to a question, may be the foulest calumny. A fact may be an
exception; but the feeling is the law, and it is that which
you must neither garble nor belie. The whole tenor of a
conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate
statement; the beginning and the end define and travesty the
intermediate conversation. You never speak to God; you
address a fellow-man, full of his own tempers; and to tell
truth, rightly understood, is not to state the true facts, but
to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not truth to
letter, is the true veracity. To reconcile averted friends a
Jesuitical discretion is often needful, not so much to gain a
kind hearing as to communicate sober truth. Women have an ill
name in this connection; yet they live in as true relations;
the lie of a good woman is the true index of her heart.

"It takes," says Thoreau, in the noblest and most useful
passage I remember to have read in any modern author, (1) "two
to speak truth - one to speak and another to hear." He must
be very little experienced, or have no great zeal for truth,
who does not recognise the fact. A grain of anger or a grain
of suspicion produces strange acoustical effects, and makes
the ear greedy to remark offence. Hence we find those who
have once quarrelled carry themselves distantly, and are ever
ready to break the truce. To speak truth there must be moral
equality or else no respect; and hence between parent and
child intercourse is apt to degenerate into a verbal fencing
bout, and misapprehensions to become ingrained. And there is
another side to this, for the parent begins with an imperfect
notion of the child's character, formed in early years or
during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres,