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He set himself upon
these lines to study--what can we call it?--the taming of fear, the
nature, care, and management of fear. . . .
"Fear is very like pain in this, that it is a deterrent thing. It
is superficial. Just as a man's skin is infinitely more sensitive
than anything inside. . . . Once you have forced yourself or have
been forced through the outward fear into vivid action or
experience, you feel very little. The worst moment is before things
happen. Rowe, the African sportsman, told me that he had seen
cowardice often enough in the presence of lions, but he had never
seen any one actually charged by a lion who did not behave well. I
have heard the same thing of many sorts of dangers.
"I began to suspect this first in the case of falling or jumping
down. Giddiness may be an almost intolerable torture, and falling
nothing of the sort. I once saw the face of an old man who had
flung himself out of a high window in Rome, and who had been killed
instantly on the pavement; it was not simply a serene face, it was
glad, exalted.


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