(You will need one clean, opaque cup filled with very dirty water and one opaque cup, dirty on the outside and filled with clean water. The soiling of the outside
of the dirty cup and the murkiness of the water in the clean cup must be exaggerated.)
(Hold up both cups so that the Scouts can see the outsides clearly but not what is inside.) Which of these cups of water do you think I should drink from? You probably think that I should drink from the clean cup. But, you see, the cup that appears clean really contains very dirty water. (Walk around the room and show the dirty water to the Scouts.) It’s the other cup, the one that looks dirty on the outside, which is really clean. (Show the clean water.)
It doesn’t really matter if Scouts play hard and get dirty doing the many fun activities we do in our troop. We can always take a shower and get clean again. But, it is a little harder to keep our insides clean. When the Scout Law says “A Scout is clean,” it is also referring to our inside selves. A Scout has clean language, clean manners, and clean thinking.
