is something more difficult than to refrain from
open lies. It is possible to avoid falsehood and yet not tell the truth.
It is not enough to answer formal questions. To reach the truth by yea
and nay communications implies a questioner with a share of inspiration,
such as is often found in mutual love. YEA and NAY mean nothing; the
meaning must have been related in the question. Many Words are often
necessary to convey a very simple statement; for in this sort of
exercise we never hit the gold; the most that we can hope is by many
arrows, more or less far off on different sides, to indicate, in the
course of time, for what target we are aiming, and after an hour's
talk, back and forward, to convey the purport of a single principle or a
single thought.

*****

The cruellist lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a
room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a
disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished
because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame
which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the
critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his
tongue? And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed
through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment; and
part of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the
foulest calumny. A fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the law,
and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole tenor
of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate statement;
the beginning and the end define and travesty the intermediate
conversation. You never speak to God; you address a fellow-man, full of
his own tempers: and to tell truth, rightly understood, is not to state
the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not
truth to letter, is the true veracity.

*****

He talked for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib,
as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth,
which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There
was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal,
to flatter himself, and to please and interest the present friend.

*****

How wholly we all lie at the mercy of a single prater, not needfully
with any malign purpose! And if a man but talk of himself in the right
spirit, refers t