The thing is, when there is danger before you, don't stop and look at it—the more you look at it the less you will like it—but take the plunge, go boldly in at it, and it won't be half so bad as it looked, when you are once in it.
In the late war between Japan and Russia some Japanese pioneers had been ordered to blow up the gate of a Russian fort so that the attackers could get in. After nearly all of them had been shot down, a few of them managed to get to the gate with their charges of powder. These had to be "tamped" or jammed tight against the door somehow, and then fired. The Japs "tamped" them by pushing them against the door with their chests; they then lit their matches, fired the charge, and blew up the gates, but blew up themselves in doing so. But their plucky self-sacrifice enabled their comrades to get in and win the place for the Emperor.
GOOD TEMPER AND CHEERINESS.
The knights laid great stress on being never out of temper. They thought it bad form to lose their temper, and to show anger. Captain John Smith, of whom I spoke just now, was himself a type of a cheerful man. In fact, towards the end of his life two boys (and he was very fond of boys) to whom he told his adventures, wrote them down in a book, but they said that they found great difficulty in hearing all that he said, because he roared with laughter so over his own descriptions of his troubles. But it is very certain, that had he not been a cheery man, he never could have got through half the dangers with which he was faced at different times in his career.
Over and over again he was made prisoner by his enemies—sometimes savage enemies—but he managed always to captivate them with his pleasant manner and become friends with them, so that often they let him go, or did not trouble to catch him when he made his escape.
If you do your work cheerfully, your work becomes much more of a pleasure to you, and also if you are cheerful it makes other people cheerful as well, which is part of your duty as a scout. Mr. J. M. Barrie writes: "Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others, cannot keep happiness from themselves," which means, if you make other people happy, you make yourself happy.
If you are in the habit of taking things cheerfully, you will very seldom find yourself in serious trouble, because if a difficulty or annoyance or danger seems very great, you will, if you are wise, force yourself to laugh at it, although I will allow it is very difficult to do so at first. Still, the moment you do laugh, most of the difficulty seems to disappear at once, and you can tackle it quite easily.
Good temper can be attained by a boy who wants to have it, and it will help him in every game under the sun, and more especially in difficulty and danger, and will often keep him in a situation where a short-tempered fellow gets turned out, or leaves in a huff.
Bad language and swearing are generally used, like smoking, by boys who want to try and show off how manly they are, but it only makes them look like fools. Generally, a man who swears is a man easily upset, and loses his head in a difficult situation, and he is not, therefore, to be depended upon. You want to be quite undisturbed under the greatest difficulties; and so when you find yourself particularly anxious or excited, or angry, don't swear, force yourself to smile, and it will set you right in a moment.
Captain John Smith, who neither smoked nor swore, had a way of dealing with swearers, which is also adopted by our scouts. He says in his diary that when his men were cutting down trees, the axes blistered their tender fingers, so that at about every third blow, a loud oath would drown the echo of the axe. To remedy this he devised a plan of having every man's oath noted down, and at night, for every oath, he had a can of water poured down the swearer's sleeve, "with which an offender was so washed, that a man would scarce hear an oath in a week."