This text is part of:
[196] of these inexperienced men, those valiant champions who, at the end of the war, carried the enemy's strong works by assault: they went under fire more resolutely the second time than the first. Bad soldiers, if unconscious of the impression which the reality of war will produce upon them, are apt to rush into the fight with as much daring and resolution as veteran troops, and once engaged they will sometimes continue to behave well; but experience makes them timid, and their courage fails them afterwards, when called upon to face a danger they have learned to appreciate. On the contrary, participation in those dangers, the loss of their comrades, the sufferings and hardships of the war, were to strengthen the courage and increase the self-possession of the volunteers whom a patriotic duty had taken from the occupations of civil life. Iron, when pure and of good quality, acquires shape and strength under the repeated blows of the blacksmith's hammer, while metal adulterated with bad alloys splits and soon flies in pieces.
Philadelphia, Jos. H. Coates and co., 1876.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.