Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1909 — Being Frank. [ARTICLE]

Being Frank.

Have you ever heard a person making his or her boast that he or she would keep certain facts from certain persons? We all have, and to a great extent we all practice the,bit of deception. But when largely carried out, mischievously, done, there is no end to the trouble it brings. The faculty for concealment, as "secretiveness,” as the phrenologists term it, is a dangerous gift. Openness and candor are delightful. When we discover that a friend has deceived or only half-trusted us, we regard him ever after with suspicion, and it requires a very long time for him to recover the ground he nas lost in our cpnfidence and esteem. 'Nothing has a worse result in the home than mysteriousness in trifles, which so often lead to quarrels, tragedies and sensational scandals. Friends are often separated by the lack of frankness in s*ome trifling event easily explained, if it needed to be, yet secretly kept. Children who begin these trifles at home are those who are discouraged and fear to be frank, and for this very reason children deceive parents because they realize they cannot go to them and confess little faults and the like because it would mean punishment of the worst kind, and something even worse, the lack of sympathy. The girl who can sit down on a low ottoman at her mother’s knee, open her letters and read them aloud, discuss her love affairs as freely as she ever discussed her school life events, is the girl who will grow to be a frank, honest woman. She may not be openly frank, but she will not be possessed of a hidden nature which always makes her a suspicious person among friends.