This Department is conducted in the interest of Girls and Young Women, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor.
Among the qualities most to be desired in a young girl's character is a high sense of honor. I wish I could impress on every reader the need of being always above everything petty or small, so that one would not for a single moment ever be tempted to do a mean or underhand thing, to speak unkindly of a friend, or to repeat a conversation which was confidential.
It may happen to you, for instance, to be visiting in the home of a relative or friend, where there may be a little friction at the table, or where some anxiety arises about the course of a member of the family. No matter what you see or hear, in such circumstances you are bound, if you are an honorable person, to be silent about it, neither making comments nor looking as if you could tell something if you chose, nor in any way alluding to what is unpleasant, at any future time. A guest in a home cannot be too careful to guard the good name of those under its roof, for it is an honor to be a guest, in the first place, and honor is demanded in return.
Again, a nice sense of honor in matters connected with money is very important. Polly is treasurer of a society, and has the care of the funds. She must never for an instant, or in an emergency, lend these funds to other people, or borrow them for her own use. I knew a girl—Polly was her name, by-the-way—who was induced, being treasurer of a certain guild, to lend her brother, for one day, the money she had in her care. The brother was older than Polly, and a very persuasive person. He said: "Why should you hesitate? I'll bring it back to you to-night, and it will oblige me very much if I can take that fifty dollars and pay a bill I owe before noon to-day." Foolish Polly permitted her scruples to be overruled. The money was not brought back, and but for her father's kindness in making it good she would have been disgraced as a dishonest treasurer. She told me long afterwards that the lesson had been burned in on her mind never to take liberties with money which she held in trust.
A nice sense of honor will keep a girl from making a confidante of her maid or of any person in an inferior situation. One's mother is a girl's natural adviser and her safest intimate friend. A nice sense of honor will hinder all prying into other people's affairs, and will lead one to turn a deaf ear to the gossip of the idle and malicious.
Sometimes one becomes accidentally aware of a state of things which she knows her friend must prefer to keep to herself. The honorable girl will never hesitate here; she will be as thoughtful for her friend's interests as if they were her own.
This little talk may be too old for some of my younger readers, so I will conclude it by telling them a little story. Once upon a time in a small New England village there was a district school. The boys and girls went to this from the country homes for miles, some of them not minding a very long walk over snowy roads in winter, and under the trees in summer. The master was very grave and stern, and if he laughed behind his grizzled beard, the children looking up to him from their benches seldom saw it. A big ruler always lay on his desk, and they were very much afraid of that; so that when one morning at recess, in a game of ball, Charley B—— had the misfortune to break a window in the school-house, it required no little courage in the eight-year-old boy to march straight into the room, up to the desk, and confess that he had been careless and had done the mischief. Mr. True was very kind, and said, consolingly, that the window could be mended. So Charley rushed off with a light heart.
Later in the day a girl, I am ashamed to say, stole up to the desk and told her tale. "Mr. True," said this disagreeable little being, "I can tell you who broke the window! I saw—"
"Hush, Nancy!" said the master, in an awful voice. "I know who did it. An honorable person did it. Which you are not. You may remain after school and write out ten pages of history as a punishment for tale-telling."