r that unmanly shame
which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the
critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his
tongue? And, again, a lie may be told by a truth, or a truth conveyed
through a lie. Truth to facts is not always truth to sentiment; and part
of the truth, as often happens in answer to a question, may be the
foulest calumny. A fact may be an exception; but the feeling is the law,
and it is that which you must neither garble nor belie. The whole tenor
of a conversation is a part of the meaning of each separate statement:
the beginning and the end define and travesty the intermediate
conversation. You never speak to God; you address a fellow-man, full of
his own tempers; and to tell truth, rightly understood; is not to state
the true facts, but to convey a true impression; truth in spirit, not
truth to letter, is the true veracity. To reconcile averted friends a
Jesuitical discretion is often needful, not so much to gain a kind
hearing as to communicate sober truth. Women have an ill name in this
connection; yet they live in as true relations; the lie of a good woman
is the true index of her heart.

"It takes," says Thoreau, in the noblest and most useful passage I
remember to have read in any modern author,[4] "two to speak truth--one
to speak and another to hear." He must be very little experienced, or
have no great zeal for truth, who does not recognise the fact. A grain
of anger or a grain of suspicion produces strange acoustical effects,
and makes the ear greedy to remark offence. Hence we find those who have
once quarrelled carry themselves distantly, and are ever ready to break
the truce. To speak truth there must be moral equality or else no
respect; and hence between parent and child intercourse is apt to
degenerate into a verbal fencing bout, and misapprehensions to become
ingrained. And there is another side to this, for the parent begins with
an imperfect notion of the child's character, formed in early years or
during the equinoctial gales of youth; to this he adheres, noting only
the facts which suit with his preconception; and wherever a person
fancies himself unjustly judged, he at once and finally gives up the
effort to speak truth. With our chosen friends, on the other hand, and
still more between lovers (for mutual understanding is love's essence),
the truth is easily indicated by the one and aptly comprehended by the
other. A hint taken, a look u