The Art of Manliness - Manvotionals - Brett McKay [85]
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.
The Law
A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
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OATH OF THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE
The oath taken by King Arthur and his band of noble knights, as imagined by Howard Pyle in his retelling of their legendary tales.
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Then all the knights arose, and each knight held up before him the cross of the hilt of his sword, and each knight spake word for word as King Arthur spake. And this was the covenant of their Knighthood of the Round Table: That they would be gentle unto the weak; that they would be courageous unto the strong; that they would be terrible unto the wicked and the evil-doer; that they would defend the helpless who should call upon them for aid; that all women should be held unto them sacred; that they would stand unto the defence of one another whensoever such defence should be required; that they would be merciful unto all men; that they would be gentle of deed, true in friendship, and faithful in love. This was their covenant, and unto it each knight sware upon the cross of his sword, and in witness thereof did kiss the hilt thereof.
“A man’s character is the reality of himself; his reputation, the opinion others have formed about him; character resides in him, reputation in other people; that is the substance, this is the shadow.” —Henry Ward Beecher
Character Is the Measure of the Man
FROM THE SUCCESSFUL MAN IN HIS MANIFOLD RELATIONS WITH LIFE, 1886
By J. Clinton Ransom
Passing along the paths of a cemetery and reading the inscriptions upon the tombstones, one is impressed with the fact that men are soon forgotten when they die. They are laid to rest and their names chronicled upon slabs and statues to mark the place where they lie. But the statues do not preserve their names any more than they do the lifeless limbs slowly crumbling to dust beneath. Only one, or perhaps two, in a thousand dead will live in the memory of those who come after. Only these are deemed worthy to have their names written upon the page of history. The other countless dead are all forgotten almost as soon as the grass grows green upon their graves. The few live on in worthy deeds, the many die because there is nothing to live for. This persistence of worthy living in the memory of men is a good illustration of the eternal persistence of character. In life, people never fully understand the workings of this law.
But character is only the final result of life. It is the end attained after life’s activities are over. It is the culmination of principle carried into deeds. It has been forming since we drew our first breath, and shall be forming until the dews of death have fallen upon the eyelids. And at last the character is the measure of the man. All that a man is and does; his habits and appetites; his imaginings, reasonings and memories; his faith, his hope, his love, are blended together in character, as wires are sometimes united under a trip-hammer into a bar of steel.
Character is, then, a blending of many elements, a composite growth of principle, action and sentiment, and when complete it represents that which is permanent in the life of a man. Then character comes to have a reflex action upon life; its effect is cumulative and tends to become settled in certain fixed lines of principle and duty. It is this that makes character the final test of manhood, and gives it a value in successful life; for when these lines of duty are once definitely marked out the man does not easily depart from them, and men come to have confidence in his integrity and ability. When a man has shown that he acts right under a given emergency, such is our confidence in this permanence of character, that we instinctively believe that he will continue to act rightly to the end of life. Good character then is a priceless possession and the best possible exponent of a good and honorable