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No Indian chief that day shirked anything; yet the white foe always advanced, and the boom of the cannon sounded in their ears like the crack of doom. Some of the balls now passed over the fields through the strip of woods and smashed into the houses of the town. The shouting of the women became shriller. Nearer and nearer came the white enemy.
It seemed certain death to enter the room in which a murderer lurked in darkness, armed with a rifle and fixed bayonet and resolved to sell his life dearly. But the subaltern did not hesitate. He was the only sahib there and of course it was his duty to go in. He could not ask his men to risk a danger that he shirked himself.
"That a good many would have shirked this duty, and that you did not, is why I thank you still to-day. Give me your hand in token of our friendship. Now we are good friends again, are we not?" With tears in his laughing eyes, Coucou laid his big brown hand in the delicate hand of the vicomte.
Young Ellwell shirked his chance; while his mates were enlisting and leaving college, he slunk away in little sprees, pleading weak health. Mark Ellwell, shamed and mortified, would have horsewhipped his son into the ranks, but the mother defended the weakling. One day young Ellwell announced his marriage to a Salem girl whom he had met the week before.
He loved to argue, never shirked an encounter with any number of disputants, and laughed as he broke down their arguments. Through some strange course of events, not easy to follow, the Copernican theory, whose birth was welcomed by the Church, had now been taken up by certain anti-clerical agitators, and was opposed by the cardinals as well as by the dignitaries of the Reformed Church.
"Pain, danger, difficulty, steady slaving toil, shall in no wise be shirked by any brightest mortal that will approve himself loyal to his mission in this world; nay, precisely the higher he is the deeper will be the disagreeableness, and the detestability to flesh and blood, of the tasks laid on him; and the heavier, too, and more tragic, his penalties if he neglect them."
Realizing his want of education, he devoted every minute he could spare from work or sleep to study. Speaking of these early days, Mr. Greeley said: "There was many a heavy load placed on my shoulders, but I staggered on and bore it as best I could. Many an uncongenial task was forced upon me, but I can honestly say I never shirked it.
The spirit of a seafaring race which has the salt in its blood from Land's End to John o' Groat's and back again to Wapping had not been destroyed, but answered the ruffle of Drake's drum and, with simplicity and gravity in royal navy and in merchant marine, swept the highways of the seas, hunted worse monsters than any fabulous creatures of the deep, and shirked no dread adventure in the storms and darkness of a spacious hell.
Seclusion may indicate contempt for others; though more usually it means indolence, cowardice, or self-indulgence. To every human being belongs his fair share of manful toil and human duty; and it cannot be shirked without loss to the individual himself, as well as to the community to which he belongs.
As has been well and finely said, a beaten nation is not necessarily a disgraced nation; but the nation or man is disgraced if the obligation to defend right is shirked. We should as a nation do everything in our power for the cause of honorable peace. It is morally as indefensible for a nation to commit a wrong upon another nation, strong or weak, as for an individual thus to wrong his fellows.
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