Don’t be a Coward

«I won’t tell a lie! I won’t be such a coward,» said a fine little fellow, when he had broken a little statuette of his father’s in showing it to his playmates, and they were telling him how he could deceive his father and escape a scolding. He was right. So Charles Mann was right, and was rewarded for it, as the following story will show:—

«A young offender, whose name was Charlie Mann, smashed a large pane of glass in a chemist’s shop, and ran away at first; but he quickly thought: ‘What am I running for? It was an accident; why not turn and tell the truth?’

«No sooner thought than done. Charlie was a brave boy. He told the whole truth—how the ball with which he was playing slipped out of his hand; how frightened he was, how sorry, too, at the mischief done, and willing to pay if he had the money.

«Charlie did not have the money, but he could work, and to work he went at once, in the very shop where he broke the glass. It took him a long time to pay for the large and expensive pane he had shattered, but when he was done, he had endeared himself so much to the shopkeeper by his fidelity and truthfulness, that he could not hear of his going away, and Charlie became his clerk.

«‘Ah, what a lucky day it was when I broke that window,» he used to say.

«‘Charlie,’ his mother would respond, ‘what a lucky day it was when you were not afraid to tell the truth.'»

«Lying lips are abomination to the Lord: but they that deal truly are his delight.»— Selected .