in order to be of
any value whatever, they would spare their tongues. In comparing the
deaths of one hospital with those of another, any statistics are justly
considered absolutely valueless which do not give the ages, the sexes,
and the diseases of all the cases. It does not seem necessary to mention
this. It does not seem necessary to say that there can be no comparison
between old men with dropsies and young women with consumptions. Yet the
cleverest men and the cleverest women are often heard making such
comparisons, ignoring entirely sex, age, disease, place--in fact, _all_
the conditions essential to the question. It is the merest _gossip_.

[32] A small pet animal is often an excellent companion for the sick,
for long chronic cases especially. A pet bird in a cage is sometimes the
only pleasure of an invalid confined for years to the same room. If he
can feed and clean the animal himself, he ought always to be encouraged
to do so.

[33] It is a much more difficult thing to speak the truth than people
commonly imagine. There is the want of observation _simple_, and the
want of observation _compound_, compounded, that is, with the
imaginative faculty. Both may equally intend to speak the truth. The
information of the first is simply defective. That of the second is much
more dangerous. The first gives, in answer to a question asked about a
thing that has been before his eyes perhaps for years, information
exceedingly imperfect, or says, he does not know. He has never observed.
And people simply think him stupid.

The second has observed just as little, but imagination immediately
steps in, and he describes the whole thing from imagination merely,
being perfectly convinced all the while that he has seen or heard it; or
he will repeat a whole conversation, as if it were information which had
been addressed to him; whereas it is merely what he has himself said to
somebody else. This is the commonest of all. These people do not even
observe that they have _not_ observed nor remember that they have
forgotten.

Courts of justice seem to think that any body can speak "the whole truth
and nothing but the truth," if he does but intend it. It requires many
faculties combined of observation and memory to speak "the whole truth"
and to say "nothing but the truth."

"I knows I fibs dreadful: but believe me, Miss, I never finds out I have
fibbed until they tells me so," was a remark actually made. It is also
one of much m