girl knows this, and feels it; above all, she feels that to incur the blame of her parents is a cruel alternative, yet she still speaks out, and defends her brother, because she believes that in this instance he is innocent. Her noble defence meets with nothing but reproof. She is put down, censured, and, more than all, suspected; but still she maintains the cause of her brother. A few days perhaps develop the real truth. The boy is innocent, and his sister was all the while right. Is the mother then to pass over, unnoticed, so noble and persevering an effort on the part of her child? Certainly not. Although herself in the wrong, and under the necessity of confessing before her children that she has been so, yet a generous and noble-minded mother will see in an instant what is the course of conduct she ought to pursue, and she will rejoice in such an opportunity of expressing her warmest approval.
Although the telling of direct falsehoods from a want of courage to speak the truth, is the first and most obvious exemplification of what is meant by an absence of moral courage, there exists throughout all those varied intricacies which belong to the structure of society, a constant occurrence of occasions, in which moral courage may be called into action for the support of integrity against the allurements of artifice, and the temptations of self-interest. In almost all those trials which beset mankind in the respectable walks of life, it is not from actual propensities to vice that they fail to maintain their ground: but from a little, and perhaps an unconscious leaning to self-interest, a little desire to keep well with the world or with a certain party; and all that endless train of little motives which mix themselves in with almost everything we say and do.
Now, it is chiefly against these that I would bring into operation the strong power of moral courage, not to uproot or destroy such motives one by one; that would indeed be to dissever the hydra heads of an unconquerable enemy. It would in fact be to destroy the whole fabric of human nature. Instead, therefore, of attempting to uproot these plants of evil growth, I would begin in the early training of children to lay the strong foundation of a solid character, by making moral courage one of the first elements of its being I would begin with a high standard, by aiming at what i
