Fairhaven herald. [volume] (Fairhaven, Wash.) 1890-????, 1892-10-25
Try 1t.

Try 1t.
Did it ever occur to you how difficult |
/: is to tell the exact truth? 1t would
be shocking thing to be liar of
course, but is there anybody who always
tells the truth, even if he knows it2 You
do, do your Then you are possessed Of
high order of intellect, for there is no
better test of brain power than ability
to see and narrate facts as they are.
OF course yes; we know you tell the
truth. But did you never, on your
honor, come in and say You had caught
u hundred fish in thirty minutes, just as
fast as you could pull them in, when the
exact facts were you had been out half
day and got just six fish-not very big
ones either? Come, now. Maybe you
are a woman, and everybody knows that
lady speaks the truth. Oh, yes! But
when Miss Elizabeth Jendeson is twenty
eight and one-half years old, with no
prospects, don't you customarily tell peo-
pie she is thirty-ive, even when you
KNOW N.lCh NAAoo 49,
deson gets husband, and she is twenty
nine and he is twenty-four, don't you
ever make merry over the fact that he
has married his grandmother, and don't
you habitually give strangers the i'm
preston that he is fifteen and she is
forty? On your sacred honor again,
mind you? Well, if you do not, then
you have great brain, and you shall
go up head.
Try for one day to tell the truth pre-
cisely as you know and see it under your
eyes. When you have seven letters to
write, don't say you have a dozen. Say
seven. Don't say it's the awfullest wind
you ever encountered. You have lived
through just such a hundred times.
Don't tell your friend you have the
worst headache you ever had. You
have suffered just as severe ones many
a time and will again. If you wait
sixteen minutes for your wife, don't
swear you have been there two hours.
Say sixteen minutes exactly. Don't say
thing happened forty years ago when
it was thirty-four. Say thirty-four.
Don't dispatch to a newspaper that the
most frightful railway accident has oc-
CURED and whole train load of passen-
gers were killed when in point Of fact
the extent of the fatality was that one
poll parrot in a cage got her neck dis
located.
Notice all day long how many times
you actually and knowingly tell an un
truth just so as to make out a gooc
story. AT night sum them all up, and i
I will make your hair stand on end to dis
t cover what liar you are. 1t is the lif'
e effort of strictly conscientious persons
8 to narrate facts as they are, without re
g gard to their own likes and dislikes o
g their desire to make out good story
4 and then they are conscious of stead,
= failure. Still the constant effort +
t speak the exact truth reacts nobly o.
1 the intellect, making it sharper an
t clearer and giving it truer perceptions
Y The person who acts with perfect sill
n cerity in all things and who strives
If adhere to the strict truth can perceiv
e more easily than anybody else when
q person is trying to humbug him.
q As to the person who habitually exat
n gerates all his big figures, every double
: and twisted superlative weakens by
a much his hearers belief in his honest
d and truthfulness. Then when reall
o great occasion arises he can make 4
n impression at all, but like the traditions
N citizen whose apples rolled down hill /
I can only shut up and remain silent.