The Choir Invisible

To such adventures with all their natural exaggeration John Gray had

listened many a time as they were recited by old hunters regarding earlier

days in the wilderness; for at this period it was thought that the cougar

had retreated even from the few cane-brakes that remained unexplored near

the settlements. But the deer, timidest of animals, with fatal persistence

returns again and again to its old-time ranges and coverts long after the

bison, the bear, and the elk have wisely abandoned theirs; and the cougar

besets the deer.

It was these stories that he remembered now and that filled him with horror,

with the faintness of death. His turn had come at last, he said; and as to

the others, it had come without warning. He was too shackled with weakness

to cry out, to stand up. The windows on each side were fastened; there was

no escape. There was nothing in the room on which he could lay hold--no

weapon or piece of wood, or bar of iron. If a struggle took place, it would

be a clean contest between will and will, courage and courage, strength and

strength, the love of prey and the love of life.It was well for him that

this was not the first time he had ever faced death, as he had supposed; and

that the first thought that had rushed into his consciousness before

returned to him now. That thought was this: that death had come far too

soon, putting an end to his plans to live, to act, to succeed, to make a

great and a good place for himself in this world before he should leave it

for another. Out of this a second idea now liberated itself with incredible

quickness and spread through him like a living flame: it was his lifelong

attitude of victory, his lifelong determination that no matter what opposed

him he must conquer. Young as he was, this triumphant habit had already

yielded him its due result that growth of character which arises silently

within us, built up out of a myriad nameless elements--beginning at the very

bottom of the ocean of unconsciousness; growing as from cell to cell, atom

to atom--the mere dust of victorious experience--the hardening deposits of

the ever-living, ever-working, ever-rising will; until at last, based on

eternal quietude below and lifting its wreath of palms above the waves of

life, it stands finished, indestructible, our inward rock of defence against

every earthly storm.

Soon his face was worth going far to see. He had grown perfectly calm. His

weakness had been followed by a sense of strength wholly extraordinary. His

old training in the rough athletics of the wilderness had made him supple,

agile, wary, long-winded. His eyes hadnever known what it was to be subdued;

he had never taken them from the cougar.