Have you boys and girls ever noticed how all the curbings at the corners
of the streets in the city are worn smooth by drivers of carts and
wagons trying to cut the corners as closely as possible?
But the principal thing to notice about those curbs is that you will
often find on them the paint, sometimes red and sometimes black or
yellow, scratched off the wheels of these carriages that are so anxious
to cut corners. And the wheels that cut corners soon get to looking
shabby from lack of paint.
That is the way it nearly always happens with people who try to cut
corners. I know boys and girls who try it in school.
They try to skim through by doing just as little work as possible. They
cut the corners as closely as possible with their lessons, so that they
can have time for play. They do that with the work in subtraction, and
then, when they get into multiplication or division, they have all
sorts of trouble. And soon their arithmetic looks very shabby indeed.
Other boys and girls try to cut corners with the truth. They see just
how near a lie they can come, and yet keep within the bounds of truth.
Something inside tells them it is not quite fair. And again, when that
happens, they have rubbed some of the bright, beautiful paint, so to
speak, off their consciences. And before long their consciences get to
be quite shabby, and not at all new, and people begin to say that they
don't quite trust that boy or girl.
And so I say to you, boys and girls, it does not pay to cut corners.
Give yourselves plenty of room. Be open and fair and industrious. For
one who cuts close corners as a boy or girl, usually grows up into a
very small sort of man or woman.