Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1890 — Honest with Himself. [ARTICLE]

Honest with Himself.

“What I most admire about him,” said the friend of an eminent man, “is his perfect truth. He not only speaks truthfully to others, hut he is incapable of deceiving himself. ” Hut many are the men and women who do deceive themselves, calling dishonor prudence, and false dealing excusable, “under the circumstances.” A school girl was one day talking over a burglary which had taken place in a neighboring house, and ended with the declaration that, in her own case, she should be frantic if a man walked off with her watch in his pocket. “But I always hide it at night,” said she. “I don’t see, what good that does,” said a school-mate. “He might put a pistol to your head and ask for it, as that one did when Mrs. Forbes would not give up her diamonds.” “But I should tell him I hadn’t any watch,” said the first speaker, coolly." “Why, May Ellis, tell a lie!” “It wouldn’t be a lie. Before I spoke I should give it away, in my mind, and then take it back again after he had gone.” “Well,” put in another girl, “I should rather lose a watch than twist my mind round quite as much as that,” and so would any absolutely sincere person. A celebrated beauty used to view herself, when dressed for a party, in large mirrors, under the strongest possible light. Hair and complexion received the most merciless inspection. “If I satisfy my own eyes, then I am ready for those of other people,” she once said, after such a critical survey. She never deceived herself by a hasty glance at apparent perfection; she demanded of herself even more than others would ever demand ot her. Another, and a very different woman, was proverbially satisfied with her own iparance, even though she was more jau ordinarily plain. “How can she be so vain ?” exclaimed an acquaintance one day. “Yain! she isn’t,” retorted another. “Did you ever go into her bedroom? I thought not. Well, her mirror is in a dark corner, and its pleasing obscurity has softened and nattered her features for so many years that she doesn’t dream they are ugly.” But to judge and direct our own souls, let us use a strong light and clear mirror. We ‘cannot afford to' soften the outline of an evil action because we ourselves choose to commit it. We must not, in honor, gild even the smallest vice because it is our own.— Youth’s Companion.