Part 6 (1/2)

POISON-LABELS

You have all seen bottles of poison, and you know when your father or mother buys poison from the druggist there is a label on the bottle marked ”POISON” in large letters, and on the label is a picture of a skull and crossbones. This is done to warn people from drinking the poison.

Now, if a druggist were to put clear, pure water into a bottle, and put a label marked ”Poison” on it, no one would drink the water if he were choking, for fear of being poisoned.

And there are boys and girls just like that good, pure, fresh water with the poison-label on it. They are good at heart. They are kind and unselfish and obedient, but n.o.body will have anything to do with them because they put such terrible poison-labels upon themselves.

I will tell you what some of these poison-labels are which frighten people away from boys and girls. One of them is slang. Now, of course, some girls and boys who are inwardly little ladies and gentlemen use slang, but usually slang is used by low-bred people who have not words enough to say what they want to. And consequently when you use slang, if people do not know that you are well-bred boys and girls, they think that you are coa.r.s.e and vulgar, and they will have nothing to do with you.

Another poison-label that boys sometimes stick on is swearing. And of course that is always bad-mannered. Another is smoking. Another is bad company. I knew a boy who was really good at heart, but who persisted in going with bad boys, and no business man in town would take him into his business because of that terrible label.

Girls sometimes wear such poison-labels as forwardness; that is, they are always making themselves heard and seen. Others are proud. Others chew gum.

I have not time to mention all of these different labels. You can think of them for yourselves. What I want to say is that it is too bad for such good, useful, well-intentioned and wholesome boys and girls to put on labels which lead people to think less of them than they should think. For by these things they spoil their chances of getting into the company of well-bred people.

LIES THAT WALK

We usually think of a lie as a thing that is spoken. But there are other kinds of lies. Some girls that I once knew went to an office in New York and bought some labels with the pictures and names of hotels in Europe printed on them. They pasted these on their suit-cases.

Now, as you probably know, when people go to Europe some of the hotels paste labels on your suit-cases and trunks when they take your baggage to the station. Some people come home with their baggage quite covered over with these slips of paper, and one can easily see by these labels what a long distance the owners of the luggage have traveled.

These girls who bought those labels in New York, but had never been to Europe, were trying to make people believe that they, too, had traveled in foreign countries.

Of course you know what that sort of deception means: it is telling a lie without speaking it.

So you see these lies went with the suit-cases. And wherever those girls carried their bags, the lies walked along with them, and said to everyone who looked at them, ”Our owners have been to Europe.”

Of course, no self-respecting boy or girl would do such a thing. But you must also be careful not to act falsehoods by pretending things in school, or acting at home as if you don't know about things when you do.

Don't try to fool _yourselves_, then you will not try to fool other people.

WELLINGTON AND THE SOLDIER

No boy likes to be called a coward, and some boys do things that are dangerous for fear that their friends will think they have no courage.

Sometimes it is more cowardly to do a dangerous thing like that than not to do it.

Do not think that you are a coward because you are afraid of dangerous things. Some of the bravest men the world ever saw have been afraid, but in spite of their fear they went firmly on.

A story is told of Lord Wellington, a great English general, who saw a young man in his army who was white with fear just before a battle, and yet did not run away. Lord Wellington said: ”There is a brave man. He knows the danger, and yet he faces it.” Another story is told of a soldier who was making fun of a second who was badly frightened just before battle. The frightened soldier said to the other one: ”Yes, I am afraid. And if you were half as much afraid as I am, you would run away.”

The lesson I want to draw is this, that it is not cowardly to be afraid of things which have danger in them. It is cowardly to run away if you ought to face them. And if you ought not to face them it is cowardly to go headlong into them, just because of some other boy's foolish dare.