Survivorship

“ The lean and feeble survivors had not energy enough to bear the bodies of their kindred to the funeral pile or to the holy river, or even to scare away the jackals and vultures, who fed on human remains in the face of day. ”

“ It was not until the evening that he could bring himself to endure an interview with the sole survivor, who stared at him with wide, inquiring eyes, and answered his questions, or failed to answer them, according to the whim of the moment. ”

“ For, I fear that his statement may become the basis of a vicious argument that the fact of survival is proof of fitness to survive. It seems to me that the question is. not whether a community lives or dies ; the question is on what plane does it live. There are different modes of survival. But all are not equally honourable. For an individual as well as for a society, there is a gulf between merely living and living worthily. To fight in a battle and to live in glory is one mode. To beat a retreat, to surrender and to live the life of a captive is. also a mode of survival. ”

“ The weaker ones died. The hardy fighters and the courageous women who had followed their men into the wilderness survived. In this way they developed a strong race of men. They cared little for the graces of life. ”

“ Death, the calm, the restful, the never weary; Death, the friend of long suffering, and world weariness and despair; Death, the rescuer, the sometime comforter—has gone away with empty [106] arms and reluctant tread, and—Life, flushed, triumphant, seizes his rescued subject and flings her out into the sea of human lives, perchance to alight upon some tiny green islet or, likelier yet, to buffet about among black waters, or encounter winds and storms, upheld only by a half-wrecked raft or floated by a scarce-supporting spar. ”

“ It was like a drowning man—with the strength of two—when rescued and brought safely to land, fainting through sheer weakness. A reprieve from death itself or the blood of his fellow man upon his hands had been met and passed. ”

“ Accident and then exigency seemed the forces at work to this extraordinary effect; the play of energies as free and planless as those that force the forest from the soil to the sky; and then the fierce struggle for survival, with the stronger life persisting over the deformity, the mutilation, the destruction, the decay of the weaker. ”

“ Should I pass in safety, I might issue forth into a wilderness, of which I had no knowledge, where I might wander till I perished with famine, or where my footsteps might be noted and pursued and overtaken by these implacable foes. These perils were enormous and imminent; but I likewise considered that I might be at no great distance from the habitations of men, and that my escape might rescue them from the most dreadful calamities. ”

“ On the very brink of starvation and death--death in the lone wilderness, peopled only with the savage denizens of the forest, who even then were thirsting for our blood--hope, sure and certain hope, had for one brief moment gladdened our hearts with the consoling assurance, that after our many trials, and protracted sufferings, we were again about to find comfort and safety. ”

“ I was saying that which survives is proved worthy of survival, as of a man and a shark, or of Athens and Macedonia, or in many other ways. Now the thruppenny bit, having survived to our own time, has so proved itself in that test, and upon this all men of science are agreed. ”

“ But we treasure the memory of it as a bright example to ourselves and to all following generations, how to fight and to sacrifice our lives for the land in which we were born and which gives us shelter and protection. ”

“ The survivor, who seems to have been the founder of his own fortune—novus homo—became eminently distinguished for his fine poetical talents, and composed a volume of lyrics, which have passed through innumerable editions. The one hundred [Pg 617] and forty-fourth of the series is supposed, by the critics, to have been commemorative of this very affair of honor—Blessed be the Lord, my strength, who teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight. ”

“ Having a strong will to survive: sense of responsibility (the strong help the weak) , family and home ties, panic control, continuous planning, patience and endurance, self-preservation, and knowledge of survival and evasion. ”

“ The survivors of the people scattered over the country—leaderless, lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd—the thousands who had fled by sea, would begin to return; the pulse of life, growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and pour across the vacant squares. ”

“ These fearless sons of the wilderness, these sturdy sons of progress, standing there clasping the hands of their partners and with faces glowing with happiness, forgetful of all save the enjoyment of the moment, were ready to go out on the morrow and battle unto the death for the homes and the lives of their loved ones. ”

“ With indescribable bravery a warrior lays down his life, a fireman rescues a child from a burning building, a life-boatman goes through the surf to a sinking ship, and, at that very moment when he proves himself best fitted to live, death comes and he is seen no more. ”

“ In the early morning hour, as I strolled home deep in thought, I determined to see these men who nightly risk their lives and stalwart limbs for the benefit and preservation of helpless fire-scorched people. Who are these men who go literally through fire and water to assist and save their fellow creatures, strangers to them— unknown, save in that they require help and succour? ”

“ Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn, Feeling my womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn. Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway, And I wait for the men who will win me — and I will not be won in a day ”

“ If this maxim were universal, how many lives would have been saved! how many lives, also, which have dwindled out in sorrow and repining, for the death of friends by rash duels, would have passed without remorse and pain! ”

“ The young man who has not heard the clarion-voices of honor and of duty now sounding throughout the land, will heed no word of mine. In the camp or the city, in the field or the hospital, under sheltering roof, or half-protecting canvas, or open sky, shedding our own blood or stanching that of our wounded defenders, students or teachers, whatever our calling and our ability, we belong, not to ourselves, but to our imperilled country, whose danger is our calamity, whose ruin would be our enslavement, whose rescue shall be our earthly salvation! ”

“ Leaving out of consideration who are the elect, and who not, which God only knows, can we think that the patience of the labourer and artisan, the endurance of the seafaring man, and the devotedness of the soldier, who at the call of duty, and in spite of the promptings of self-preservation, exposes himself to almost certain death on the field of battle, have no relation to their future destiny? ”

