Conductor Bradley did

The nurse in the plague

not escape the notice of Whittier.
has never been written of more affectingly than by Mrs.
Phelps Ward in her story of the murderer Zerviah Hope,
who washed out his crime by giving his life for others.
The doctor appears in Whittier's The Hero as achieving
the impossible. This particular hero was Dr. Howe, who,
with infinite patience and skill, taught Laura Bridgman.
He found a way of enriching life for those born without
sight, hearing, and speech. Dr. Holmes has also praised
the physician, in his poem of The Two Armies. The duty
of one army is to slay; that of the other, the far nobler
band, is to save. A great fire reveals heroism not merely
in the ordinary fireman, like him of Mrs. Mulock Craik's
A True Hero, but in other people. Lowell tells - An
Incident of the Fire at Hamburgh - how, when the flames
were beating down his church, the old sexton stood by his
bells, and chimed, "All good souls praise the Lord," until
the tower came crashing down.

literature, great deeds
Mr. Kipling is said to

An Incident of the

Fire at

Ham

burgh,

p. 128.

Recognized or unrecognized in are not lacking in common life. have declared that there will be no dearth of subjects for literature so long as the daily paper exists. Certainly that is true of themes for heroic ballads. To-day it is the account of a gamin unconcernedly losing an arm in saving his chum amid the maze of tracks; to-morrow, that of a painter dashing before a car and yielding his life for a stranger's child, I refer to Hovenden, whose picture, "Breaking Home Ties," was at the Fair of 1893. It may be a report of fine humanity from a quarter where it was least expected. Dr. Conan Doyle has versified such a report of a sporting man. He was a quiet fellow, riding to the hounds with a party of friends. It is the custom of fox- 'Ware hunters to call out "Ware Holes," when they see a rabbit- Holes, burrow that may trip those behind. The "

"gent from

p. 130.

London" ran at full speed upon a deep, hidden quarry. He went down easily to his death, calmly singing out, "'Ware Holes," - and saved all three who were just behind him.1

The severest tests of heroism come when the hero has no immediate pattern to work by. Most persons have imagined themselves saving another's life, though, indeed, that is

not the same thing as performing the feat. But the actual demands for heroism are often of an unexpected sort. A new species of courage must be shown. A "loftier way," as Emerson said, must be found. For example, if physical courage is demanded, it is apt to be some absurd thing like controlling an irritable nerve. New forms of bravery are constantly being exhibited. Even in children the highest courage in enduring pain, both physical and mental, is often seen. The mere pains of fear felt by children are inconceivable to grown persons,- fear of the dark, fear of animals, fear of the bully, fear of ridicule, fear of death. To overcome any of these is a great achievement for a child. The following anecdote by Dr. Clay Trumbull, of` Philadelphia, would be incredible to any but those who have studied children:

"There was a tender-hearted, loving child in a New England home, to whom life was all gladness and joy. He loved as he was loved, and he was worthy of all the love which was given to him. One day, as he was starting out for a ride with his parents, he asked them where they were going; and they told him that they were going to take him up to the new cemetery, a beautiful city of the dead by the river's bank, beyond the town. His bright face grew

1 On the day that these lines were sent to the printer, the newspapers were reporting the heroic death of a sporting man in New York. Mr. James McDonald threw his runaway horse to save a collision with approaching carriages. In so doing he was obliged to sacrifice his own life and that of his horse,

shadowed, and his little lips quivered, so that his father asked him, 'Why, Willy, don't you want to go there?" Quietly the trustful answer came back, 'Yes, if you think it best, papa.' And they rode on silently, in through the broad gateway; on, along the lovely tree-shaded and turfbordered avenues.

"That bright boy seemed strangely quiet, clinging in love to his mother's side, and looking up from time to time with a face that seemed never so beautiful in its restful confidence. As they finally passed out again from the gateway they had entered, the dear child drew a breath of relief, and, looking up in new surprise, asked, 'Why, am I going back with you again?' 'Of course you are. Why should you doubt it?' 'Why, I thought that when they took little children to the cemetery, they left them there,' said that hero-child.

"And then it was found that with a child's imperfect knowledge that dear boy had supposed he was being taken, at the call of God, and by the parents whom he loved and trusted, to be buried in the place which he had heard of only as a place of burial. And all by himself he had had the struggle with himself, and had proved the victor."1

Children know so little of life that they can hardly be expected to have courage; they have few grounds for courage. Imagine an orphan girl in the hospital, a little creature like that in Mr. Henley's Enter Patient. Imagine Enter Pathis child overhearing a surgeon say that she must undergo tient, p.132. an operation from which she can hardly hope to recover. Some idea of what an operation means can be had from Operation, Mr. Henley's poem on that subject. There is no parent P. 133. to assure her that it will "not hurt much"; that "father will hold her hand all the while." Now we get the situa- In the tion in Tennyson's poem on little Emmie. Her childish Children's

1 "Character-shaping and Character-showing."

Hospital, p. 134.