Singers and Storytellers Page: 75
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ludicrous, no one questions the tactics it symbolizes: the tactics
of reasonable caution.
The less cautious realist minimizes real, external danger
from the rear. As General George Patton once said, "Never
worry about your flank or rear. Just shoot one bullet, take three
steps forward, shoot one more bullet, take three more steps,
and keep on going straight ahead." Everybody knows Admiral
Farragut's famous battle cry, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed
ahead" The best defense is an offense. Everybody for himself
and the devil take the hindmost.
Jesus Christ told the Devil, "Get thee behind me, Satan."
But his danger was not external; he was wrestling with tempta-
tion. Christ was, in this respect, a well-balanced idealist, not
the type to stick his head in the sand ostrich-like and ignore
evil. He was, furthermore, a man of faith. Pandora lacked the
faith to put her box behind her and walk away from it. Ichabod
Crane lacked the faith to quell the fear he felt within himself;
he looked back and saw something even worse than he had
imagined. The fabulous turtle lacked faith in the eagle which
was carrying him aloft. He looked down, against the eagle's
advice, got dizzy, lost his grasp, and was smashed in the fall.
His danger was more internal than external.
There is a western cowboy expression: "The man who wears
his chin on his instep never sees the horizon." Were he a man
of faith, he would look forward, not downward or backward.
The direction in which one looks, in either a physical or
chronological sense, indicates his attitudes. It has some bearing
upon his cowardice or bravery, caution or lack of it, idealism
or realism, primitivism or futurism, fatalism or its opposite,
ambition or indifference, asceticism or lack of it, pragmatism
or its opposite, and finally his faith or lack of it.
1. A. L. Campa, "Mafiana Is Today," New Mexico Quarterly, IX
(February, 1939), 3-11.
2. Stephen Leacock, Literary Lapses (New York, 1918), p. 37.DON'T LOOK BACK
75
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Singers and Storytellers (Book)
Collection of popular folklore of Texas, including personal anecdotes about storytellers and singers, as well as folk songs, myths, and ghost stories. The index begins on page 295.
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Boatright, Mody C. Singers and Storytellers, book, 1961; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc67655/m1/81/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Press.