NERVE AS OPPOSED TO PLUCK.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2587, 9 February 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

NERVE AS OPPOSED TO PLUCK.

Nerve is a quality which is possessed by few men in its highest degree. Nerve is altogether different to that quality known as pluck. Therefore, a brave man may be, and indeed often is very nervous. Pluck, as Whyte Melville remarks, gets a man into a difficulty ; nerve gets him out of it. Take a battle, for instance A nervous man would be nervous before the action began, but when the fighting was at its height, he would, in all probability, be the coolest, and his bravery would show conspicuously. A man who had no nerves would not inind in the least the suspense which preceded the opening of the action. A nervous man may possess good quality—moral courage—because although he is nervous, he is brave and capable of doing an heroic action, such as saving the wounded under heavy fire. A story is told of Waterloo which illustrates this. Wellington sent two aides-de-camp to carry orders across a portion of the field traversed bj heavy fire. Many had been sent only to be shot down. The one, observing his companion's lips twitch, asked him if he was afraid. "No I'm not," replied the other, but I'm confoundedly nervous." Upon hearing this No 1 returned to the Duke and reported the other as being afraid. "Go &t once," replied the Iron Duke, "you'll find him there before you." And so it was. The nervous man was alroady half way through the storm of lead that swept the plateau. So it is in the common things of life, nervous men will sometimes do things that men without nerves would not dare. This seems paradoxical but its true. Take a man who is brave and free from any tremour of the nerves ; put him in a position of danger where no one else can see him, and ho will retire. The nervous man also alone, having the higher quality, moral courage, would remain and fight the danger ; because if he went away, his nerves would torment him and call him a coward, One cannot persuade the nervous but brave man to accept the saying, " He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day." It's no use, bfcinse if he ran away from danger he would be miserable, as the story books says, over afterwards. One more instance, and I have done. A wellknown commander of calvary observed, as he mounted his horse on the morning of a battle, that his knees twitched and quivered. "Ah?" he said, " you two, if you only knew where you were going, you'd shake a good deal harder," —Sau Francisco Chronicle.