Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And TriumphsFuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
History
Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs
Fuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
Biography
But we are not all soldiers or sailors, although, too, our Christian
profession hath adopted the title of soldiers in the battle of life. It
is all very well to cite great commanders who, in the presence of
danger, excited by hope, with the eyes of twenty thousand men upon them,
are cheerful and happy; but what is that to the solitary author, the
poor artist, the governess, the milliner, the shoemaker, the
factory-girl, they of the thousand persons in profession or trade who
are given to murmur, and who think life so hard and gloomy and wretched
that they can not go through it with a smile on their faces and despair
in their hearts? What are examples and citations to them? "Hecuba!"
cries out poor, melancholy, morbid Hamlet, striking on a vein of
thought, "what's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" Much.
We all have trials; but it is certain that good temper and cheerfulness
will make us bear them more easily than any thing else. "Temper," said
one of our bishops, "is nine-tenths of Christianity." We do not live now
in the Middle Ages. We can not think that the sect of Flagellants, who
whipped themselves till the blood ran into their shoes, and pulled
uncommonly long faces, were the best masters of philosophy. "True
godliness is cheerful as the day," wrote Cowper, himself melancholy-mad
enough; and we are to remember that the precept of the Founder of our
faith, that when we fast we are to anoint our countenances and not to
seem to fast, enjoins a certain liveliness of face. Sydney Smith, when a
poor curate at Foster-le-Clay, a dreary, desolate place, wrote: "I am
resolved to like it, and to reconcile myself to it, which is more manly
than to fancy myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post of
being thrown away, or being desolated, and such like trash." And he
acted up to this; said his prayers, made his jokes, did his duty, and,
Upon fine mornings, used to draw up the blinds of his parlor, open the
window, and "glorify the room," as he called the operation, with
sunshine. But all the sunshine without was nothing to the sunshine
within the heart. It was that which made him go through life so bravely
and so well; it is that, too, which renders his life a lesson to us all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account