Nine years later Washington Irving had an opportunity to show his gratitude. Just before the panic of 1857 a young man whom the generous publisher had taken into partnership, involved him seriously. The defalcations were not discovered until the accidental death of the partner. Thus weakened, the firm was unable to survive the panic; its affairs were put in the hands of a receiver, and all accounts were sold. At the age of forty-two, the head of the firm bravely faced the necessity of beginning life over. At the receiver's sale Washington Irving bought the plates of all his books. A number of publishers offered him fancy terms if he would permit them to bring out new editions, but he turned a deaf ear to their entreaties and offered the plates to their former owner, to be paid for in annual installments. Touched by the gratitude of his friend, the publisher accepted the offer. The author never had cause to regret his action. During the years that elapsed before his death the results of the new venture were more satisfactory than ever. The courageous action of both publisher and author had been amply vindicated by results. II FORMING CHARACTER The best time to learn the courage that proves so effective in the struggle of life is in youth. More than fifty years ago two boys in Scotland were hunting rabbits. Tiring of the comparatively easy hunting on the ground, they looked longingly at a cliff of hard clay several hundred feet high, in whose precipitous side were many rabbit burrows. They managed to climb the cliff. At length they were making their way along an almost perpendicular parapet, cutting their way with their knives. Then one of the boys fell, with a scream, to the bottom of the cliff. There was a moment of terror. This was succeeded by a grim determination to go forward, the only way of escape. Driving his knife deep in the clay, he rested on this for a moment. That moment, it has always since seemed to him, marked the first momentous period in his life, the time when his personality first emerged into consciousness. He says: "I whispered to myself one word, 'Courage!' Then I went on with my work." At length he reached the ground. The lesson learned at such fearful cost told emphatically on the boy's character. From that day he showed that there was in him the making of a man who would not be balked by unfavorable circumstances. He did not understand how or why, but he felt that new will-power had come to him with the appeal to himself to take courage in the face of death.