“Aunt,” said Walter, as
he sat at her feet, where he had placed himself after
resigning his laurels, “I am afraid you are a
little hard to please or, at any rate,
that I haven’t much chance of getting you to
see any moral courage in my unworthy self.”
“Why not, dear boy?” she
asked; “why should not you exhibit moral courage
as well as any one else?”
“Oh, I don’t know exactly;
but it’s so hard to know precisely what moral
courage is after all, there are so many things that
it is not. Now, what do you say to `pluck,’
auntie; is `pluck’ the same as moral courage?”
“That depends upon what you mean by `pluck,’
Walter.”
“Oh! you must admire pluck.
Every true-born Englishman and Englishwoman admires
pluck.”
“That may be, my clear nephew.
I believe I do admire pluck, as far as I understand
what it is. But you must give me your idea of
it, that I may be able to answer your question about
its being the same as moral courage.”
“Well, dear aunt, it is a thoroughly
English, or perhaps I ought to say British, thing,
you know. It isn’t mere brute courage.
It will keep a man who has it going steadily on with
what he has undertaken. There is a great deal
of self-denial, and perseverance, and steady effort
about it. Persons of high refinement, and of
very little physical strength, often show great pluck.
It is by no means mere dash. There are plucky
women too plucky ladies also as well as
plucky men. Indeed I think that, as a rule,
there is more true pluck among the weak than the strong,
among the refined than the coarse-grained. Thus
you will find high-bred officers show more pluck and
sustained endurance in sieges and fatigue parties
than most of the common soldiers; and so it is with
travellers through difficult unexplored countries.
Those who have had the least of rough training at
home, but have given their mind more thoroughly to
the work, will hold out and hold on pluckily when the
big fellows with limbs and muscles like giants give
in and knock up. It’s pluck that carries
them through. Now, isn’t that pretty much
the same as moral courage?”
“Hardly, I think, my dear boy.”
“Well, where’s the difference?”
“I think the difference lies
in this, that, if I understand rightly what you mean,
and what I suppose is commonly meant by pluck, it may
be found, and often is found, where there is no moral
element in it at all.”
“I don’t quite see it, auntie.”
“Do you not? then I must go
to examples to show what I mean. I heard you
tell a story the other day at breakfast of what you
called a very `plucky’ thing on the part of
your friend Saunders.”
“What! the fight he had with some bargees?
Oh yes, I remember.”
“Now, Walter, what were the circumstances of
that fight?”
“Ah, I remember; and I think
I see what you are driving at, Aunt Kate. Saunders,
who is only a slightly-built fellow, and almost as
thin as a whipping post, got into a row with some
of those canal men; he wanted them to turn out of
his way, or to let him pass and go through a lock
before them, and they wouldn’t.”
“And did he ask them civilly?”
“Nay, Aunt Kate, not he.
No, I’m sorry to say he swore at them; for
he’s a very hasty fellow with his tongue is Saunders.”
“And were the bargemen unreasonably hindering
him?”
“I can’t say that.
They were just going into the lock when he rowed up,
and he wanted them to get out of his way and let him
go into the lock first. I don’t think
myself that he was right.”
“And what happened then?”
“Oh, he abused them, and they
wanted to throw him into the canal; at least they
threatened to do so. And then he challenged the
biggest of them to a stand-up fight, and a ring was
made and they fought; and certainly it was a strange
thing to see Saunders, with his bare arms looking
no thicker than a hop-pole, tackling that great fellow,
whose right arm was nearly as thick as Saunders’s
body. Nevertheless, Saunders didn’t shrink;
he stood up to the bargee, and, being a capital boxer,
he managed to win the day, and to leave the man he
was fighting with nearly blind with two swollen black
eyes. And every one said what `pluck’
little Saunders showed.”
“Had the bargeman a wife and
children?” asked Miss Huntingdon quietly, after
a few moments’ silence.
“What a strange question, auntie!”
cried her nephew laughing. “Oh, I’m
sure I don’t know. I daresay he had.”
“But I suppose, Walter, he was
a plain working-man, who got bread for himself and
his family by his work on the canal.”
“Oh, of course, auntie; but what has that to
do with it?”
“A very great deal, dear boy.
There may have been plenty of pluck shown by your
friend Saunders on that occasion, but certainly no
moral courage. Indeed I should call his
conduct decidedly immoral and cowardly.”
“Cowardly, aunt!”
“Yes, cowardly, and mean.
What right had he to use, or rather abuse, his superior
skill as a pugilist for the purpose of carrying out
an act of wrong-doing, and so to give pain and inflict
loss on a plain working-man who had done him no harm,
and had not had the same advantages of education as
himself?”