“ Now what is Survival?
Etymologically, it should mean something qui survit, which outlives its fellows, like the Wandering Jew, encountered suddenly and unexpectedly, now here, now there, in every quarter of the globe from century to century. In practice, we use the word rather to denote a relic, a dead thing cut off from its source, like a lock of hair preserved long after the head it was cut from has mouldered into dust. ”

“ Here was the sole surviving specimen of what in the Past was the best that the men and women could expect—namely, to be spared until the age of seventy-five, and then to linger on afflicted with miserable diseases and, slowly or swiftly, to be tortured to death. ”

“ Your trial and your training come like ours, mostly through human hands, although you are destined for higher plans and more blessed services. Listen to us, for we have messages for you, each one of us."
Then the stones from the wall said—"We come from the mountains far away, from the sides of the craggy hills. Fire and water worked on us for ages, but only made us crags. Human hands have made us into a dwelling where the children of your immortal race are born, and suffer, and rejoice, and find rest and shelter, and learn the lessons set them by our Maker and yours. ”

“ Death seems certain, when a convict, clad in red, and with a green cap, runs up for rescue, lets himself down alongside of the swaying sailor, now in the last extremity of weakness, and ready to drop like a winter leaf. ”

“ RESCUED. Wherever the tide of human life flows very deeply and swiftly, there shipwreck is most frequent and we place Rescue Missions at these points. But do we ever think of there being rescue missions in the skies? Could we scan the far battlements of heaven we might, perhaps, see them lined with hosts of angels watching and waiting to descend to the rescue of some tender child whom it were better to snatch away to scenes of glory, than leave it in an atmosphere that reeks with moral contagion. ”

“ Noiselessly they propagate themselves from land to land, and mankind goes out and reaps the rich harvest and thanks God; but the achievements of the warrior are like his canvas city, “to-day a camp, to-morrow all struck and vanished, a few pit-holes and heaps of straw.” ”

“ Having passed through every phase of danger, while so many of his contemporaries fell in battle, or met death on their knees, he bore a charmed life, and, surviving defeat and exile, returned to the scenes of his grandest triumphs, and breathed out his last days on his own soil surrounded by his family. ”

“ But somewhere in the eternal plan That strength, that life survive, And like the files on Lookout's crest, Above death's clouds they strive. A chosen corps, they are marching on In a wider field than ours ”

“ It is a question hard to answer, for the promise of life grows ever greater in our eyes once we have begun to see it at all. There was a time when for our ancestors of the caves it must have called for little more than strength and skill, courage and perseverance, in attack or in defence and in the procuring of shelter, food and wives. ”

“ As the circle in which I stood inclosed by this time was much thinned, and death seemed to be approaching with hasty strides, it was proposed by some of the most resolute to make one vigorous effort, and endeavour to force our way through the savages, the only probable method of preserving our lives that now remained. ”

“ And in the history of the frontier there is recorded countless heroic deeds performed, deeds and actions that required an iron nerve, self denial in all that these words imply, the sacrificing of one life to save the life of a stranger or a friend. ”

“ So active had been the work of the pillagers that followed the camp, that the dead and the dying had been stripped; and by the countenance alone could one discover a friend from a foe, I examined every face amidst a heap of dead bodies, and discovered my friend. Life was not yet extinct. ”

“ True, there was a little stir—a little abiding of shepherds in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night—a little buzzing in knots of men waiting to be hired before the daybreak—a little stealthy movement as of a burglar or two here and there—an inchoation of life. But the true life of the man was after death and not before it. ”

“ The country of the dead differed but little in their imagination, from the land of the living, and accordingly, looking on death merely as a passage from one region to another nearly similar, they met the summons with indifference. The deceased warrior was placed outside his wigwam in a sitting posture, to show that although life was over, the principle of existence still survived, and in that position he was buried, together with his pipe, manitou, tomahawk, quiver, and bent bow, and a supply of maize and venison for his travels to the paradise of his ancestors. ”

“ Then his voice rang out:
"There is only one chance—to jump for your lives."
Jump for your lives! I looked at the men who were too ill to be moved, who lay unconscious, with flushed cheeks and closed eyes. Jump for our lives! What chance had they? Truly the Boches could take toll that night if they counted sick and wounded men and Red Cross nurses as fair prey. ”

“ Their rewards were, many times, an unmarked grave or broken health, a maimed and crippled body, or, if they survived to a ripe old age of perhaps 60 years, memories of a lifetime of adventure multiplied many times beyond the normal conception. ”

“ Think of the splendid discipline of those heroic fellows—rank and file alike—drawn up as though on parade, staring death—certain death—straight in the face without a qualm, so that the women and children should be saved. ”

“ The children had often discussed and pondered over this subject together, and had made a compact that whichever of them died first should, if possible, appear to the survivor, and thus solve the awful problem of a future life. ”

“ Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs. ”

“ Our particular lives seem of such fortune and confident strength and durability as piers of solid rock thrown forward into the tide of circumstance. When every other path would fail, with singular and unerring confidence we advance on our particular course. What risks we run! famine and fire and pestilence, and the thousand forms of a cruel fate,—and yet every man lives till he—dies. ”

“ Having fully supplied the demands of nature in this respect, I returned to reflection on the circumstances of my situation. The path winding round the hill was now free from all impediments. What remained but to precipitate my flight? I might speedily place myself beyond all danger; I might gain some hospitable shelter, where my fatigues might be repaired by repose, and my wounds be cured; I might likewise impart to my protectors seasonable information of the enemies who meditated their destruction.
I thought upon the condition of the hapless girl whom I had left in the power of the savages. ”