Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so, is dearly purchased at a sacrifice.  Deal kindly, but firmly, with all your classmates; you will find it the policy which wears best.  Above all, do not appear to others what you are not.  If you have any fault to find with any one, tell him, not others, of what you complain; there is no more dangerous experiment than that of undertaking to be one thing before a man’s face and another behind his back.  We should live, act, and say, nothing to the injury of any one.  It is not only best as a matter of principle, but it is the path to peace and honor.

“In regard to duty, let me, in conclusion of this hasty letter, inform you that, nearly a hundred years ago, there was a day of remarkable gloom and darkness—­still known as ’the dark day’—­a day when the light of the sun was slowly extinguished, as if by an eclipse.  The Legislature of Connecticut was in session, and, as its members saw the unexpected and unaccountable darkness coming on, they shared in the general awe and terror.  It was supposed by many that the last day—­the day of judgment—­had come.  Some one, in the consternation of the hour, moved an adjournment.  Then there arose an old Puritan legislator, Davenport, of Stamford, and said that, if the last day had come, he desired to be found at his place doing his duty, and, therefore, moved that candles be brought in, so that the House could proceed with its duty.  There was quietness in that man’s mind, the quietness of heavenly wisdom and inflexible willingness to obey present duty.  Duty, then, is the sublimest word in our language.  Do your duty in all things, like the old Puritan.  You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.  Never let me and your mother wear one gray hair for any lack of duty on your part.”

The maxims of this letter indicate the noble and conscientious character of the man who wrote it.  “Frankness is the child of honesty and courage.”  “Say just what you mean to do on every occasion.”  “Never do a wrong thing to make a friend or keep one.”  “Duty is the sublimest word in our language ... do your duty in all things ... you cannot do more.”  That he lived up to these great maxims, amid all the troubled scenes and hot passions of a stormy epoch, is Lee’s greatest glory.  His fame as a soldier, great as it is, yields to the true glory of having placed duty before his eyes always as the supreme object of life.  He resigned his commission from a sense of duty to his native State; made this same duty his sole aim in every portion of his subsequent career; and, when all had failed, and the cause he had fought for was overthrown, it was the consciousness of having performed conscientiously, and to his utmost, his whole duty, which took the sting from defeat, and gave him that noble calmness which the whole world saw and admired.  “Human virtue should be equal to human calamity,” were his august words when all was lost, and men’s minds were sinking under