Home > Authors Index > John T. Faris > Book of Courage > This page
The Book of Courage, a non-fiction book by John T. Faris |
||
Chapter 4. The Courage Of Facing Consequences - 2. Forming Character |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER FOUR. THE COURAGE OF FACING CONSEQUENCES II. FORMING CHARACTER The best time to learn the courage that proves so effective in the struggle of life is in youth. More than fifty years ago two boys in Scotland were hunting rabbits. Tiring of the comparatively easy hunting on the ground, they looked longingly at a cliff of hard clay several hundred feet high, in whose precipitous side were many rabbit burrows. They managed to climb the cliff. At length they were making their way along an almost perpendicular parapet, cutting their way with their knives. Then one of the boys fell, with a scream, to the bottom of the cliff. There was a moment of terror. This was succeeded by a grim determination to go forward, the only way of escape. Driving his knife deep in the clay, he rested on this for a moment. That moment, it has always since seemed to him, marked the first momentous period in his life, the time when his personality first emerged into consciousness. He says: "I whispered to myself one word, 'Courage!' Then I went on with my work." At length he reached the ground. The lesson learned at such fearful cost told emphatically on the boy's character. From that day he showed that there was in him the making of a man who would not be balked by unfavorable circumstances. He did not understand how or why, but he felt that new will-power had come to him with the appeal to himself to take courage in the face of death. A few years later he went to Brazil. A Spaniard told him that moral deterioration within six months was all but certain to come to every young man who began life there. But he was determined not to give way to bad habits. When he reached Santos, his companions urged him to give himself up to all kinds of vice; they told him that it was either this or death, or perhaps something worse than death. They emphasized their words by pointing to a young man who had determined to keep straight, and had been left to himself until he was demented. But the boy who had learned courage on the precipice made up his mind that he must live as God wished him to live, and he turned a deaf ear to all entreaties. Another book of biography tells of a boy who delighted in playing cards with his father and mother. But when he united with the Church and became President of the Christian Endeavor Society he began to wonder if he was doing right. One night his father took up the cards and called him to play whist. "I don't think I'll play whist any more," he said quietly. "I've been thinking that perhaps it wasn't right for me to play." "Are you setting yourself up to judge your father and mother, young man?" his father asked, sternly. "No, I didn't say it isn't all right for you to play," was the reply. "But you know I am President of the Christian Endeavor Society and some of the members don't think it is right to play. So I guess I'd better not." His father looked at him thoughtfully for a minute, then picked up the cards and threw them back into the drawer. "Charlie," he said, "I want you to understand that I think you have done a manly thing to-night, and I honor you for your courage." That was the end of whist in that house. Courage showed itself in much the same way in the life of J. Marion Sims, the great surgeon. He used to tell how, when he was a boy at a South Carolina School, he was able to take a stand that had its effect on his whole after-life. Many of his fellow students were sons of wealthy planters, and their habits were not always the best. On several occasions they tried to lead him into mischief. They were particularly anxious to make him a companion in their drinking bouts. Twice he gave way to their pleas, but after sorrowful experience of the results of his lapses, he decided to make a brave stand. So he said to his tempters: "See here, boys, you can all drink, and I cannot. You like wine and I do not. I hate it; its taste is disagreeable, its effects are dreadful, because it makes me drunk. Now, I hope you all will understand my position. I don't think it is right for you to ask me to drink wine when I don't want it, and when it produces such a bad effect on me." To say this required real courage, but the results were good, not only in himself, but also, fortunately, in some of his companions. _ |
||