專四晨讀美文：On Lying

On Lying
Now as to the matter of lying.
You want to be very careful about lying,
otherwise you are nearly sure to get caught,
once caught, you can never again be,
in the eyes of the pure and the good, what you were before.
Many a young person has injured himself permanently
through a single clumsy and ill-finished lie,
the result of carelessness born of incomplete training.
Some authorities hold that the young ought not to lie at all.
That, of course, is putting it rather stronger than necessary.
Still, while I can't go quite so far as that,
I do maintain, and I believe I am right,
that the young ought to be temperate in the use of this great art
until practice and experience shall give them
that confidence, elegance, precision
which alone make the accomplishment graceful and profitable.
Patience, diligence, painstaking attention to detail-
these are the requirements.
These, in time, will make the student perfect.
Upon these, and upon these only,
may he rely as the sure foundation for future eminence.
Think what tedious years of study, thought,
practice, and experience,
went to the equipment of the peerless old master
who was able to impose upon the whole world
with the lofty and sounding maxim
that "truth is mighty and will prevail"-
the most majestic compound feature of fact
which any of woman born has yet achieved.
For the history of our race and every individual's experience,
are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill
and that a lie told well is immortal.
There is in Boston a monument of the man
who discovered the anesthesia.
Many people are aware, in these later days,
that he didn't discover it at all,
but stole the discovery from another man.
Is the truth mighty, and will it prevail?
No, my hearers, the monument is made of hard materials,
but the lie it tells will outlast a million years.
An awkward, feeble, leaky lie is a thing
which you ought to make it your unceasing study to avoid;
such a lie as that has no more real permanence
than an average truth.
Why, you might as well tell the truth at once
and be done with it.