Evergreens | Page 5

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 had lived with them, fought beside them; they were his people. He would stand by them to the end--of eternity. Most assuredly, a very shocking old Viking! But I think it might be worth while giving up our civilization and our culture to get back to the days when they made men like that.
The only reminder of such times that we have left us now, is the bull-dog; and he is fast dying out--the pity of it! What a splendid old dog he is! so grim, so silent,