Dear children, be true all through! Have you ever seen a glass jar of pure honey, no bits of wax floating in it, all clear and pure? Let your heart be like that, sincere, which means "without wax, clear and pure".
(Blackboard.)
A Half-truth is as Hateful as a Lie.
(Untruth, by "Stretching"—Exaggeration.)
11. The Three Feathers.
One day three little girls were talking about hats and feathers.
The first girl said: "I have such a long feather in my best hat; it goes all down one side".
Then the next girl said: "Oh! my feather is longer than that, for it goes all round the hat"; and the third girl said: "Ah! but my feather is longer than either of yours, for it goes round the hat and hangs down behind as well".
On the next Sunday each of these little girls went walking in the park with her parents, wearing her best hat with the wonderful feather; it never occurred to one of them that she might meet the other two, but that is just what happened, and the three "long" feathers proved to be nothing but three short, little feathers, one in each hat! Can you guess how ashamed each girl felt?
You have seen a piece of elastic stretched out. How long you can make it, and how short it goes when you leave off stretching! Each girl wanted to be better than the other, and to appear so, each "stretched" the story of her feather, just as the length of elastic was stretched, forgetting that
(Blackboard)
When we "Stretch" a Story, we do not Speak the Truth.