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wrong do not usually begin by a colossal fraud. It is the apparently trifling dishonesty that makes people lose their confidence in them. "Just one little lie to help me out of this difficulty," a man says to himself. "I won't count this. Just one little embezzlement; no one will know it, and I can return the money before it will be needed."

Metals, and all solids, have what is called a melting point. At a certain degree of heat they tend to liquefy. We test men's honesty by the different degrees of temptation they withstand. Some people are very honest in the absence of any special temptation. They are indifferently honest, but their honesty melts at a certain temperature of the temptation.

There is a certain kind of dishonesty which does not seem so very wrong to many people, and this is brought about by a curious psychological law that the constant doing of a thing, the constant repetition of a wrong, gradually robs it of its enormity and makes it seem more and more legiti

mate.

We are all more or less guilty of violating the strict law of integrity. We excuse certain acts on the ground that "they are not so very wrong." How many of us are constantly indulging in what are known as "white lies," that is, what we call less harmful deceptions!

Some one has said that society could not exist without these diplomatic deceptions. If everybody

told the truth, they say, everybody would be offended with everybody else. Nobody could bear to be told the exact blunt truth about himself.

"Truth never excludes tact, which, after all, enables us to be artistic in our search for truth. Tact and truth can keep house together without insincerity.

"One can love truth and yet obtrude it where it is unwelcome. There is a time to speak and a time to be silent. One can harbor truth without launching it out on every stormy sea. There never was an American who more perfectly personified truth in his character than Lincoln. Nor has there ever been an American who exercised more tact in the presentation of the truth to those about him."

The human mind is constructed for truth telling. This is its normal condition, and under the exercise of true living and true thinking the character becomes strong and robust.

Wholeness, completeness, comes into the life from truth, from sincerity. Sincerity is made up of two words—sine and cere, sine, without, and cere, wax. Without wax. And it means absolutely pure, transparent.

There is something in the mind which thrives upon sincerity and which protests against all that is false, against all sham. Nothing ever quite satisfies this longing but absolute truth. No modification, no deception satisfies this inward hunger. The mind thrives and expands when expressing truth,

but becomes sickly and weak when forced to express whatever is false.

Living a lie, turning life into a deceptive machine, is not only demoralizing, but it is always a confession of weakness. The strong, balanced mind does not have to resort to a subterfuge. It can afford to be transparent, open, because it is conscious of strength and does not need to hide anything.

There is a tremendous power in transparency of character.

During the Civil War in America, when General Lee was consulting one of his officers as to a certain movement of his army, a simple farmer's boy overheard the General remark that he had decided to march upon Gettysburg instead of Harrisburg. The quick-witted boy at once telegraphed this fact to Governor Curtin. "I would give my right hand," said the Governor, "to know if this boy tells the truth." A corporal replied, "Governor, I know that boy. It is impossible for him to lie. There is not a drop of false blood in his veins." In fifteen minutes the Union troops were marching toward Gettysburg. The world knows the result.

If we study carefully the histories of the prominent men who experience a drop in the public regard, we find that there was something lacking in their early training, that they were not grounded in moral principles, that they were not trained to

believe that character is the foundation stone of every genuine success.

The test sometimes shows that what we take for steel is only soft iron or brittle metal which bends and breaks when the strain comes. Likewise, some metals are not affected by different acids, and yet there is one acid which no metal but gold can stand. So it is when we turn the searchlight of honesty on a man. Only the man who is pure gold, who is all character, can endure that test.

Character is power. A man is impersonal when in the right. What he does or says is no longer a question of personality but of truth. We instinctively feel something beyond and above the man who speaks, that is proclaiming the divine principle. Honesty is the natural utterance of a truthful character; and Truth herself is the voice of God.

When a man is conscious that he is lying, that he is trying to take unfair advantage of somebody; when he is conscious that he is not genuine, that he is really a fraud at heart, that he is practising dishonesty under the cloak of honesty; when he knows he is a cheat and a fraud, he is shorn of his power, just as Sampson was shorn of his power when he was shorn of his locks.

WORRY THE SUCCESS KILLER

—HOW TO OVERCOME

Worry is a curse, and the man who could rid the world of worry and fear would render greater service to the race than all of the inventors and discoverers that ever lived.

Did you ever hear of any good coming to any human being from worry? Did it ever help anybody to better his condition? Does it not always—everywhere—do just the opposite by impairing health, exhausting vitality, and lessening efficiency?

If you have had an unforunate experience; if you have made a failure in your undertaking; if you have been placed in an embarrassing position; if you have fallen and hurt yourself by a false step; if you have been slandered and abused—forget it. There is not a single redeeming feature in these memories, and their ghosts will rob you of many a happy hour.

D

URING a great financial panic an influential Western business man was so harassed by the troubles threatening him that he felt he could no longer keep his hand on the helm or prevent the work of years from going to utter destruction. His concern was not for himself alone, but also for the many who must suffer with him in the event of his failure. His mind was enveloped in such a fog of worry that when he needed them most he was fast losing his perspective and his capacity for decisive action.

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