fellow-creatures happy at any
sacrifice, even at the frightful one of entertaining such a bore as you
are!' He would never come near me again, if he knew I thought that; and
yet, if I do think so, and make him think I do not, is not that the
biggest sort of a lie? Why, Mr. Allen, many a time when I have seen
tiresome or disagreeable people coming to our house, I have run away and
hid myself, so as not to be found; not in the least because I could not
bear the being bored by them, but because I could not bear the thought of
the lies I should speak, or at least act, if I saw them."

"The interpretation a visitor chooses to put upon our kind cordiality of
manner to him is his own affair, not ours, Mercy. It is a Christian duty
to be cordial and kindly of manner to every human being: any thing less
gives pain, repels people from us, and hinders our being able to do them
good. There is no more doubt of this than of any other first principle of
Christian conduct; and I am very sorry that these morbid notions have
taken such hold of you. If you yield to them, you will make yourself soon
disliked and feared, and give a great deal of needless pain to your
neighbors."

It was hard for Mr. Allen to be severe with Mercy, for he loved her as if
she were his younger sister; but he honestly thought her to be in great
danger of falling into a chronic morbidness on this subject, and he
believed that stern words were most likely to convince her of her mistake.
It was a sort of battle, however,--this battle which Mercy was forced to
fight,--in which no human being can help another, unless he has first been
through the same battle himself. All that Mr. Allen said seemed to Mercy
specious and, to a certain extent, trivial: it failed to influence her,
simply because it did not so much as recognize the point where her
difficulty lay.

"If Mr. Allen tries till he dies, he will never convinc me that it is not
deceiving people to make them think you're glad to see them when you're
not," Mercy said to herself often, as, with flushed cheeks and tears in
her eyes, she walked home after these conversations. "He may make me think
that it is right to deceive them rather than to make them unhappy. It
almost seems as if it must be; yet, if we once admitted that, where
should we ever stop? It seems to me that would be a very dangerous
doctrine. A lie's a lie, let whoever will call it fine names, and pass it
off as a Christian duty The Bible does not s