k227@ak.wakwak.comCourage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not
absence of fear.  Except acreature be part coward it is not a
compliment to say it is brave; it is merelya loose misapplication of
the word.  Consider the flea!--incomparably thebravest 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 factthat in
bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the
earthto a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and
nights in thevery lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and
yet is no moreafraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city
that was threatened byan earthquake ten centuries before.  When we
speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnamas men who "didn't know what fear
was," we ought always to add the flea--andput him at the head of the
procession.                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"