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I think not. Every family has its irrepressible, impossible, unpractical member, its enfant terrible, who is forever doing the wrong thing with the best intentions. Truth is the enfant terrible of the Virtues. Some times it puts them to the blush and throws them into confusion; at others it blusters like a blatant liar; at others, again, it stutters and stammers like a detected thief.
That sort of thing is not courage: it is rashness, which is just another name for foolishness. Shakespeare once said: "I dare do all that may become a man, Who dares do more is none." The really brave boy is not the one that blusters and brags: the brave boy is usually quiet, but, as we say, "all there" when the pinch really comes.
The blusterer blusters; the profane man swears; the tearful woman weeps and weeping, by the way, is no mean accomplishment if it be used at the right moment. Mrs. Agar naturally meditated on that form of diplomacy which is sometimes called lying. Dora absolutely refused to come to Stagholme while Arthur was there a delicacy of feeling, which, by the way, was quite incomprehensible to Mrs. Agar.
Felix is such a jolly boy, and likes the winds roaring and the waves foaming, and he struts and blusters about as if he was six feet two, and stout in proportion, instead of being a shrimp of the smallest dimensions. He is getting a colour though, and his mother looks at him quite happy. Winny is such an innocent little donkey, so quaint and matter-of-factish.
I cannot grieve; I almost feel as if I wished it so. Augustus as a grandson-in-law would sting her fine senses unbearably. He blusters continually, and his airs of proprietorship envers moi would irritate her; besides, she would always have the idea that she is cheating me by remaining alive, that, after all, my marriage was not a necessity if she is still there to keep me.
There are, it may be admitted, heroic exceptions. The chaffinch sits in the plum and blusters out his music, cat or no cat. To be sure, he only sings, a flush of all the colours, in order to distract our attention. He is not an artist but a watchman.
In his fatuous, insular way, it pleased him to regard them rather as a species of aborigines benefiting by English civilization. The English Ass and the German Ass are touchingly alike. The shade of difference is that the English Ass's sublime self-satisfaction is in the German Ass self-glorification. The English Ass smirks and plumes himself; the German Ass blusters and bullies and defies."
And the assistant looks confused enough for Tom to rejoin, "And you sold him laudanum?" "Why ah " "And you had sold him laudanum already this afternoon, you young rascal? How dare you, twice in six hours? I'll hold you responsible for the man's life!" "You dare call me a rascal?" blusters the youth, terror-stricken at finding how much Tom knows.
This "never doubting good will triumph" is really, when one examines it, nothing but the inverted prostration of the helot-slave, glad to have been allowed to get so totally drunk! It blusters and swaggers, but at heart it is base and ignoble.
"But," added Eve, "the clouds above us, and those farther south, appear to be hurrying towards your bright opening, captain, instead of from it." "Quite in nature, gentlemen; quite in nature, ladies. When a man has fully made up his mind to retreat, he blusters the most; and one step forward often promises two backward.
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