“Where did you get the eye, old chap?” I asked casually.
He looked up sheepishly, smiled and pushed his cup toward me.
“Some more milk, if you please, father,” he said. The fighting problem had been solved forever.
The mother who coddles her boy shows him a double unkindness. She not only increases his boyhood miseries, through making him the particular target of other boys, but she retards the development of his self-reliance and his manliness.
I give the affaire d’honneur an important place in this chapter because it is one of the things about boys that mothers often misunderstand and quite generally undervalue.
Of course, the cardinal precept which should form the foundation of the character structure is—Truth. Combine in him manliness and truthfulness, and the other essential traits of good character will spring from these two like shoots from the trunk of a healthy tree. Truth-telling should be made a matter of habit with the boy. Have you not among your acquaintances men, women and children who are habitual prevaricators, people who make misstatements continuously, absolutely without purpose and without malice? Lying has become a habit with them. By the same token truth-telling can be and should be so instilled in the boy as to become automatic. He should never be punished for a falsehood as you might punish him for disobedience. The problem of disobedience, which I discussed in a foregoing chapter, is a matter of psychology from beginning to end. Truth-telling becomes so in the end but is a matter of morals at the beginning. It can be formed into a fixed habit by treating it morally and by keeping everlastingly at it until the result is achieved. You cannot beat a boy into hating a lie, but you can shame him into it.
It is natural for a very young boy to seek to evade responsibility for an offence by disclaiming it. The first time he does this he must be made to know that, however serious the offence may be, it is as nothing compared to the lie that he seeks to cover. I did not go so far as to promise my boy immunity for infractions that he frankly confessed; but I did make it a rule unto myself that he should never suffer through confession, and I did invariably commend him, in the highest terms, when he told the truth under conditions that made it peculiarly praiseworthy. An example: I find my inkstand tipped over and a great black stain upon the carpet. I summon the boy and ask him sternly: “Who did that?” My manner is threatening. The offence is grave. He is thoroughly frightened, but after a moment he answers, falteringly, “I did.” Instantly my attitude changes from admonitive to commendatory. I say to him: “This is an awful thing that you have done. The carpet is spoiled. The stain will always be there. Nothing can remove it. But you have told the truth and that is the finest thing that a boy can do. As bad as this is, I would rather you would do it a hundred times than tell one lie.”
If, on the other hand, he falsifies, I grieve before him. I tell him that nothing that a boy can do is as bad as a falsehood: that a lie is the very meanest and lowest thing in the world. I tell him that I fully forgive him for spilling the ink, but it is almost impossible to forgive him for that lie. I leave him to meditate upon it.
I never allow an untruth to pass without bringing a blush of shame to the boy’s cheek. I never let a lie show itself without holding it up as a thing to be despised. The boy first gets to fear a falsehood, then to despise it—and finally to forget it. And by forgetting I mean that it passes beyond the pale of things considerable. Truth has become a fixed habit.
Having accomplished this, you have given your boy a solid foundation upon which to rear the structure of good character.