_________________________________________
/ Courage is resistance to fear, mastery  \
| of fear--not absence of fear. Except a  |
| creature be part coward it is not a     |
| compliment to say it is brave; it is    |
| merely a loose misapplication of the    |
| word. Consider the flea!--incomparably  |
| the bravest of all the creatures of     |
| God, if ignorance of fear were courage. |
| Whether you are asleep or awake he will |
| attack you, caring nothing for the fact |
| that in bulk and strength you are to    |
| him as are the massed armies of the     |
| earth to a sucking child; he lives both |
| day and night and all days and nights   |
| in the very lap of peril and the        |
| immediate presence of death, and yet is |
| no more afraid than is the man who      |
| walks the streets of a city that was    |
| threatened by an earthquake ten         |
| centuries before. When we speak of      |
| Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who    |
| "didn't know what fear was," we ought   |
| always to add the flea--and put him at  |
| the head of the procession.             |
|                                         |
| -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's     |
\ Calendar"                               /
 -----------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||