The general was an awful brute, as bad as he could be, but Westwater’s action seemed to impress him, and his orders were very exact. During his occupation of the city there was no single instance of crime. Westwater’s gallant action, too, imprest even the Boxers. They named him the savior of the town, and when, some months later, he took his departure for home, he was made the honored guest of extraordinary banquets, and was accompanied to the railway station by all the grateful citizens, half of them waving flags and half of them banging musical instruments.

(601)

See [Trouble Bravely Met].

COURAGE CONTAGIOUS

Charles Wagner, in “The Gospel of Life,” says:

You are struggling with difficulties, your look is troubled and your good will as well. One of those painful moments of strife and discouragement, when man is no longer anything but the shadow of himself, is passing over. In these circumstances a newspaper falls into your hands. In it you read that, on such and such a day, in the heart of Africa, surprized by an ambuscade, surrounded by enemies in superior numbers, an officer, who does not speak your language and who is not fighting for your cause, has kept calm; that, the better to show his tranquil resolution, he has, at a moment like that, before his troops, hemmed in, lost, lighted his cigar, recalled in few words the memory of the fatherland and the duty of a soldier; and then marched toward the enemy and to certain death. It is all told in three lines. And when you have read it, you arise, you come out of your depression, you organize your resistance; you look your trouble in the face, you feel high spirits, virility, a certain generous ardor for the strife. And all this life, this precious elasticity of courage that animates you, you owe to those who are unknown to you, to the vanquished, and to the dead lying out yonder without burial and without name. What a proof of what we can do for each other?

(602)

COURAGE IN LIFE

This poem has been printed as anonymous and it has also been attributed to Edmund Vance Cook:

Did you tackle the trouble that came your way