There is something in living close to the great elemental forces of nature that causes people to rise above small annoyances and discomforts. Beginning in 1911, Mrs. Wilder, of “Little House” fame wrote a column for a local Ozark newspaper, The Missouri Ruralist ; the column was titled " As a Farm Woman Thinks." In these columns, she hits pioneer spirit mike drops left and right. Many of these nuggets of self-reliant gold were collected in a book titled Words from a Fearless Heart edited by Stephen W. Hines. I offer two big shovelfuls of Mrs. Wilder’s true preachin’ below. The stout-hearted and good souled should find much to sustain! If patience and cheerfulness and courage… count for so much in man that he expects to be rewarded for them… surely such virtues in animals are worth counting in the sum total of good in the universe. Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds. · ...
“ Battles are won by fire and by movement. The purpose of the movement is to get the fire in a more advantageous place to play on the enemy. This is from the rear or flank .”—General George S. Patton, Jr. “ War as I Knew It ” [1947] “ Give ‘em the shift, then shift ‘em agin!”— Reported “Ringside” at an Impromptu Scuffle in Georgia, circa. 1840s. Fist fighting/Boxing were different animals in the early days of the Republic. Before the turn to “extending” bouts and the bleed over from AAU rules to score fights, less “fencing” minded tactics were embraced. Rather a full-throated adherence to “ Get in and tear it up ” was the watchword. We see many examples of this in the early era [ungloved] on into the early glove era [Dempsey, Wolgast, Ketchel et al.] into unlicensed fighting influenced by penitentiary adaptation on into the Cus D’Amato tutelage of the early Iron Mike as he leapt and shifted onto the world stage. In our latest Black Box Historical Combat Instructional Vo...