Miscellaneous. Heroes.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 2009, 23 May 1885, Page 6 (Supplement)

Miscellaneous. Heroes.

In dramas heroes are generally resaued triumphantly from the dangers to whioh their bravery has exposed them, bnt it is not always so in real life. Every year oonvinoes ma that poetioal justice does not exist on earth, and that the reward of the hero is found eUewhere, as is that of the simplj good man. The coward often saves himself. The selfish and grasping too often prosper. We at least ought to hold the heroes in our memories awhile. But, alas I who but those who loved them will do this ? I blush with shame to think that at this instant I cannot reoall the name of the man who stopped the gap in the breaking tunnel with his own body, and said : " Boys, save yourselves. You are married ; I am not," and was drowned. I regret that there is no record of those who every year lose their liven in saving strangers from a watery grave ; that their comrades only know the firemen who die amidsl smoke and flames in the discharge of their duty, and the engineers who go to their death — as many a one has done — to save the train full of passengers behind them. To-day, the name of another hero lies before me, that of James Oarr, the foreman of a Ohioago factory that waa recently burned. By his coolness and energy he saved the lives of more than thirty persons, and then fearing that some helpless soul bad been forgotten, he returned to the upper story, and perished. He died an agonizing death, within sight of those who might have shared a similar fate but for his efforts. I do not know whether he had wife or children, or any dear ones to grieve for him ; but it is probable that he had. Such a man oould searoely be without olose ties of some sort. Bitterly must they grieve for him. But beyond mention of the fire, little will be said. Little was said of the hero of the submerged tunnel. Accidents are painful. People do not like to linger over them, and the heroes of them aro set aside with other unpleasant details. Officers who fall in battle get into history ; men of the ranks rarely; and these plain working-men, who are heroes of a ram sort than soldiers, pass with the newsboy's ory of "^Dreadful aooident 1 " " Loss of life I " from men's memories. Yet, amidst the selfish world, full of rather oowardly folk, how brightly they ought to stand out, these men who have given their lives for others, not blindly, but knowing all their risks, as brave men only know it.