Walter turned red, and looked very uncomfortable, and for a little time made no reply. Then he said hastily, “And what ought I to have done?”
“Well, my boy, in my judgment,” replied his aunt, “you ought to have listened to your father, and to have withdrawn your offer, and to have borne patiently the shame and the annoyance this would have brought upon you from your friends Gregson, Saunders, and others.”
“Ah, I see; and then I should have shown real moral courage. What’s the difference, then?”
“I think, Walter, the difference is just this: in the course you took, your firmness and patience were for an unworthy object; had you taken the other course, they would have been for a worthy object. It seems to me that this makes all the difference. I could not myself call that moral courage which made a man carry through, spite of all hindrances, opposition, and with much personal sacrifice, a purpose which he must know to be unworthy. Now, I will give you an illustration of what I mean by an example. And first, I would remind you that all my heroes hitherto have been those who showed their moral courage about worthy objects; for instance, Washington, Howard, Colonel Gardiner, the young man in the American revival. But the person whose moral courage I am now going to mention was not on other occasions one of my heroes, but his conduct on one particular occasion is specially to the point just now. For I want you to see, dear boy, that true moral courage is shown, not in sticking to a thing just because you have said it, when you must know that you ought not to have said it, but in giving up what you have said, and bearing the reproach of doing so, when you have become convinced that you have said or undertaken what was wrong. It is duty, in fact, that makes all the difference.”
“I see it, auntie; and who’s your hero now?”
“Frederick the Great of Prussia, Walter.”
“What! the man who ridiculed that good officer’s religion?”
“The same; but remember that, while he ridiculed religion, he was constrained to honour that officer for his consistency. But his moral courage was exhibited on a very different occasion. Now, you must remember what sort of a man Frederick was,—he just resembled a spoiled child, who could not brook the slightest thwarting of his will or pleasure. In some things he was a miser, and in others just the reverse. He wore his uniform till it was patched and threadbare, while he gave two dollars each for cherries in the winter. He would pay enormous sums to secure a singer, and then refuse to allow the opera-house to be lighted with wax-candles, so that the pleasure of the evening was spoiled by the smell of tallow. He was, unhappily, well-known in the army for two peculiarities,—first, a temper of such iron unforgiveness that, if he had taken offence at any one, that man’s career was closed, he was never employed again; and, second, a memory of such tenacity that not a hope existed of entrapping him into forgetfulness.
“Now, among his officers there was a colonel, a very brave man, and a capital soldier, who, on one occasion, had made some slight military slip or blunder. This drew on him the king’s displeasure, and was never forgotten. So his pension or half-pay allowance was made the very lowest his rank would permit; for these allowances were regulated by the king himself.
“The poor colonel had a wife and a large family of children; he did not understand how to make the best of his small income, nor to improve it by other employment, so that he was at last reduced to what was little short of beggary and starvation. Day after day he placed himself in the royal ante-chamber and begged an audience; but the king would not hear him, and one day got into a towering passion when the officer-in-waiting ventured to utter the poor man’s name in the king’s presence. At last the colonel grew desperate. He could not make up his mind to beg; his wife was ill, his children starving,—what was he to do? He hit upon the curious idea of getting relief for his family by putting up, unobserved, in the night time, at the corners of the streets in Berlin, placards breathing the most venomous abuse of the king, in the hope that a reward would be offered to the person who should disclose who was the writer of the placard, that he might then himself claim the reward by informing against himself, and so might relieve the immediate pressing necessities of his wife and children, whatever might be the personal suffering and consequences to himself.