use more serious injury than throwing the patient
into a long and heavy sleep, and frightening his family. The doctor,
who had engaged the nurse, discharged her, as Mr. B. was so far
improved as to need only such care as his wife and daughter could
give him.

My curiosity prompted me to inquire of Mrs. B. and Miss B., without
divulging my motive, the particulars of the call they had received
from the horse-car orator. I learned that Mrs. B. had told the girl's
mother the facts of the case while the two daughters were talking
together. Miss B. said that they, now and then, overheard a few words
of the conversation between the older women, and that her companion
had made several inquiries concerning it. Among others was the query:

"How many grains of the medicine does your father take every day?"

Miss B., supposing she referred to the quinine, answered:

"Five, generally; but on the day of which mamma speaks, ten grains
were prescribed."

And from this scanty amount of rapidly acquired information had grown
the story to which I had been an amazed listener.

"Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth!"

Yet this girl did not intend to lie. She gleaned scraps of a
conversation, and allowed a vivid imagination to supply the portions
she did not hear. Add to this the love of producing a sensation, which
is an inherent trait of many characters, and behold potent reasons for
seven-tenths of the cases of exaggeration which come to our notice,
romances constructed upon the "impressionist-picture" plan--a thing of
splash and glare and abnormal perspective that vitiates the taste for
symmetry and right coloring.

We all like to be the first to tell a story, and are anxious to relate
it so well that our listeners shall be entertained. That a tale loses
nothing in the telling is an established fact, especially if the
narrator thereof observes a lack of interest on the part of his
listeners. Then the temptation to arouse them to attention becomes
almost irresistible and unconsciously one accepts the maxim at which
we all sneer,--that it is folly to let the truth spoil a good story.
Every day we have occasion to hold our heads, reeling to aching with
conflicting accounts of some one incident, and repeat the question
asked almost nineteen hundred years ago:

"What is truth?"

We hear much of people who are "too frank." These destroyers of the
peace of mind of friend and foe alike pride themselves on the fact
that t