impulse of extraordinary feats of endurance. This has of late been
admirably illustrated. Not long since, there returned to our shores a
hero who--as Dante was believed by the people of Italy to have entered
the Inferno of Fire--had actually descended into the opposite Inferno
of Frost, and done unprecedented battle with the demons of that realm.
Dr. Kane was slight, delicately framed, lean, with sharp, clear-cut
features, of quivering mobility and fineness of texture, having the
aspect rather of an artist than an explorer,--not at all the personage
to whom most judges would assign great power of endurance. And as one
follows him through those thrice Herculean toils,--sees him not only
bearing cheerfully the great burden of his own cares and ills, but
lifting up, as it were, from his companions, and assuming upon his own
shoulders, the awful oppression of the polar night, as Atlas of old was
fabled to support the heavens,--not even one's admiration at such force
of soul can wholly exclude wonder at such fortitude of body. Whence, we
ask, this power of endurance? We can trace it to no ordinary physical
resource. It _comes_ from no ordinary physical resource. It is pure
brain-power. It streams down upon the body, in rivers of invigoration,
from the cerebral hemispheres. A conversational philosopher,
discoursing to a circle of intelligent New England mechanics,
said,--"It is commonly supposed that the earth supports man. Not so;
man upholds the earth!" "How!" exclaimed a wide-eyed auditor; "upholds
the earth? How do you make that out?" "How?" answered the philosopher,
with superb innocence,--"don't you see that it sticks to his heels?"
When the question is asked, How the slight frame of this Arctic hero
could support such tests, the answer must be analogous,--It clung to
his brain. The usual order of support is reversed; and here is that
truer Mercury, in whom the winged head, possessing as function what its
prototype only exhibited as ornament and symbol, really soars in its
own might, bearing the pendent feet.