to judge him too harshly for his blindness.

At length, by-and-by, when his sister conies in, and the untruth is
discovered, the boy is astonished and bewildered by being called to account
in a very solemn manner by his mother on account of the awful wickedness of
having told a lie!

_How the Child sees it_.

Now I am very ready to admit that, notwithstanding the apparent resemblance
between these two cases, this resemblance is only apparent and superficial;
but the question is, whether it is not sufficient to cause such a child
to confound them, and to be excusable, until he has been enlightened by
appropriate instruction, for not clearly distinguishing the cases where
words must be held strictly to conform to actual realities, from those
where it is perfectly right and proper that they should only represent
images or conceptions of the mind.

A father, playing with his children, says, "Now I am a bear, and am going
to growl." So he growls. Then he says, "Now I am a dog, and am going to
bark." He is not a bear, and he is not a dog, and the children know it.
His words, therefore, even to the apprehension of the children, express an
untruth, in the sense that they do not correspond with any actual reality.
It is not a wrongful untruth. The children understand perfectly well that
in such a case as this it is not in any sense wrong to say what is not
true. But how are they to know what kind of untruths are right, and what
kind are wrong, until they are taught what the distinction is and upon what
it depends.

Unfortunately many parents confuse the ideas, or rather the moral sense of
their children, in a much more vital manner by untruths of a different kind
from this--as, for example, when a mother, in the presence of her children,
expresses a feeling of vexation and annoyance at seeing a certain visitor
coming to make a call, and then, when the visitor enters the room, receives
her with pretended pleasure, and says, out of politeness, that she is very
glad to see her. Sometimes a father will join with his children, when
peculiar circumstances seem, as he thinks, to require it, in concealing
something from their mother, or deceiving her in regard to it by
misrepresentations or positive untruths. Sometimes even the mother will do
this in reference to the father. Of course such management as this must
necessarily have the effect of bringing up the children to the idea that
deceiving by untruths is a justifiable resort i