Bound to Be a Hero.
A young man in California received several threatening letters, and indulged in fine, manly talk about the direful things he would do to the writers of those epistles. At last he made up a party of forty other young men, whom he took out to the bloody field where he was to satisfy his wounded honor. Our hero went eagerly ahead of the crowd, and his friends, though they saw nobody, heard a pistol-shot. Soon the valiant fellow appeared nursing his left hand, which had a bullet hole in it. He expected great applause, but some way his companions were suspicious. They put the young man on the rack of rigid questioning, and at last made him confess that he had shot one hand with the other, and had himself written those threatening letters to himself. So he became conspicuous all right, but not in just the way he had planned.
It is easy to obtain notoriety; one has only to show one's self to be a big enough fool. But as nothing is easier than notoriety, nothing is more fallacious. The hero of the story just related cheated himself worse than he expected to cheat other folks. He wanted to be a hero; he succeeded only in being a ninny. He wanted to be praised; he merely got laughed at.
Heroism, in fact, is always unconscious. It can no more be planned for than the beauty of a rose or the fragrance of a violet. The mere desire to be a hero is unheroic, and vitiates its own purpose. The opportunity for heroism is met by the hero instinctively. He does not debate the deed, he just does it. A hero is a hero by character and not by logic. He never realizes that he is a hero; he is annoyed and embarrassed when others tell him of it. Trying to shoot one's self into a hero's renown simply puts a hole in one's hand and punctures, at the same time, the balloon of a silly ambition. Don't attempt it.
Didn't Want to Tell.
William J. Murphy was well known at Revere Beach, near Boston, where he was a life-guard for the thousands of bathers between 1897 and 1909.
He is said to have saved seventy-five lives.
He was the first around Boston to organize a volunteer life-saving association. He held a medal of the Massachusetts Humane Society for heroic rescues in the breakers.
He was bravest of the brave. He never hesitated to go after a drowning man, whether to the bottom of the sea or far out over the wild waves.
He remained in the water the greater part of his working day, from 10 A. M. till 8 P. M., and he was always ready for signs of trouble.
"Sometimes," says his chief, "after he had rescued a man and I would call him into the office, it was hard work to get a statement from him to file in the records. A good many of his rescues at the bath-house I am satisfied were never reported. There is many a man alive and walking this earth today who has to thank Murphy for it, that no one else knows anything about."
In this account of William J. Murphy you may see two essentials of heroism: it is always ready for any need; and—it does not like to talk about it.
Ready.
It was in Boston, not far from the heart of the city. A robber walked coolly into a second-floor jeweler's office and pointed a revolver at a young woman, a bookkeeper, who was alone there. "Hold up your hands!" he ordered.
She did nothing of the kind. She turned her back on the man, walked to the back of the room, and threw in a switch that set going an electric alarm gong in the hall.
The man ran away. As only one tenant on the floor remembered that the gong was an alarm, the robber was not caught.
As he disappeared, the young woman became hysterical. She had earned that right.
What makes a hero or heroine? Just this readiness.
If that young woman had been obliged to stop and think, it would all have been up with her. The diamonds would have been taken from the safe, and the robber would have escaped with them.
If she had waited to balance probabilities, whether he would fire or not, whether the gong would work or not, whether the robber would run or not, whether anyone would come or not, whether it paid to risk her life for some jewelry or not—if she had delayed for these considerations, she would not have been a heroine.
Heroic souls act from the instinct of heroism. That is all they have time for. They are ready.
Therefore heroism cannot be furbished up on order. It cannot be acquired when the need arises. It must have been the habit of one's mind for years. It must have become ingrained in the nature.
No one need be in doubt whether he will act heroically when the need arises, or act cravenly. Is he heroic now? or is he a coward? That is the only, the decisive, question.
And everyone may know.