ds,
minutes, and tens of minutes passed, without a sound from the mine, and
the suspense became painful. Lieutenant Doughty and Sergeant Kees
volunteered to examine the fuse. Through the long subterranean
galleries they hurried in silence, not knowing but they were advancing
to a horrible death. They found the defect, fired the train anew, and
soon a terrible upheaval of earth gave the signal to march to victory.

At the battle of Copenhagen, as Nelson walked the deck slippery with
blood and covered with the dead, he said: "This is warm work, and this
day may be the last to any of us in a moment. But, mark me, I would
not be elsewhere for thousands." At the battle of Trafalgar, when
Nelson was shot and was being carried below, he covered his face, that
those fighting might not know their chief had fallen.

In a skirmish at Salamanca, while the enemy's guns were pouring shot
into his regiment, Sir William Napier's men became disobedient. He at
once ordered a halt, and flogged four of the ringleaders under fire.
The men yielded at once, and then marched three miles under a heavy
cannonade as coolly as if it were a review.

Execute your resolutions immediately. Thoughts are but dreams till
their effects be tried. Does competition trouble you? work away; what
is your competitor but a man? _Conquer your place in the world_, for
all things serve a brave soul. Combat difficulty manfully; sustain
misfortune bravely; endure poverty nobly; encounter disappointment
courageously. The influence of the brave man is a magnetism which
creates an epidemic of noble zeal in all about him. Every day sends to
the grave obscure men, who have only remained in obscurity because
their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort; and who,
if they could have been induced to begin, would, in all probability,
have gone great lengths in the career of usefulness and fame. "No
great deed is done," says George Eliot, "by falterers who ask for
certainty." The brave, cheerful man will survive his blighted hopes
and disappointments, take them for just what they are, lessons and
perhaps blessings in disguise, and will march boldly and cheerfully
forward in the battle of life. Or, if necessary, he will bear his ills
with a patience and calm endurance deeper than ever plummet sounded.
He is the true hero.

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prospe