How to Stop Worrying and Start Living: Dale Carnegie

by Dale Carnegie

John Brown, who was hanged for seizing the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry and trying to incite the slaves to rebellion. He rode away to the gallows, sitting on his coffin. The jailer who rode beside him was nervous and worried. But old John Brown was calm and cool. Looking up at the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, he exclaimed: “What a beautiful country! I never had an opportunity to really see it before.” Or take the case of Robert Falcon Scott and his companions- the first Englishman ever to reach the South Pole. Their return trip was probably the cruelest journey ever undertaken by man. Their food was gone-and so was their fuel. They could no longer march because a howling blizzard roared down over the rim of the earth for eleven days and nights-a wind so fierce and sharp that it cut ridges in the polar ice. Scott and his companions knew they were going to die; and they had brought a quantity of opium along for just such an emergency. A big dose of opium, and they could all lie down to pleasant dreams, never to wake again. But they ignored the drug, and died “singing ringing songs of cheer” .We know they did because of a farewell letter found with their frozen bodies by a searching party, eight months later. Yes, if we cherish creative thoughts of courage and calmness, we can enjoy the scenery while sitting on our coffin, riding to the gallows; or we can fill our tents with “ringing songs of cheer", while starving and freezing to death.

John Brown & Robert Falcon Scott - Facing death with grace