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196 HUNTING. 



will go then.' The saying is ill-natured, no doubt, and often 

 enough contradicted by subsequent facts ; nevertheless it has a 

 spice of truth in it. These two sorts of courage, the courage 

 of sheer ignorance, rashness or foolhardiness, if you like to call 

 it so, and the courage of judgment, which is the true courage, 

 are very fairly distinguished by the following story. On the 

 morning of that famous October day in Balaclava valley, after 

 the splendid charge of our heavy cavalry had broken and 

 scattered to the winds more than twice their number of Russian 

 horse, while our Light Brigade were waiting the fatal order 

 which poor Nolan was to bring them, two grim war-worn 

 veterans, as they sat on their horses in the ranks waiting for the 

 next move, were watching a young trooper near them tickling 

 his comrade's horse to make it kick. •' Look at Bill,' said one 

 of them admiringly, ' ain't he a rare good plucked one ? ' ' Not 

 a bit of it,' was the answer, ' he's only a fool ; he don't know his 

 danger. Now you and I, mate, have been at this game before. 

 We do know our danger, and cursedly afraid of it we are. But 

 we can't run away, and we wouldn't if we could. We're the real 

 good plucked ones.' It is probable that the young rider whose 

 heart is really in the right place will in time acquire this better 

 sort of courage, and that one or two rattling falls, instead of 

 destroying his phick^ will improve it into that still more valuable 

 and rarer quality we call nerve ; and thus will he develop into the 

 first-rate performer who, thoroughly conscious of all the hazards 

 he runs, is determined to shirk none of them that are necessary, 

 but who, by experience and judgment, has learned how far they 

 may be minimised, and is equally determined to throw no one 

 of his lessons away. 



Nerve and pluck are two distinct qualities, though both 

 belong to the gem^s courage. Whyte- Melville very well sepa- 

 rates them when he says, ' The latter takes us into a difficulty, 

 the former brings us out of it ; ' and he goes on more minutely 

 to define them thus : ' I conceive the first to be a moral 

 quality, the result of education, sentiment, self-respect, and 

 certain high aspirations of the intellect ; the second a gift of 



