Courage Author:J. M. Barrie J M Barrie was a Scottish novelist and dramatist best known for creating the character Peter Pan. Barrie was given a Baronet in 1913 for his literary accomplishments. Peter Pan first appeared in a serial called The Little White Bird in 1901. Courage was the Rectorial Address delivered at St Andrews University on May 3, 1922. Barrie began his... more » speech with these words. ?You have had many rectors here in St. Andrews who will continue in bloom long after the lowly ones such as I am are dead and rotten and forgotten. They are the roses in December; you remember someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. But I do not envy the great ones. In my experience--and you may find in the end it is yours also--the people I have cared for most and who have seemed most worth caring for--my December roses--have been very simple folk. Yet I wish that for this hour I could swell into someone of importance, so as to do you credit. I suppose you had a melting for me because I was hewn out of one of your own quarries, walked similar academic groves, and have trudged the road on which you will soon set forth. I would that I could put into your hands a staff for that somewhat bloody march, for though there is much about myself that I conceal from other people, to help you I would expose every cranny of my mind. "« less