Raising citizens

From "The Salt-Box House," a proofing project at Gutenberg, a 1929 sketch of pre-Revolutionary War New England by Jane de Forest Shelton:

[A]ll feats of skill and daring were welcomed. Fear was not cultivated. To be brave, to be skilful in whatever one set a hand to, to accomplish everything undertaken, to surmount difficulty, gave life a perpetual goal. Nothing was more clearly demonstrated in the later conflict with disciplined armies than that he that had been faithful in little would be faithful also in much. That the hour of emergency must be the hour of triumph is one of the great underlying principles for the success of a venture or a country.