It nearly took my breath away; though I thought I might possibly
have misunderstood. I said:

"Why, you little rascal! _Was hast du gesagt?_"

But she said the same words over again, and in the same decided
way. I suppose I ought to have been outraged; but I wasn't, I was
charmed. And I suppose I ought to have spanked her; but I didn't, I
fraternized with the enemy, and we went on and spent half an hour
with the cows.

That incident is followed in the "Record" by the following paragraph,
which is another instance of a juvenile characteristic maintaining
itself into mature age. Susy was persistently and conscientiously
truthful throughout her life with the exception of one interruption
covering several months, and perhaps a year. This was while she was
still a little child. Suddenly--not gradually--she began to lie; not
furtively, but frankly, openly, and on a scale quite disproportioned to
her size. Her mother was so stunned, so nearly paralyzed for a day or
two, that she did not know what to do with the emergency. Reasonings,
persuasions, beseechings, all went for nothing; they produced no effect;
the lying went tranquilly on. Other remedies were tried, but they
failed. There is a tradition that success was finally accomplished by
whipping. I think the Record says so, but if it does it is because the
Record is incomplete. Whipping was indeed tried, and was faithfully kept
up during two or three weeks, but the results were merely temporary; the
reforms achieved were discouragingly brief.

Fortunately for Susy, an incident presently occurred which put a
complete stop to all the mother's efforts in the direction of reform.
This incident was the chance discovery in Darwin of a passage which said
that when a child exhibits a sudden and unaccountable disposition to
forsake the truth and restrict itself to lying, the explanation must be
sought away back in the past; that an ancestor of the child had had the
same disease, at the same tender age; that it was irremovable by
persuasion or punishment, and that it had ceased as suddenly and as
mysteriously as it had come, when it had run its appointed course. I
think Mr. Darwin said that nothing was necessary but to leave the matter
alone and let the malady have its way and perish by the statute of
limitations.

We had confidence in Darwin, and after that day Susy was relieved of our
reformatory persecutions. She went on lying witho