3. They make people whom you cannot trust, and almost anything else I would wish for you than to be one who cannot be trusted.
You can't rely on a liar. Not only one who lies with his tongue, but who acts lies. He gets by-and-by so full of lies that if you try to lean on him, down you go!
Out in the West, one of the great wheat elevators at Fort William suddenly slid down into the river, because the foundation was too weak to hold it up.
And a liar is like that! He is a bad foundation for home or school or society!
He caves in if any weight is put on him.
Let the girls and boys who study about these foxes watch this bad one, and be straight and true and upright and strong, so people can be sure of them.
I like the story I read once of a Scottish schoolboy who was called "Little Scotch Granite." When the boys were supposed to tell how often they had whispered in school—and if they had not at all, got a perfect mark called "Ten"—they got the habit of saying "Ten," even when they had broken the school rule. Little Scotty came, and although he was bright and full of fun he would not say "Ten"—although his record got very low.
But he changed the whole school.
He was always a good sport, but he never would tell a lie to save himself.
At the close of the term he was away down on the list, but when the teacher said he had decided to give a special medal to the most faithful boy in the school and asked to whom he would give it—forty voices called out together, "Little Scotch Granite!"