ut of breath.

"But Mrs. A.!" I raised my girlish voice to reach the deaf ears. "I
think all that is beautiful. I only wish I could imitate her, and be
as popular and as much beloved."

"Humph!" inhaling the snuff spitefully. "She's too sweet to be
wholesome. Fair words butter no parsnips. Look out for a tongue that's
smooth on both sides. What does the Bible say of the hypocrite? 'The
words of his mouth were smoother than butter.' I'd rather have honest
vinegar!"

I stood too much in dread of her frankness to ask if sugar is never
honest, or to speculate audibly why she chose parsnips with their
length of fibre and peculiar cloying sweet, as types of daily living.
The adage seemed droll enough to me then, and it is odd even now that
I have become familiar with it in the talk of old-fashioned people.
Interpreting it as they do, I dispute it stoutly. Parsnips may be only
passable to most palates even when buttered. They would be intolerable
with vinegar. Furthermore,--before we drop the figure,--if anything
can butter them, it is fair words.

This business which we call living is not easy at the best. Our
parsnips are sometimes tough and stringy; sometimes insipid; often
withered by drought or frost-bitten. If served without sauce, they--to
quote our old-fashioned people again--"go against the stomach."

There is a pernicious fallacy to the effect that a rough tongue is an
honest one. There are quite as many unpleasant untruths told as there
are flattering falsehoods. Because a speech is kind it is not of
necessity a lie, nor does a remark gain in truth in direct ratio as it
loses its politeness. Often the blunt criticism is the outcome of a
savage instinct on the part of the perpetrator. In America, men and
women (always excepting Italians) do not carry poniards concealed in
their breasts, or swords at their sides. In lieu of these the tongue
is used to revenge an evil.

The Psalmist exclaims: "Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a
kindness; and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil," but
the average representative of the nineteenth century will not echo his
sentiment. It may be that the "righteous" of that day had a more
agreeable way of offering reproof than have the modern saints. However
that may be, the "excellent oil" seems to have given place to
corrosive sublimate and carbolic acid--neither of which, applied in an
undiluted form, may be even remotely suspected of soothing an open
wound. Tr