“O aunt! you are severe indeed.”
“Not too severe, Walter.
Saunders, you acknowledge, spoke and acted hastily
and improperly at first, and he must have known that
he had done so. Now the true moral courage would
have been shown in his confessing that he was wrong,
and expressing sorrow for it.”
“What! to a bargee!”
“Yes, to a bargee, Walter.
The world might have called him mean or cowardly
for such a confession, but he would have shown true
moral courage and nobility for all that. To
do what will give pain to others rather than incur
the reproach of cowardice is really acting under the
tyranny of a mean and slavish fear of man, though it
may be a plucky thing in the eyes of the World.”
“Ah, well, auntie, that is certainly
a new view of things to me; and I suppose, then, you
would apply the same test to duelling, affairs
of honour, as they used to be called?”
“Most certainly so, Walter.
The duellist is one of the worst of moral cowards.”
“Ah! but,” cried the other,
“to fight a duel used to be considered a very
plucky thing, and it really was so, auntie.”
“I don’t doubt it, Walter;
but it was a very immoral thing also. Happily,
public opinion has quite changed on the subject of
duelling in our own country, and no doubt this has
been owing indirectly to the spread of a truer religious
tone amongst us. But what could be more monstrous
than the prevailing feeling about duelling a few years
ago, as I can well remember it in my young days.
Why, duelling was at that time the highroad to a
reputation for courage, and the man who refused to
fight was frowned upon in good society, and in some
places scouted from it. And I say
it with the deepest shame my own sex greatly
helped to keep up this feeling; for the man who had
fought the most duels was, with the ladies of his
own neighbourhood, for the most part, an object of
special admiration and favour.
“And yet, what nobility or moral
courage was there in the man who gave or accepted
the challenge? Just think of what the consequences
might be, and what the ground of the quarrel often
was. A hasty word, or even a mere thoughtless
breach of etiquette, would bring a challenge; and the
person called out must not decline to meet his challenger,
and give him `satisfaction,’ as it was called,
in the shape of a pistol bullet, under pain of being
cut by all his friends and acquaintances as a coward.
So a man who was a husband and father would steal
away from his home early in the morning, and go out
to some lonely spot and meet the man whom he had offended,
and be murdered in cold blood, and carried back a bleeding
corpse to his miserable widow and fatherless children,
just because he could not bear to be called a coward
by the world. And to call this `satisfaction!’
The devil never palmed upon his poor deluded slaves
a more transparent lie.
“Just think of two men, for
instance, who had been friends for years, and in some
unguarded moment had used intemperate language towards
each other. Their companions tell them that
this is a matter for giving and receiving satisfaction.
So, in perfectly cold blood, with the most ceremonious
politeness, the time and place of meeting are fixed
by the seconds, who make all arrangements for their
principals; and at the time appointed these two men
stand face to face, with no malice, it may be, in
either heart, feeling rather that there were faults
on both sides, and at any rate no more wrong done
or intended than a little mutual forbearance and concession
might easily set right. And yet there they stand;
at a given signal aim each at the other’s heart;
and, if that aim is true, each is murdered by his
brother, and hurried in a moment red-handed into
the awful presence of his Maker and Judge. And
this used to be called `satisfaction,’ and the
man who refused to give it was branded as a coward.
And such was the tyranny of this fashion which Satan
had imposed upon thinking and immortal men, that rarely
indeed was a man found who had the true moral courage
to refuse to fight a duel when challenged to do so.”
“Ah then, auntie,” said
her nephew, “you would give the laurels for
moral courage to the man who declined to fight.”
“Certainly I would. Yes,
I should have called him a truly noble and morally
courageous man who, in those sad duelling days, should
have declined a challenge on the ground that he feared
God rather than man that he was willing
to brave any earthly scorn and loss rather than be
a cold-blooded murderer and do violence to his own
conscience, and break the laws of his Creator and
Redeemer. Such courage as this would be worth,
in my eyes, a thousandfold more than all the `pluck’
in the world.”
“Indeed, dear Aunt Kate,”
said Walter seriously, “I believe you are right;
but can you give me any example of such moral courage?”
“Yes, dear boy, I think I can.
I call to mind the case of an excellent Christian
man; I rather think he was an officer in the army,
and that made his position more trying, because in
the days when duelling was the fashion, for an officer
to refuse a challenge would have raised up the whole
of the service against him. However, whether
he was a military man or not, he was at any rate a
true soldier of the Cross. By something he had
done, or left undone, he had grievously offended a
companion, and this friend or acquaintance of his called
on him one morning, and, being a hot-tempered man,
charged him with the supposed offence or affront,
and working himself up into a violent passion, declared
that they must fight it out, and that he should send
him a formal challenge. The other listened very
quietly to this outburst of wrath, and then said calmly
and deliberately, `Fight you, must it be? certainly,
I must not decline your challenge. Yes, we will
fight, and it shall be now; here, on this very spot,
and with swords. I have my weapon close at hand.’
