The Book of Courage

by John T. Faris

"When a young man, he found to his amazement among his father's papers a deed to five thousand eight hundred and eighty-three acres of land, located in what is known as West Virginia. This deed was a great surprise to all who saw or heard of it. Putting this deed in his pocket, young Palmore, the only heir to the property, made a trip to West Virginia, to look over his vast estate, which was far in the interior.

"Starting from the city of Charleston, West Virginia, he drove in a buggy into the region where his plantation was located. He traced the boundaries of his property and found that hundreds of families had settled on it without any right to it, but were living as if secure in the possession of their separate little patches of territory. He found that beneath the surface of this land there was almost limitless wealth, but the multitudes who had built themselves humble homes on the surface did not know of it, and had been living thus in undisturbed possession for a number of years. He quietly walked about at night and looked through the windows at the parents and children living on his estate. Great lawyers were ready to inaugurate legal proceedings that would have made him a millionaire, and such legal proceedings would doubtless have been instituted if the heir in person had not visited the scene of his great estate. As he dreamed in the nighttime about dispossessing such a multitude of people of their humble homes, he began to feel that, instead of such a fortune being a blessing, an estate received at such an expense would be a burden.

"After earnest prayer and sleepless hours in the midst of his vast acres, he was seized with the conviction that each member of this multitude of families living on his property needed it more than did the heir, and there and then he made up his mind that he would leave them in quiet possession of his estate."

The reporter who related the story said that the man had been called a fool, and commented, "He was God's fool."

Then he said that the incident he had related would have been unbelievable if it had not been so well attested. But why unbelievable? Is it because of the common idea that "every man has his price," that it is unthinkable that a sane man would let a fortune that he could claim honestly slip through his fingers?

Perhaps it is true that every man has his price. However, if this snarl of the pessimist is to have universal application, the price must be understood to be—in many instances—not selfish gratification, but the opportunity for courageous service. There are men and women who can be won by such an opportunity who cannot be reached by any argument of mere private advantage. Such people silence the complaints of the croaker and command the confidence of those who are struggling to help their fellows.

Louis Agassiz, the naturalist, was such a man. "I have no time to make money," was his remark when urged by a friend to turn aside from the important work of the moment to an easy, lucrative task. His reason was thus explained at another time: "I have made it the rule of my life to abandon any intellectual pursuit the moment it becomes commercially valuable." It was his idea that there were many who would then be willing to carry on work he had begun.

A contrast is presented by the famous inventor who, early in life, made it a rule never to give himself to any activity in which there was no prospect of financial gain. His first question was not, "Does the public need this invention?" but "Is there money in it?" Having answered to his satisfaction, he was ready to go ahead.

The world could not well have spared either of these men, for both rendered valuable service. But, judging from the stories of their careers, there was more joy in the life of the naturalist, who, satisfied to earn a living, thought most of serving his fellows, than in the life of the inventor before whose eyes the dollar continually loomed large. The counting-house measure of life is not the most satisfying nor is it the most useful.

That was the notion of Jacob Riis, of whom a minister who was devoting his life to the interest of young working men near his church once asked if such effort was merely thrown away, if he was pocketing himself. "Pocketing yourself, are you?" Riis replied. "Stick to your pocket. It is a pretty good pocket to be in. Out of such a pocket, worked in the way you are working it, will come healing for the ills of the day that now possess us. I would rather be in such a pocket, working for the Lord, than in a $1,000,000 church, working for the applause of a congregation."