and sent it back to the hospital by the hand of
the nurse. How did you answer this question--'Was the nurse at any
time guilty of a negligence which was likely to result in the patient's
taking cold?' Come--everything is decided by a bet here in California:
ten dollars to ten cents you lied when you answered that question." She
said, "I didn't; I left it blank!" "Just so--you have told a silent lie;
you have left it to be inferred that you had no fault to find in that
matter." She said, "Oh, was that a lie? And how could I mention her one
single fault, and she so good?--it would have been cruel." I said, "One
ought always to lie when one can do good by it; your impulse was right,
but, your judgment was crude; this comes of unintelligent practice. Now
observe the result of this inexpert deflection of yours. You know
Mr. Jones's Willie is lying very low with scarlet fever; well, your
recommendation was so enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him,
and the worn-out family have all been trustingly sound asleep for the
last fourteen hours, leaving their darling with full confidence in
those fatal hands, because you, like young George Washington, have a
reputa--However, if you are not going to have anything to do, I will
come around to-morrow and we'll attend the funeral together, for, of
course, you'll naturally feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case--as
personal a one, in fact, as the undertaker."

But that was all lost. Before I was half-way through she was in a
carriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion to
save what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly
nurse. All of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had been
lying myself. But that same day, all the same, she sent a line to the
hospital which filled up the neglected blank, and stated the facts, too,
in the squarest possible manner.

Now, you see, this lady's fault was not in lying, but only in lying
injudiciously. She should have told the truth there, and made it up to
the nurse with a fraudulent compliment further along in the paper. She
could have said, "In one respect the sick-nurse is perfection--when she
is on watch, she never snores." Almost any little pleasant lie would
have taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary expression of
the truth.

Lying is universal--we all do it; we all must do it. Therefore, the
wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully,
judic