ng cold?' Come--everything is decided by a bet here in
California: ten dollars to ten cents you lied when you answered that
question." She said, "I didn't; _I left it blank!_" "Just so--you have
told a _silent_ lie; you have left it to be inferred that you had no
fault to find in that matter." She said, "Oh, was that a lie? And _how_
could I mention her one single fault, and she is so good?--It would have
been cruel." I said, "One ought always to lie, when one can do good by
it; your impulse was right, but your judgment was crude; this comes of
unintelligent practice. Now observe the results of this inexpert
deflection of yours. You know Mr. Jones's Willie is lying very low with
scarlet-fever; well, your recommendation was so enthusiastic that that
girl is there nursing him, and the worn-out family have all been
trustingly sound asleep for the last fourteen hours, leaving their
darling with full confidence in those fatal hands, because you, like
young George Washington, have a reputa--However, if you are not going to
have anything to do, I will come around to-morrow and we'll attend the
funeral together, for, of course, you'll naturally feel a peculiar
interest in Willie's case--as personal a one, in fact, as the
undertaker."

But that was not all lost. Before I was half-way through she was in a
carriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion to
save what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly
nurse. All of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had been
lying myself. But that same day, all the same, she sent a line to the
hospital which filled up the neglected blank, and stated the _facts,_
too, in the squarest possible manner.

Now, you see, this lady's fault was _not_ in lying, but in lying
injudiciously. She should have told the truth, _there,_ and made it up
to the nurse with a fraudulent compliment further along in the paper.
She could have said, "In one respect this sick-nurse is perfection--when
she is on the watch, she never snores." Almost any little pleasant lie
would have taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary
expression of the truth.

Lying is universal--we _all_ do it. Therefore, the wise thing is for us
diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie
with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage,
and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly,
hurtfully, maliciously; to lie