You say, “Magna est veritas et praevalebit.”  Psha!  Great lies are as great as great truths, and prevail constantly, and day after day.  Take an instance or two out of my own little budget.  I sit near a gentleman at dinner, and the conversation turns upon a certain anonymous literary performance which at the time is amusing the town.  “Oh,” says the gentleman, “everybody knows who wrote that paper:  it is Momus’s.”  I was a young author at the time, perhaps proud of my bantling:  “I beg your pardon,” I say, “it was written by your humble servant.”  “Indeed!” was all that the man replied, and he shrugged his shoulders, turned his back, and talked to his other neighbor.  I never heard sarcastic incredulity more finely conveyed than by that “indeed.”  “Impudent liar,” the gentleman’s face said, as clear as face could speak.  Where was Magna Veritas, and how did she prevail then?  She lifted up her voice, she made her appeal, and she was kicked out of court.  In New York I read a newspaper criticism one day (by an exile from our shores who has taken up his abode in the Western Republic), commenting upon a letter of mine which had appeared in a contemporary volume, and wherein it was stated that the writer was a lad in such and such a year, and, in point of fact, I was, at the period spoken of, nineteen years of age.  “Falsehood, Mr. Roundabout,” says the noble critic:  “You were then not a lad; you were then six-and-twenty years of age.”  You see he knew better than papa and mamma and parish register.  It was easier for him to think and say I lied, on a twopenny matter connected with my own affairs, than to imagine he was mistaken.  Years ago, in a time when we were very mad wags, Arcturus and myself met a gentleman from China who knew the language.  We began to speak Chinese against him.  We said we were born in China.  We were two to one.  We spoke the mandarin dialect with perfect fluency.  We had the company with us; as in the old, old days, the squeak of the real pig was voted not to be so natural as the squeak of the sham pig.  O Arcturus, the sham pig squeaks in our streets now to the applause of multitudes, and the real porker grunts unheeded in his sty!

I once talked for some little time with an amiable lady:  it was for the first time; and I saw an expression of surprise on her kind face, which said as plainly as face could say, “Sir, do you know that up to this moment I have had a certain opinion of you, and that I begin to think I have been mistaken or misled?” I not only know that she had heard evil reports of me, but I know who told her—­one of those acute fellows, my dear brethren, of whom we spoke in a previous sermon, who has found me out—­found out actions which I never did, found out thoughts and sayings which I never spoke, and judged me accordingly.  Ah, my lad! have I found you out?  O risum teneatis.  Perhaps the person I am accusing is no more guilty than I.