The Worthington advance. [volume] (Worthington, Minn.) 1874-1908, 1900-08-24
STRONG BY WILL POWER.
Many Military Heroes Have Been
Delicate In Physique When
They Were Young.


something new to learn that many eel
ebrated generals have as boys been any
thing but robust or noted for the viz
tues just mentioned, says the London
Express.
Lord Roberts is the most signal ex-
ample of this. AS lad he was so deli
cate that when he went out to India on
his first voyage there as soldier it was
generally supposed by his most init
mate friends and relatives that his life
would necessarily be short, so pale and
delicate was he. We have several indie
pendent accounts of how the crew of
the ship and some of his. messmates
pitied the tender-looking young Anglo
Indian and prophesed that an early
grave would be his.
But the Indian climate, his native
climate, too, set him Up and worked
wonders in him. How have those
prophets of evil been falsified by what
we in our time see and know to-day!
The duke of Wellington was not at all
strong when lad and his mother was
often much concerned about his health.
At Eton he got the reputation of being
rather q silent, taciturn, somewhat
sullen youth. But it is generally be.
Ieved now that this was as much due
to his delicate health as to any in
dividual characteristics of his own tenn
permanent.
Arthur Wellesley could not stand the
knocking about and rough-andrtumble
life that some of his Eton friends en-
joyed at that time, and they were not
slow to make him aware of the fact.
Rochefort Mcguire, whose recent ad-
ventures in Kimberley and help to the
garrison have made his name more
known even than before the siege, was
almost "given up when a boy, so poor
was his general health.
His destined career had to be changed
for no other reason than that his health
would not stand it, and he had to go
out to the Cape in order to seek that
health which seemed to be denied him
in England Happily he found it there,
and found fortune, too, at the same
time; SO he, at any rate, cannot now be-
moan his fate.
Mcguire found at the Cape a man still
more influential than he himself was to
become, a man who also had had to
leave England and the prospect of be-
ing a clergyman owing to his weak
state of health. This man had once
been intended for a parson, like his
father, and would have perhaps ended
his days as country vicar had not
bad health stepped in and made him
give up that idea and set out for Cape
Colony. Then his health became re-
newed and to-day the whole world
knows Cecil Rhodes almost as we'll as
it knows anybody.
Rhodes may well be called a "sol-
der as regards fighting. for, though.
not military man by profession, he
was always willing to take any share of
fighting that came along his way, and
his advice to doubtful -Britons during
the late crisis in Kimberley, to ''be like
me and sit tight" will not be readily
forgotten. It was said that Kruger
had such an opinion of Cecil Rhodes
fighting powers that he proposed to
put him into a cage when Kimberley
was taken, but it may be also said that
Rhodes would have shown the Beers
NO small amount of resistance first be-
fore he had thus allowed himself to be
taken, for he is by instinct fighting
man to the very bone.
Havelock was never very strong and
as boy he was decidedly on the dark
side of health. Even when q man his
pale face was general subject of re-
mark among his followers. But they
all knew his worth and courage when
the time of trial came.
Perhaps no civilian in this century was
more born fighter than was Lord
Byron, had he been able to become a
real soldier, but he was kept back from
that by his deformity and by constant
bad health. Yet he went forth man
fully to help the Greeks in their strug-
glesfor independence against the Turks
and persisted at Missolonghi.
The present kaiser has never been a
robust man and as a lad was still more
delicate. His deformed arm always
gave him much trouble in affecting his
general health, especially in his young
er years. But he has, by his splendie
resolution and care, grown out IF this
constant bad health, and to-day he is q
fighting man with whom all Europe
has to reckon man not easily to be
beaten in what he undertakes.
So that there il much hope for deli.
cate boys after all, if they have the
ri1ht sort of muck in them