Saying which, the good man pulled a small Bible out
of his pocket, and holding it up before his companion,
whose face had turned deadly pale, said, `Here is
my sword, the sword of the Spirit, the only weapon
I intend to fight you with.’ Telling a
friend about it afterwards, the Christian man remarked,
`Never did poor creature look upon a Bible with more
satisfaction and relief than my adversary did on mine.’
But at the time when the angry man was speechless
with astonishment, the other proceeded to say to him
kindly, `Friend, I have a dear wife and children.
Now, would it have been right in me to meet you with
pistols or other deadly weapons, and to have entailed
lasting misery on those so dear to me, and so dependent
on me, by either being myself your murderer or allowing
you the opportunity of being mine?’ That was
true moral heroism, dear Walter, and it had its reward
there and then, for the challenger at once grasped
the hand of his companion and said, `It would not
have been right on your part; you have done just what
it was your duty to do in declining my challenge,
and I honour you for it. Let us part friends.’”
“Thank you, auntie; I admire
your hero immensely. Now, pray give me another
example, if you have one ready.”
“I have read a curious story
on this subject,” replied Miss Huntingdon, “but
I am not sure that it is a true one. I read it
in some book years ago, but what the book was I cannot
call to mind. However, the story may be true,
and it may be useful to repeat it, as it just illustrates
my present point about moral courage in reference to
duelling. The story is substantially this:
“Some years ago, when a regiment
was quartered for a time in one of our county towns,
one of the officers of the regiment was challenged
by a brother officer, and refused to accept the challenge.
This refusal soon flew abroad over all the town and
neighbourhood, and the consequence was that every
one turned his back on the man who refused to fight.
He was avoided by all of his own rank of both sexes
as a craven and a coward. Of course, he felt
this very keenly. To be shut out from houses
where he used to be welcomed; to be looked at with
scorn by his brother officers; to have not a word
addressed to him by any one of them when they met
him on parade or at mess; to be the object of ill-concealed
contempt even to the common soldiers; these
things were burdens almost intolerable to a man who
had any respect for his own character as a soldier.
However, for a time he bore it patiently. At
last he hit upon an expedient to prove to the world
that he was no coward, which was undoubtedly original
and convincing, though, certainly, by no means justifiable.
“A large evening party was being
given to the officers of the regiment by some distinguished
person in the town; a ball probably, for many ladies
were present. While all were in the very midst
and height of their amusement, suddenly the disgraced
officer made his appearance among them in his dress
uniform. How could this be? how came he there?
Assuredly no one had invited him. As he advanced
into the middle of the brilliantly lighted room an
empty space was left for him, officers and ladies
shrinking from him, as though his near approach brought
defilement with it. Looking quietly round, he
deliberately produced and held up a hand-grenade,
as it was called that is to say, a small
bombshell and, before any one of the astonished
spectators could stop him, lighted a match at one
of the wax-candles, and applied it to the fusee of
the shell. A shower of sparks came rushing from
the hand-grenade, which would explode in a minute
or two or even less. The consternation of the
company was frightful, and a furious and general rush
was made to the doors. As the guests dashed out
of the room, some just caught sight of the officer
who had brought in and lighted the shell standing
calmly over it with his arms folded. A few moments
more, all the company had vanished terror-stricken,
and then a frightful explosion was heard. One
or two of the officers hurried back with horror on
their faces. The man who had been branded as
a coward lay outstretched on the ground. He
had thrown himself flat on the floor the instant the
room was cleared; the fragments of the shell had flown
over him, and he was almost entirely uninjured.
“His object in this extraordinary
proceeding was to show his brother officers and the
world generally that a man might refuse, from conscientious
motives, to fight a duel and yet be no coward.
I am not praising or approving of his conduct in
taking such a dangerous course to prove his point;
for he was endangering the lives of many as well as
his own life, and nothing could justify that.
But, if the story be true, it shows at least that
a man may decline to do an act from a high sense of
duty, so as to bring upon himself the reproach of cowardice,
and yet may be a man of undoubted bravery after all.
But I do not at all place this officer on my list
of moral heroes. I trust, however, dear Walter,
that our conversation on this subject will strengthen
in you the conviction that the noblest and truest
courage is that high moral courage which enables a
man to endure with patience any scorn, or loss, or
blame, rather than deliberately do what he knows that
his conscience and the Word of God condemn.”