be careful
to keep his mouth clean. Let nothing go into it or come out of it that
is in any way lowering.

Did you ever hear a loafer on a corner using profane and obscene
language? I'll warrant most of you have, and I'll warrant that you were
thoroughly disgusted. You looked on the fellow as low, coarse, cheap,
unfit to associate with respectable persons. The next time you use a
word that you should be ashamed to have your mother or sister hear just
think that you are following the example of that loafer. You are
lowering yourself in the eyes of somebody, even though you may not think
so at the time. Perhaps one of your companions may be a person who uses
such language freely, and yet he has never before heard it from you. He
laughs, he calls you a jolly good fellow to your face; but he thinks to
himself that you are no better than anybody else, and behind your back
he tells somebody what he thinks. He is glad of the opportunity to show
that you are no better than he is. Never tell a vulgar story. Better
never listen to one, unless your position is such that you cannot escape
without making yourself appear a positive cad. If you have to listen to
such a story, forget it as soon as possible. Above all things, do not
try to remember it.

Some young men boast of the stories they know. And all their stories are
of the "shady" sort. It is better to know no stories than to know that
kind. It is better not to be called a good fellow than to win a
reputation by always having a new story of the low sort ready on your
tongue.

There are other and better ways of winning a reputation as a good
fellow. There are stories which are genuinely humorous and funny which
are also clean. No matter how much of a laugh he may raise, any
self-respecting person feels that he has lowered himself by telling a
vulgar story. It is not so if he has told a clean story. He is
satisfied with the laughter he has caused and with himself.

Frank Merriwell was called a good fellow. It was not often that he told
a story, but when he did, it was a good one, and it was clean. He had an
inimitable way of telling anything, and his stories were all the more
effective because they came at rare intervals. He did not cheapen them
by making them common.

And never had anybody heard him tell a story that could prove offensive
to the ears of a lady.

Not that he had not been tempted to do so. Not that he had not heard
such stories. He had been placed in posi