If you ask him what he thinks of you, he tells you.

Some people don't ask him a second time.

They say: "What a very rude little boy you are!" "But you insisted upon it," he explains; "I told you I'd rather not say." It does not comfort them in the least.

Yet the result is, he is already an influence.

People who have braved the ordeal, and emerged successfully, go about with swelled head.
And little Boys would always tell the Truth! Politeness would seem to have been invented for the comfort of the undeserving.