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An unexampled instance of self-devotion and presence of mind was manifested by a maidservant, during the war in La Vendée. "The wife of Lepinai, a general in the Vendean army, was imprisoned at Nantes, and attended by a young girl, a native of Chatellerault, so faithfully attached to the service of her mistress that she had followed her to prison.
Venner, I must beg you, as one of the Trustees of this Institution, to look at the manner in which its Principal has attempted to swindle this faithful teacher whose toils and sacrifices and self-devotion to the school have made it all that it is, in spite of this miserable trader's incompetence. Will you look at the paper I hold?"
Early in the morning the Russians, in great force, attacked the Turkish batteries, which they succeeded in capturing, the English gunner in each, with noble self-devotion, spiking the guns before he attempted to escape. One large body of the enemy now attacked the 93rd, under Lieutenant-Colonel Ainslie, but were bravely repelled. Another, and the most powerful, turned towards the cavalry.
The two series of Dramatic Idyls included some conspicuous successes. The classical poems Pheidippides, Echetlos, Pan and Luna, idyls heroic and mythological, invite us by their beauty to return to them again and again. Browning's sympathy with gallantry in action, with self-devotion to a worthy cause, was never more vividly rendered than in the first of these poems.
Strange as it may appear, it seems because the tales of Australian travel and self-devotion are true, that they attract but little notice, for were the narratives of the explorers NOT true we might become the most renowned novelists the world has ever known. Again, Australian geography, as explained in the works of Australian exploration, might be called an unlearned study.
The little princesses wore ruffles and silk mantillas, of all the colors of the rainbow; but the queen-mother had far more important business to attend to than the adornment of her person, and in her self-devotion to her commonwealth had long ago, of her own free will, laid aside flounces and furbelows. What a good motherly body she was! and how devoted her subjects were to her!
Bonaparte said, that at the beginning of almost every battle there was a moment when the bravest troops were liable to sudden panic; let the personal control of the general once lead them past that, and the field was half won. The courage of self-devotion, lastly, is the faculty evoked by special exigencies, in persons who have before given no peculiar evidence of courage.
And all who know the way in which our boys did it, will bear witness to their great nobleness. Patient, and strong, and brave, where there was no excitement to cheer, nor spectators to applaud; their fortitude and their patience and their generous self-devotion never failed nor faltered, when all adventitious or real helps and stimulants were withdrawn, and patriotism and bravery stood alone.
To keep seven children in good condition and discipline in a small house, on a small income, is more, it must be allowed, than most girls of twenty are equal to; only enthusiasm and self-devotion could make such a task possible, and these qualifications poor little Ursula did not possess.
The petition was unfortunately heard before the Master of the Rolls, Sir George Jessel, a man animated by the old spirit of Hebrew bigotry, and who had superadded to this the coarse time-serving morality of "a man of the world", sceptical of all sincerity, and contemptuous of all self-devotion to a cause that did not pay, as of a weakness by which he was himself singularly unassailable.
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