hear the cry with a note of triumph! And if he have, how often has
he told the truth? And if he have, how many are entitled by pure
innocence in that matter to throw a stone at him? And if he have, do
we not know how lies will come to the tongue of a man without thought
of lying? In his stoutest efforts after the truth a man may so express
himself that when afterward he is driven to compare his recent and his
former words, he shall hardly be able to say even to himself that he
has not lied. It is by the tenor of a man's whole life that we must
judge him, whether he be a liar or no.

To expect a man to be the same at sixty as he was at thirty, is to
suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colors which
adorn its setting. And there are men whose intellects are set on so
fine a pivot that a variation in the breeze of the moment, which
coarser minds shall not feel, will carry them round with a rapidity
which baffles the common eye. The man who saw his duty clearly on this
side in the morning shall, before the evening come, recognize it on
the other; and then again, and again, and yet again the vane shall go
round. It may be that an instrument shall be too fine for our daily
uses. We do not want a clock to strike the minutes, or a glass to tell
the momentary changes in the atmosphere. It may be found that for the
work of the world, the coarse work--and no work is so coarse, though
none is so important, as that which falls commonly into the hands of
statesmen--instruments strong in texture, and by reason of their
rudeness not liable to sudden impressions, may be the best. That it is
which we mean when we declare that a scrupulous man is impractical in
politics. But the same man may, at various periods of his life, and
on various days at the same period, be scrupulous and unscrupulous,
impractical and practical, as the circumstances of the occasion may
affect him. At one moment the rale of simple honesty will prevail