’Well, your heart was right, G—–­, and your act was right.  What you did was kindly and courteous and beautiful; I would have done it myself; but it was a lie.’

‘A lie?  I didn’t say a word.  How do you make it out?’

’I know you didn’t speak, still you said to him very plainly and enthusiastically in dumb show, “Hello! you in town?  Awful glad to see you, old fellow; when did you get back?” Concealed in your actions was what you have called “a misleading reservation of an explanatory fact” —­the act that you had never seen him before.  You expressed joy in encountering him—­a lie; and you made that reservation—­another lie.  It was my pair over again.  But don’t be troubled—­we all do it.’

Two hours later, at dinner, when quite other matters were being discussed, he told how he happened along once just in the nick of time to do a great service for a family who were old friends of his.  The head of it had suddenly died in circumstances and surroundings of a ruinously disgraceful character.  If know the facts would break the hearts of the innocent family and put upon them a load of unendurable shame.  There was no help but in a giant lie, and he girded up his loins and told it.

‘The family never found out, G—–?’

’Never.  In all these years they have never suspected.  They were proud of him and had always reason to be; they are proud of him yet, and to them his memory is sacred and stainless and beautiful.’

‘They had a narrow escape, G—–.’

‘Indeed they had.’

’For the very next man that came along might have been one of these heartless and shameless truth-mongers.  You have told the truth a million times in your life, G—–­, but that one golden lie atones for it all.  Persevere.’

Some may think me not strict enough in my morals, but that position is hardly tenable.  There are many kinds of lying which I do not approve.  I do not like an injurious lie, except when it injures somebody else; and I do not like the lie of bravado, nor the lie of virtuous ecstasy; the latter was affected by Bryant, the former by Carlyle.

Mr. Bryant said, ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’  I have taken medals at thirteen world’s fairs, and may claim to be not without capacity, but I never told as big a one as that.  Mr. Bryant was playing to the gallery; we all do it.  Carlyle said, in substance, this—­I do not remember the exact words:  ’This gospel is eternal—­that a lie shall not live.’  I have a reverent affection for Carlyle’s books, and have read his ‘Revelation’ eight times; and so I prefer to think he was not entirely at himself when he told that one.  To me it is plain that he said it in a moment of excitement, when chasing Americans out of his back-yard with brickbats.  They used to go there and worship.  At bottom he was probably fond of it, but he was always able to conceal it.  He kept bricks for them, but he was not a good shot, and it is matter of history