And whether he’s slow or spry,
It isn’t the fact that you’re dead that counts,
But only how did you die.
(603)
COURAGE, MORAL
Mrs. George E. Pickett, wife of General Pickett, who led the fatal charge the last day at Gettysburg against the Union forces, writes of the tender memories she had of Grant. She called upon him with her husband while he was President. Grant knew that his old comrade of West Point had been made a poor man by the war, and he offered him the marshalship of Virginia. While sorely needing help, he appreciated the heavy draft made upon the President by office-seekers, and said: “You can’t afford to do this for me now, and I can’t afford to take it”; but Grant instantly replied with firmness, “I can afford to do anything I please that is right.”—Col. Nicholas Smith, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”
(604)
COURAGE OF HOPE
These lines from an unidentified source point a New Year’s lesson:
As a dead year is clasped in a dead December,