such good, useful, well-intentioned and wholesome boys and girls to put
on labels which lead people to think less of them than they should
think. For by these things they spoil their chances of getting into the
company of well-bred people.




LIES THAT WALK


We usually think of a lie as a thing that is spoken. But there are other
kinds of lies. Some girls that I once knew went to an office in New York
and bought some labels with the pictures and names of hotels in Europe
printed on them. They pasted these on their suit-cases.

Now, as you probably know, when people go to Europe some of the hotels
paste labels on your suit-cases and trunks when they take your baggage
to the station. Some people come home with their baggage quite covered
over with these slips of paper, and one can easily see by these labels
what a long distance the owners of the luggage have traveled.

These girls who bought those labels in New York, but had never been to
Europe, were trying to make people believe that they, too, had traveled
in foreign countries.

Of course you know what that sort of deception means: it is telling a
lie without speaking it.

So you see these lies went with the suit-cases. And wherever those