only avoidance of disgrace; but even fear of shame is better than mere
love of bodily ease, and from that lowest motive the scale rises to the
most noble and precious actions of which human nature is capable--the
truly golden and priceless deeds that are the jewels of history, the
salt of life.

And it is a chain of Golden Deeds that we seek to lay before our
readers; but, ere entering upon them, perhaps we had better clearly
understand what it is that to our mind constitutes a Golden Deed.

It is not mere hardihood. There was plenty of hardihood in Pizarro when
he led his men through terrible hardships to attack the empire of Peru,
but he was actuated by mere greediness for gain, and all the perils he
so resolutely endured could not make his courage admirable. It was
nothing but insensibility to danger, when set against the wealth and
power that he coveted, and to which he sacrificed thousands of helpless
Peruvians. Daring for the sake of plunder has been found in every
robber, every pirate, and too often in all the lower grade of warriors,
from the savage plunderer of a besieged town up to the reckless monarch
making war to feed his own ambition.

There is a courage that breaks out in bravado, the exuberance of high
spirits, delighting in defying peril for its own sake, not indeed
producing deeds which deserve to be called golden, but which, from their
heedless grace, their desperation, and absence of all base motives--
except perhaps vanity have an undeniable charm about them, even when we
doubt the right of exposing a life in mere gaiety of heart.

Such was the gallantry of the Spanish knight who, while Fernando and
Isabel lay before the Moorish city of Granada, galloped out of the camp,