This book is a companion volume to Miles’ A Book of Brave Girls at Home and Abroad [no. 1.3.18].
Preface [3-5]
It is part of the fallacy that leads us to designate as “good old days” some of the worst periods of history, which causes some to imagine that times of noble purpose and high achievements have passed for ever, and that opportunities of heroism are no more. The fact is, as Time turns the kaleidoscope of Life, we see constant changes in the patterns of things; and though history is said to repeat itself, there are not two patterns which are exactly alike. In on the red will be dominant, in another the blue, and in a third the colours will neutralise each other and present a grey or a dull appearance. But we do not for this say, “Ah! there is no red in the kaleidoscope nowadays,” or “The blue has passed from happening for ever,” for we know that all the colours remain in the sphere of the phenomena, that all go to the making of the dullest pattern, and that it is but varying circumstances and conditions which from time to time bring about the dominance of one or another shade. There is no more indisputable fact in life than that [4] human nature is “the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever”; and while human nature remains without change, courage will always be called for and heroism will always respond. To doubt the courage and heroism of the times is to doubt the red and the blue of the kaleidoscope, and to do so for the same reason, because we cannot trace their contribution to the colour-scheme. It is of course true that as civilisation advances barbarous forms of courage find fewer opportunities of display; but it may well be doubted whether the tyrannies of civilisation, though less brutal, are not more cruel than the tyrannies of barbarism, and do not require more courage in their endurance and greater heroism for their combat. It is not too much to say that nowadays men and women and boys and girls are as brave as their ancestors were, and that the great colours which have left their mark on the pages of history are equalled in our own time by hues as bright and fast, but which, in these days of larger opportunity, are more widely diffused as well as actively operate. It is this that gives us so many heroes in humble life. We are not limited to Knights of Round Tables, however large, or battle-fields, however red, for examples heroism and chivalry. The boy learns early the value of “the honour of the school,” the youth becomes soon impressed with the necessity for “playing the game,” the competitor in many sports acquires the cheerful [5] courage which fights as valiantly a losing as a winning cause, and comrades everywhere becomes inspired by esprit de corps. And so we have heroes in the school and the home, in the playing field, in the workshop, the factory, and the mine: and so we have the possibility of such records of courage and devotion as occupy the following pages. Adventures are far to seek in English life, though heroism is a powerful factor in the national character; hence the English boy often lacks those opportunities for the dramatic display of the courage within him which abound in other countries both east and west, though he may, and often does, show an equal heroism of pluck and endurance under mundane circumstances which attract little or no attention. We have to go to Europe, Africa, India, and America for our most thrilling examples of the heroic; and the West, which includes all nationalities and all climates, is naturally one of the most fertile fields of research. The pages of the Youth’s Companion, Harper’s Young People, and other American serials, are veritable storehouses of heroic records, to which the Editor cheerfully acknowledges his great indebtedness.
A. H. M.
Contents
A Modern Hero By Clive R. Fenn 9Old Penny-Pincher By Frank Roe Batchelder 22
A Bear Hung on the Oregon Mountains By L. J. Bates 39
The Short Straw By Clarence Maiko 49
The Charge of the Hounds By George Cary Eggleston 63
“Ugly Mack” By Sheldon C. Stoddard 69
On the Straight By H. J. A. Hervey 79
Shorty and the Professor By Robert F. Gibson 97
A Double Dilemma By Albert W. Tolman 110
Among Desperadoes By C. A. Stephens 119
In the Track of the Tow By Albert W. Tolman 129
On “Lugger Number Four” By Alvah M. Kerr 138
The Doctor’s Ride By W. E. Maclellan 145
’Twixt Earth and Heaven By W. Herbert Crotzer 154
The Cave of the Waters By Lewis B. Miller 167
A Born Coward By Francis Lynde 180
For More than a Medal By James B. Connolly 193
The Parachute Drop Told by Mr. Lane-Stokes 206
An Awful Experience By Norman Duncan 215
Heroes of the Road By the Editor 225
After Wild Fowl By John D. Sherman 236
The Whinnying Bays By Sheldon C. Stoddard 245
How a Blacksmith’s Boy became a Knight By Paul Hull 262
“Subchlor.” Or “Bichlor.”? By Frank Lillie Pollock 271
“Chub” By Walter A. Sinclair 281
“You, Charles!” By W. F. Skerryr 289
Gildea’s Medium By G. Manville Fenn 302
Our Uninvited Guest By F. W. Crissman 317
In an Oakum Wash By Albert W. Tolman 329
Koyouk’s Ravens By G. Harlow Clark 340
A Timber-Cruiser’s Defence By Franklin Welles Calkins 351
Timothy, the Timid By Cromwell Galpin 363
Into a Man-Trap By Shirley W. Smith 375