ow so deep as to delay them seriously, they went back,
and the elder reported that they could not get on. The father very
judiciously replied: "If that be so, I have of course nothing to say;
but I wish you to try again, and I leave it to your honour not to turn
back, unless necessary." On the second attempt, the elder was more
than once for returning; but Horatio stuck it out, repeating
continually, "Remember it was left to our honour," and the difficult
journey was accomplished.

The children in this instance seem to have felt that there was danger
in going on. The other recorded occurrence shows in the lad that
indifference to personal benefit, as distinguished from the sense of
conspicuous achievement, which was ever a prominent characteristic of
the man. The master of his school had a very fine pear-tree, whose
fruit the boys coveted, but upon which none dared hazard an attempt.
At last Nelson, who did not share their desires, undertook the risk,
climbed the tree by night, and carried off the pears, but refused to
eat any of them,--saying that he had taken them only because the
others were afraid.

Trivial though these incidents may seem, they are so merely because
they belong to the day of small things. To those accustomed to watch
children, they will not appear unworthy of note. Taken together, they
illustrate, as really as do his greatest deeds, the two forms assumed
at different times by the one incentive which always most powerfully
determined Nelson's action through life,--the motive to which an
appeal was never made in vain. No material considerations, neither
danger on the one hand, nor gain on the other, ever affected him as
did that idealized conception which presented itself, now as duty, now
as honor, according as it bore for the moment upon his relations to
the state or to his own personality. "In my mind's eye," said he to
his friend Captain Hardy, who afterwards bent over him as his spirit
was parting amid the tumult of his last victory, "I ever saw a radiant
orb suspended which beckoned me onward to renown." Nelson did not
often verge upon the poetical in words, but to the poetry of lofty
aspiration his inmost being always answered true.

To the young naval officer of a century ago, especially if without
political or social influence, it was a weighty advantage to be
attached to some one commanding officer in active employment, who by
favorable opportunity or through professional friendships coul