New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1856-08-09
. ID NIsi III M @ 81 .

The measure Of our endurance is the measure Of our
lnanliness All ages have acknowledged this doc
tfire and some have even made their gods and emis
gods anss III IT. The Spartan boy has Immortality,
because the sharpest knaWngs of the fox brought no
tears 10 his eyes-no groans from his determined
heart.
r What man can do, and how much he can endure,
before the tendons give way and the immortal part
confesses its mortal coparnership, like the ductility
and malleabty of metal can be told emily after trial
That there is steel somewhere in man, and touch of
divine endurance, every ones experience attests. In
some there Is that strongly woven FORMULATION and
fine fibre which can hardly be parted by any power;
which may be woven round and around, like thread,
without sanlerng In Others there is the brittleness
#of glass Z
4 There are many who have never passed through
the inquiston Of pain and the crucibe of suffering
many who may, in the alembic surely oconles prove
the golden neness and cohesion Of their natures, but
who are as apt to vince and writhe under the trial.
Some will stand like Cyclops; will endure like Poly
pheme; will bear like Ixion or Tantalus, what the
wrath Of the Gods. the Nemesis of their own for
tunes may visit upon them. Pelion upon 0ssa shall
be felt, but no more acknowledged than the first
shoveEfull Of disquietude; and under all they will
exhibit the calm stoicism for which Procruses and
Prometheus will live evermore. A toothache will be
10 others the measure Of their endurance gnant
4 with eternal torture.
Read by the light of ones personal experience how
diyinely grand and heroic do some Of the great world
martyrs stand out upon the page Of history Beaded
/ drops may be rolling in hot channels down their
4 cheeks, and an agonized corrugated front, make
4 their brows as mountainous the Alps and its val
legs; groan may find faint utterance, but naught can
wiring from them anything more than the preface and
Inscription to the historic scrPta Of their suffer-
! ing. Such men may go under, like others; but when
they do, depend upon it, something of gold, of the
true noble manly principle of primitive heroism, goes
1 with them.
4 The world has acknowledged this truth, in that
endorsing which places the story of great deeds on
the highest pnacle Of grandeur. The Indian Of our
own prairies, who put his captive to death with
almost the ingenuity Of the middeage inquisiton, in
/ order that he might have test of his endurance,
4 awarded divine honors to the memory of him whose
spirit ruled his body that information of his death
song betrayed consciousness of the cruel work that
was rendering his mortal part back to Immortality
! The truest endurance may break, for it is finite
but it will not bend-snceits very mortality is woven
into what is immortal, and the line of demarcation
runs so close to what is infinite and onlnpotent, that
neither pain from without nor pain from within, can
shape it.
What is the problem Of endurance? What invests
mar with it? Examine closely and it will be found
that endurance and virtue travel hand in hand.
If before the star chamber that holds ceaseless SEES
sion in every ones own before which. memory
is an unfagging prosecutor and conscience q more
severe Rhadamanthos than any inquistor that ever
sat-the cuprt obtains verdict of acquittal; if he
can prove himself just to himself before the tribunal
whose circuits are in consonance with his own move
ments if he can purge himself to himself, then the
roars Of hell itself will leave him fearless and COM
posed; for he is not culprit but unsoiled in his
semi-diyinity; erring, because human enduring be-
cause superhuman and divine even in his ransgres-
sions
The problem of human life and destiny is a grand
one yet its solution TO humanity now than
in the beginning but, lit no teaching figures up SO
largely as the grand one to 'sutfer and be srong So
the anciens deemed and trained up their children to
| be race of heroes So should we deem it, if am
bilious Of approaching the apogee and perihelion of
the largest humanity And, in education to this
godlike endurance, morality and virtue must neces-
sarily be impressively taught; since it is only with
an excusing conscience, and q soul thoroughly at
peace with ITSELF that man can look into the jaws of
death and give quiverings as he says farewell to
"A life.
our manliness.
q b