en 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