I have altered the little details of the anecdote somewhat.  But this story is, I vow and declare, as true as Mrs Lynx’s.  Gracious goodness! how do lies begin?  What are the averages of lying?  Is the same amount of lies told about every man, and do we pretty much all tell the same amount of lies?  Is the average greater in Ireland than in Scotland, or vice versa—­among women than among men?  Is this a lie I am telling now?  If I am talking about you, the odds are, perhaps, that it is.  I look back at some which have been told about me, and speculate on them with thanks and wonder.  Dear friends have told them of me, have told them to me of myself.  Have they not to and of you, dear friend?  A friend of mine was dining at a large dinner of clergymen, and a story, as true as the sausage story above given, was told regarding me, by one of those reverend divines, in whose frock sits some anile chatter-boxes, as any man who knows this world knows.  They take the privilege of their gown.  They cabal, and tattle, and hiss, and cackle comminations under their breath.  I say the old women of the other sex are not more talkative or more mischievous than some of these.  “Such a man ought not to be spoken to,” says Gobemouche, narrating the story—­and such a story!  “And I am surprised he is admitted into society at all.”  Yes, dear Gobemouche, but the story wasn’t true; and I had no more done the wicked deed in question than I had run away with the Queen of Sheba.

I have always longed to know what that story was (or what collection of histories), which a lady had in her mind to whom a servant of mine applied for a place, when I was breaking up my establishment once and going abroad.  Brown went with a very good character from us, which, indeed, she fully deserved after several years’ faithful service.  But when Mrs. Jones read the name of the person out of whose employment Brown came, “That is quite sufficient,” says Mrs. Jones.  “You may go.  I will never take a servant out of that house.”  Ah, Mrs. Jones, how I should like to know what that crime was, or what that series of villanies, which made you determine never to take a servant out of my house.  Do you believe in the story of the little boy and the sausages?  Have you swallowed that little minced infant?  Have you devoured that young Polonius?  Upon my word you have maw enough.  We somehow greedily gobble down all stories in which the characters of our friends are chopped up, and believe wrong of them without inquiry.  In a late serial work written by this hand, I remember making some pathetic remarks about our propensity to believe ill of our neighbors—­and I remember the remarks, not because they were valuable, or novel, or ingenious, but because, within three days after they had appeared in print, the moralist who wrote them, walking home with a friend, heard a story about another friend, which story he straightway believed, and which story was scarcely more true than that sausage