In all your actions, in all your dealings, let strict and rigid
honesty guide you. Never be tempted to swerve from its dictates,
even in the most trivial degree. There will be strong allurements
to entice you from this path. The appetite for gain--the voice
of avarice--will often whisper that honesty may be violated to
advantage. There will be times when it will seem that its dictates
may be placed aside--that a little dishonesty will be greatly to
your benefit. Believe not this syren song. This is the time you are
in the most danger of being deceived to your serious injury.
Although there may be occasions when you will seem actually to lose
by adhering to honesty, yet you should not shrink a hair's breadth.
Whatever you may lose, in a pecuniary point of view, at any time,
by a strict submission to honesty, you will make up an hundred-fold
in the long-run, by establishing and preserving a reputation for
integrity. Looking at it in simply a pecuniary point of view,
community will give their countenance, their patronage, and
business, much quicker to a man who has established a reputation for
honesty, than to one who is known, or suspected of being fraudulent
in his dealings. Every consideration which can bear upon the young,
religious, moral and pecuniary, unite to urge them to establish,
in the outset of life, the rule of unswerving _honesty_ and
_integrity_, as their constant guide. Let it not be forgotten, that
in every possible point of view, and in every conceivable condition
of things, it will always be true, that "Honesty is the best
policy."

I would have the young also cultivate and establish as it fixed
rule of life, a friendly and accommodating disposition. This is
all-essential to make their days pleasant and happy. Other virtues