One doesn't have to be big, or old, or strong to be brave. But one does have to believe in something so much and so hard that nothing else counts, even death. An idea that is so big that everything else seems small is called an ideal. It is easy for a boy with an ideal to be brave. Cassabianca, the boy who stayed on the burning ship because he had been ordered to wait there by his dead father, had made obedience his ideal. The boy of Holland who found a leak in the dyke which could only be stopped by his hand, and who stayed through the long night and saved his village but lost his right hand had learned this great ideal of self-sacrifice. The shepherd boy who saved his sheep from a lion and a bear and who afterward was the only one who dared enter the fatal valley and meet the fierce giant-warrior had as his ideal faith. He believed so strongly that he was doing God's will that he shared God's strength. In the great war between slavery and freedom which swept like fire over the country, boys learned the ideals for which their fathers fought. They learned to believe so entirely in freedom that there was no room left for fear. Many of them went to the war as drummer boys, the only way in which boys could enlist. One of these was Johnny McLaughlin of the Tenth Indiana. Johnny lived at a place called Lafayette and was not quite eleven years old. From the minute that the war broke out he thought of nothing but what he could do for his country and for freedom. Other boys played at drilling and marching, but this was not enough for him. He made inquiries and found that if he could learn to drum, there was a chance that he might be allowed to enlist. He said nothing at first to his father and mother about his plans, but saved all his spending-money and worked every holiday in order to get enough to buy a drum. Times were hard, however. There was little money for men, much less for boys, and after Johnny had worked for over two months, he had saved exactly two dollars. In the village was a drummer who had been sent home to recover from his wounds and to him Johnny went one day to ask how much more he would have to save before he could buy a drum. The man told him that a good drum would cost him at least ten dollars. Johnny sighed and turned away very much discouraged. "Why don't you play something else?" said the man. "You can get more fun out of ten dollars than buying a drum with it." "I don't want it to play with," said Johnny. "I want to learn to drum so that I can enlist." At first the man laughed at the boy--he seemed so little, but when he found that Johnny had made up his mind to do his share for his country in the great fight, Donaldson, as he was named, became serious.