timid. And a lie that comes from either side of the child's nature
cannot be taken as a sign of moral depravity; the treatment which a
child is given must take into consideration the child's temperament.
Charles Darwin tells of his own inclination to make exaggerated
statements for the purpose of causing a sensation. "I told another
little boy," he writes in his autobiography, "that I could produce
variously-colored polyanthuses and primroses by watering them with
certain colored fluids, which was, of course, a monstrous fable, and
had never been tried by me. I may here also confess that as a little
boy I was much given to inventing deliberate falsehoods, and this
was always done for the sake of causing excitement. For instance, I
once gathered much valuable fruit from my father's trees and hid it
in the shrubbery and then ran in breathless haste to spread the news
that I had discovered a hoard of stolen fruit."

For the vaunting lie it is usually sufficient to defeat its purpose
by showing that the boast cannot be carried out. The braggart is
made to descend from the pedestal of the hero to the level of the
fool.

How the other extreme in disposition may lead to a "lie" is shown by
the little girl who was sent to the store for a loaf of bread and
came back saying that there was no more to be had. The mother was
very sure that that could not be, but soon found out, on
questioning, that the child had forgotten what she was sent to get
and was then afraid of being ridiculed for having forgotten. Here
the cause of the lie was timidity. To punish this child would only
make her more timid. In a case of this kind the mother should try to
cultivate the self-confidence of the child instead of punishing her
for untruthfulness.