vested
interests. To proclaim truth in the face of these opponents in early
times has cost many a man his life; and to-day it often exposes one to
calumny and abuse. Hence comes the temptation to conceal our real
opinions; to cover up what we know to be true under some phrase which we
believe will be popular; to sacrifice our convictions to what we suppose
to be our interests.

Especially when we have done wrong the temptation to cover it up with a
lie is very great. Deception seems so easy; it promises to smooth over
our difficulties so neatly; that it is one of the hardest temptations to
resist. Little do we dream,

What a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.

THE VICE OF DEFECT.

+The forms of falsehood are numberless.+--We may lie by our faces; by
our general bearing; by our silence, as well as by our lips. There is
"the glistening and softly spoken lie; the amiable fallacy; the
patriotic lie of the historian; the provident lie of the politician; the
zealous lie of the partisan; the merciful lie of the friend; the
careless lie of each man to himself." The mind of man was made for
truth: truth is the only atmosphere in which the mind of man can breathe
without contamination. No passing benefit which I can secure for myself
or others can compensate for the injury which a falsehood inflicts on
the mind of him who tells it and on the mind of him to whom it is told.
For benefits and advantages, however great and important, are what we
have, and they perish with the using. The mind is what we are; and an
insult to our intelligence, a scar upon ourselves, a blow at that human
confidence which binds us all together, is irremediable.

THE VICE OF EXCESS.

+The mischievousness of gossip and scandal.+--We are not called upon to
know everything that is going on; nor to tell everything that we cannot
help knowing. Idle curiosity and mischievous gossip result from the
direction of our thirst for knowledge toward trifling and unworthy
objects. There is great virtue in minding one's own business. The
tell-tale is abhorrent even to the least developed moral sensibility.
The gossip, the busybody, the scandalmonger is the worst pest that
infests the average town and village. These mischief-makers take a grain
of circumstantial evidence, mix with it a bushel of fancies, suspicions,
surmises, and inuendoes, and then go from house to house peddling the
product for undoubted fact. The scandalmonge