It’s pretty hard to know how to treat a lie when it’s about yourself.  You can’t go out of your way to deny it, because that puts you on the defensive; and sending the truth after a lie that’s got a running start is like trying to round up a stampeded herd of steers while the scare is on them.  Lies are great travellers, and welcome visitors in a good many homes, and no questions asked.  Truth travels slowly, has to prove its identity, and then a lot of people hesitate to turn out an agreeable stranger to make room for it.

About the only way I know to kill a lie is to live the truth.  When your credit is doubted, don’t bother to deny the rumors, but discount your bills.  When you are attacked unjustly, avoid the appearance of evil, but avoid also the appearance of being too good—­that is, better than usual.  A man can’t be too good, but he can appear too good.  Surmise and suspicion feed on the unusual, and when a man goes about his business along the usual rut, they soon fade away for lack of nourishment.  First and last every fellow gets a lot of unjust treatment in this world, but when he’s as old as I am and comes to balance his books with life and to credit himself with the mean things which weren’t true that have been said about him, and to debit himself with the mean things which were true that people didn’t get on to or overlooked, he’ll find that he’s had a tolerably square deal.  This world has some pretty rotten spots on its skin, but it’s sound at the core.

There are two ways of treating gossip about other people, and they’re both good ways.  One is not to listen to it, and the other is not to repeat it.  Then there’s young Buck Pudden’s wife’s way, and that’s better than either, when you’re dealing with some of these old heifers who browse over the range all day, stuffing themselves with gossip about your friends, and then round up at your house to chew the cud and slobber fake sympathy over you.

Buck wasn’t a bad fellow at heart, for he had the virtue of trying to be good, but occasionally he would walk in slippery places.  Wasn’t very sure-footed, so he fell down pretty often, and when he fell from grace it usually cracked the ice.  Still, as he used to say, when he shot at the bar mirrors during one of his periods of temporary elevation, he paid for what he broke—­cash for the mirrors and sweat and blood for his cussedness.

Then one day Buck met the only woman in the world—­a mighty nice girl from St. Jo—­and she was hesitating over falling in love with him, till the gossips called to tell her that he was a dear, lovely fellow, and wasn’t it too bad that he had such horrid habits?  That settled it, of course, and she married him inside of thirty days, so that she could get right down to the business of reforming him.