Evergreens | Page 5

get the charm and fascination. You will
get the after-headaches, the complainings and grumblings, the silence
and sulkiness, the weariness and lassitude and ill-temper that comes as
such a relief after working hard all day at being pleasant!
It is not the people who shine in society, but the people who brighten
up the back parlor; not the people who are charming when they are out,
but the people who are charming when they are in, that are good to live
with. It is not the brilliant men and women, but the simple, strong,
restful men and women, that make the best traveling companions for
the road of life. The men and women who will only laugh as they put

up the umbrella when the rain begins to fall, who will trudge along
cheerfully through the mud and over the stony places--the comrades
who will lay their firm hand on ours and strengthen us when the way is
dark and we are growing weak--the evergreen men and women, who,
like the holly, are at their brightest and best when the blast blows
chilliest--the stanch men and women!
It is a grand thing this stanchness. It is the difference between a dog and
a sheep--between a man and an oyster.
Women, as a rule, are stancher than men. There are women that you
feel you could rely upon to the death. But very few men indeed have
this dog-like virtue. Men, taking them generally, are more like cats.
You may live with them and call them yours for twenty years, but you
can never feel quite sure of them. You never know exactly what they
are thinking of. You never feel easy in your mind as to the result of the
next-door neighbor's laying down a Brussels carpet in his kitchen.
We have no school for the turning-out of stanch men in this nineteenth
century. In the old, earnest times, war made men stanch and true to
each other. We have learned up a good many glib phrases about the
wickedness of war, and we thank God that we live in these peaceful,
trading times, wherein we can--and do--devote the whole of our
thoughts and energies to robbing and cheating and swindling one
another--to "doing" our friends, and overcoming our enemies by
trickery and lies--wherein, undisturbed by the wicked ways of
fighting-men, we can cultivate to better perfection the "smartness," the
craft, and the cunning, and all the other "business-like" virtues on
which we so pride ourselves, and which were so neglected and treated
with so little respect in the bad old age of violence, when men chose
lions and eagles for their symbols rather than foxes.
There is a good deal to be said against war. I am not prepared to
maintain that war did not bring with it disadvantages, but there can be
no doubt that, for the noblest work of Nature--the making of men--it
was a splendid manufactory. It taught men courage. It trained them in
promptness and determination, in strength of brain and strength of hand.
From its stern lessons they learned fortitude in suffering, coolness in
danger, cheerfulness under reverses. Chivalry, Reverence, and Loyalty
are the beautiful children of ugly War. But, above all gifts, the greatest
gift it gave to men was stanchness.

It first taught men to be true to one another; to be true to their duty, true
to their post; to be in all things faithful, even unto death.
The martyrs that died at the stake; the explorers that fought with Nature
and opened up the world for us; the reformers (they had to do
something more than talk in those days) who won for us our liberties;
the men who gave their lives to science and art, when science and art
brought, not as now, fame and fortune, but shame and penury--they
sprang from the loins of the rugged men who had learned, on many a
grim battlefield, to laugh at pain and death, who had had it hammered
into them, with many a hard blow, that the whole duty of a man in this
world is to be true to his trust, and fear not.
Do you remember the story of the old Viking who had been converted
to Christianity, and who, just as they were about, with much joy, to
baptize him, paused and asked: "But what--if this, as you tell me, is the
only way to the true Valhalla--what has become of my comrades, my
friends who are dead, who died in the old faith--where are they?"
The priests, confused, replied there could be no doubt those unfortunate
folk had gone to a place they would rather not mention.
"Then," said the old warrior, stepping back, "I will not be baptized. I
will go along with my own people."
He