Explore "The Bushwhackers" by Mary Noailles Murfree on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was a wonderful period of mental development for this wild young creature of the woods, when Hilary received in his sudden transition to the "valley kentry" his first adequate impressions of civilization. He learned that the world is wide; he beheld the triumphs of military science; he acquiesced in the fixed distinctions of rank, since he must needs concede the finer grades of capacity. But courage, the inherent, inimitable endowment, he recognized as the soul of heroism, and in all the arrogance of elation he became conscious that he possessed it. This it was that opened his stolid mind to the allurements of ambition. He rejoiced in an aspiration.
He was brave. That was his identity -- his essential vitality! Was he ignorant, poor, the butt of the campfire jokes, because of his simplicity in the wide world's ways, slothful, slow, wild, and turbulent? He took heed of none of this! He was the bravest of the brave -- and all the command knew it!