A Gentleman

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 3, 1903

He is above a mean thing. He can not stoop to a mean fraud. He invades no secret in the keeping of another. He betrays no secret confided to his keeping. He never struts in borrowed plumage. He never takes selfish advantages of mistakes. He uses no ignoble weapons in controversy. He never stabs in the dark. He is ashamed of innuendos. He is not one thing to a man's face and another behind his back. If by accident he comes in possession of his neighbor's counsels, he passes upon them an act of instant oblivion. He bears sealed packages without tampering with the wax. Papers not meant for his eye, whether they flutter at the window or lie open before him in unguarded exposure, are sacred to him. He invades no privacy of others, however the sentry sleeps. Bolts and bars, locks and keys, hedges and pickets, bonds and securities, notices to trespassers, are none of them for him. He may be trusted alone, out of sight, near the thinnest partition—anywhere. He buys no offices, he sells none, he intrigues for none. He would rather fail of his rights than win them through dishonor. He will eat honest bread. He tramples on no sensitive feeling. He insults no man. If he have rebuke for another, he is straightforward, open, manly; he can not descend to scurrility. In short, whatever he judges honorable, he practises toward every man.—Selected.