Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1875-08-09
NO. 1877.
HONOR.

Honor is a very difficult thing from hon.
esty. There are men who scrupulously
pay their debts and promptly meet their
notes of hand, who are utterly deficient in
the nice sense of personal dignity which
we call honor. Yet in the necessary COM
merce of life. the dealing of men and
women with each other in business and in
friendship, there can be no perfect or sat-
isfactory issues where honor IS not reg
nant. Let us illustrate by reference to
some everyday matters. Etefs
You are guest in the family of friend.
Beng guest you are admitted into the
privacies of the home. The members of
the household go on in their ordinary way
in your presence, thus paying you the
| highest compliment in their power by
making you one of themselves. Now II
you go from them and afterwards in your
own home or in society make their idio-
syncrasies the theme of your conversation,
tell of the ill-temper Of this one, the parsi-
mony of that, and the oddities of third,
you are in plain words dishonorable. You
were trusted in the unSpoken confidence
of friendship. and you have violated.
trust. Ladies' maids and Wallets sometimes
do this in print, with regard to the great
people whom they have served, and their
revelations are interesting reading to a
| class like-minded with themselves. 1t
seems to us that neither ladies nor gentle
men. would care to penetrate guarded in
teriors by such doors as these. q
| The literary disputes that so frequently
arise concerning the authorship OF popu.
| lar poems as brochures would be impossi-
| BILE, were all members of the literary craft
| filled with the sense of honor which ought
to inspire those who make and color pub
| lie opinion. Unfortunately the contested
authorships reveal very dark page in this
| part of human nature, and the conscious
| plagiarisms of authors who need not steal
| in order to be readable are among the in
cxplicable mysteries of life. '' -
In the training of children from the very
first, by precept and by thrice powerful ex-
ample, the principle of honor should be
strengthened. They should be taught
never to listen TO conversation not meant
for them, never to speak unkindly of any
one, never to trespass on another's rights.
Sometimes this white flower of honor
grows spontaneously from strange soils,
but oftener it needs cultivation. A gen.
tleman not long since, while waiting at a
railway station, bought paper from a
little ragged mite of boy. 1t happened
to be a paper that he had read, and as he
had asked, we will say, for the Times and.
had been given the Tribune, he said !:
my boy, this was not the paper I asked
you for. have read this: but you may
keep the five cents, and here is your pa
per back" A few moments passed and
the cars Were just moving off, when the
little fellow rushed in, shouted, Here's
your five cents-I sold it, sir" and jumped
off; as newsbovs do, at the peril of his
life. The feeling that made that boy give
back the five cents 10 stranger, was the
feeling of honor tr@ kse..
1t would be curious to study the differ
ent standards of honor among different
classes of people if it were not rather
apart from the purpose ofthis article. Thus
among school-boys certain things are re-
garded as dshonorable, and whoever in
tringes upon their unwritten code is speed
ilv sent to coventry. In the army there is
well understood though not specially de-
scribed theory of honor, and whoever
trespasses against it is in army parance.
guilty of conduct unbecoming IAN officer
and gentleman In business and in So
ciety, wherever people are brought into
contact there are strong intangible rules;
which cannot be safely broken through.
which are stronger because intangible,
and which depend for their maintenance
almost entirely upon the sentiment OF
manly honor.