A Book of Golden Deeds | Page 4

other hand, it is not only the valor, which
meets a thousand enemies upon the battlefield, or scales the walls in a
forlorn hope, that is of true gold. It may be, but often it is a mere greed
of fame, fear of shame, or lust of plunder. No, it is the spirit that gives
itself for others--the temper that for the sake of religion, of country, of
duty, of kindred, nay, of pity even to a stranger, will dare all things,
risk all things, endure all things, meet death in one moment, or wear
life away in slow, persevering tendance and suffering.
Such a spirit was shown by Leaena, the Athenian woman at whose
house the overthrow of the tyranny of the Pisistratids was concerted,
and who, when seized and put to the torture that she might disclose the
secrets of the conspirators, fearing that the weakness of her frame
might overpower her resolution, actually bit off her tongue, that she
might be unable to betray the trust placed in her. The Athenians
commemorated her truly golden silence by raising in her honor the
statue of a lioness without a tongue, in allusion to her name, which

signifies a lioness.
Again, Rome had a tradition of a lady whose mother was in prison
under sentence of death by hunger, but who, at the peril of her own life,
visited her daily, and fed her from her own bosom, until even the stern
senate were moved with pity, and granted a pardon. The same story is
told of a Greek lady, called Euphrasia, who thus nourished her father;
and in Scotland, in 1401, when the unhappy heir of the kingdom, David,
Duke of Rothesay, had been thrown into the dungeon of Falkland
Castle by his barbarous uncle, the Duke of Albany, there to be starved
to death, his only helper was one poor peasant woman, who, undeterred
by fear of the savage men that guarded the castle, crept, at every safe
opportunity, to the grated window on a level with the ground, and
dropped cakes through it to the prisoner, while she allayed his thirst
from her own breast through a pipe. Alas! the visits were detected, and
the Christian prince had less mercy than the heathen senate. Another
woman, in 1450, when Sir Gilles of Brittany was savagely imprisoned
and starved in much the same manner by his brother, Duke François,
sustained him for several days by bringing wheat in her veil, and
dropping it through the grated window, and when poison had been used
to hasten his death, she brought a priest to the grating to enable him to
make his peace with Heaven. Tender pity made these women venture
all things; and surely their doings were full of the gold of love.
So again two Swiss lads, whose father was dangerously ill, found that
they could by no means procure the needful medicine, except at a price
far beyond their means, and heard that an English traveler had offered a
large price for a pair of eaglets. The only eyrie was on a crag supposed
to be so inacessible, that no one ventured to attempt it, till these boys,
in their intense anxiety for their father, dared the fearful danger, scaled
the precipice, captured the birds, and safely conveyed them to the
traveler. Truly this was a deed of gold.
Such was the action of the Russian servant whose master's carriage was
pursued by wolves, and who sprang out among the beasts, sacrificing
his own life willingly to slake their fury for a few minutes in order that
the horses might be untouched, and convey his master to a place of
safety. But his act of self-devotion has been so beautifully expanded in
the story of 'Eric's Grave', in 'Tales of Christian Heroism', that we can
only hint at it, as at that of the 'Helmsman of Lake Erie', who, with the

steamer on fire around him, held fast by the wheel in the very jaws of
the flame, so as to guide the vessel into harbour, and save the many
lives within her, at the cost of his own fearful agony, while slowly
scorched by the flames.
Memorable, too, was the compassion that kept Dr. Thompson upon the
battlefield of the Alma, all alone throughout the night, striving to
alleviate the sufferings and attend to the wants, not of our own
wounded, but of the enemy, some of whom, if they were not sorely
belied, had been known to requite a friendly act of assistance with a
pistol shot. Thus to remain in the darkness, on a battlefield in an
enemy's country, among the enemy themselves, all for pity and mercy's
sake, was one of the noblest acts that history can show. Yet, it was
paralleled in the