convey the purport of a single principle or a single thought.
And yet while the curt, pithy speaker misses the point
entirely, a wordy, prolegomenous babbler will often add three
new offences in the process of excusing one. It is really a
most delicate affair. The world was made before the English
language, and seemingly upon a different design. Suppose we
held our converse not in words, but in music; those who have a
bad ear would find themselves cut off from all near commerce,
and no better than foreigners in this big world. But we do
not consider how many have "a bad ear" for words, nor how
often the most eloquent find nothing to reply. I hate
questioners and questions; there are so few that can be spoken
to without a lie. "DO YOU FORGIVE ME?" Madam and sweetheart,
so far as I have gone in life I have never yet been able to
discover what forgiveness means. "IS IT STILL THE SAME
BETWEEN US?" Why, how can it be? It is eternally different;
and yet you are still the friend of my heart. "DO YOU
UNDERSTAND ME?" God knows; I should think it highly
improbable.

The cruellest lies are often told in silence. A man may
have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet
come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.
And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or
spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a
man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical
point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his
tongue? And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth
conveyed through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to
sentiment; and part of the truth, as often happens in answer