one man who has passionate, well-defined views, while others are cold and undecided.  Be that one man.  You do not know where the circumstances of life will take you; your flag may be directly challenged to your face, and you must reveal yourself.  These are things to avoid.  Be firm, rather than aggressive; but be always quietly prepared for the aggressive man; that is to inspire confidence in the timid.  Avoid vituperation as a disease, but have your facts clear and ready for friend or foe.  Whenever, and wherever least expected, a false idea comes wandering forth, put in at once a luminous word or two to clear the air, hearten friends and keep them steady.  If you find yourself alone in the midst of opponents, who assume you are with them and expect your co-operation, you put them right with a word.  This will arrest them; they will understand where you stand, and that you are ready; and they will generally yield you respect.  But whether it involve a fight or not, thus do you declare your attitude.  We may conveniently call it—­putting up the flag.

IX

It is well to consider something of the opposition that confronts a man who tries to fill his life with a brave purpose.  He will be told it is an illusion; he is a dreamer, a crank, or a fool.  And it may serve a purpose to see if our critics are blinded by no illusion, to contrast our folly with their wisdom.  Here is one pushing by who will not be a fool, as he thinks—­he’s for the emigrant-ship.  Ask yourself if the people who go out from the remote places of Ireland, quiet-spoken and ruddy-faced, and return after a few years loud-voiced and pallid, have found things exactly as their hope.  They protest, yes; but their voice and colour belie them.  Take the other man who does not emigrate but who has his fling at home, who “knocks around” and tells you to do likewise and be no fool—­mark him for your guidance.  You will find his leisure is boisterous, but never gay.  Catch him between whiles off his guard and you will find the deadening lassitude of his life.  This votary of pleasure has a burden to carry in whatever walk of life, high or low.  On the higher plane he may have a more fastidious club or two, a more epicurean sense of enjoyment, more leisure and more luxury; but the type wherever found is the same.  Life is an utter burden to him; in his soul is no interest, no inspiration, no energy, and no hope.  Let him be no object of envy.  Here a friend pats you on the shoulder:  “Quite right; be neither an emigrant nor a waster; but be practical; have no illusions; deal with possibilities—­who can say what is in the future?  We must face these facts.”  Our confident friend lacks a sense of humour.  He would put your plan by for its bearing on the future, but he proposes one himself that the future must justify.  He tells you circumstances will not be in your favour:  he assumes them in his own.  But we only claim that our principles will rule the future as they have ruled the past; for the circumstances no man can speak.  He calls you a dreamer for your principles, but he can’t show, now nor in history, that his exemplars were ever justified.  We are all dreamers, then; but some have ugly dreams, while the dreams of others are beautiful worlds, star-lighted and full of music.