Library Collections: Document: Full Text

As yet, it has not done so, and I can recollect no instance of moral obliquity except under strong temptation. I recall now one instance of deliberate deception, and that I am bound to confess, with sorrow, was perhaps attributable to indiscretion on my part. She came to me one day dressed for a walk, and had on a new pair of gloves which were stout, and rather coarse. I begun to banter and tease her, (in that spirit of fun of which she is very fond, and which she usually returns with interest,) upon the clumsy appearance of her hands, at which she first laughed, but soon began to look so serious and even grieved that I tried to direct her attention to something else, and soon forgot the subject. But not so poor Laura; here her personal vanity, or her love of approbation, had been wounded; she thought the gloves were the cause of it, and she resolved to be rid of them. Accordingly they disappeared, and were supposed to be lost; but her guileless nature betrayed itself, for without being questioned, she frequently talked about the gloves, not saying directly that they were lost, but asking if they might not be in such or such a place. She was uneasy under the new garb of deceit, and soon excited suspicion. When it reached my ears, I was exceedingly panted, and moreover doubtful what course to pursue. At last, taking her in the most affectionate way, I began to tell her a story of a little girl who was much beloved by her parents, and brothers and sisters, and for whose happiness every thing was done; and asked her whether the little girl should not love them in return, and try to make them happy; to which she eagerly assented. But, said I, she did not, she was careless, and caused them much pain. At this Laura was excited, and said the girl was in the a wrong, and asked what she did to displease her relations; I replied, she deceived them; they never told her any thing but truth, but she one day acted so as to make them think she had not done a thing, when she had done it. Laura then eagerly asked if the girl told a fib, and I explained to her how one might tell a falsehood, without saying a word; which she readily understood, becoming all the time more interested, and evidently touched. I then tried to explain to her the different degrees of culpability resulting from carelessness, from disobedience, and from intentional deceit. She soon grew pale, and evidently begun to apply the remarks to her own case, but still was very eager to know about "the wrong little girl," and how her parents treated her. I told her her parents were grieved, and cried, at which she could hardly restrain her own tears. After a while she confessed to me that she had deceived about the gloves, that they were not lost, but hidden away. I then tried to show her that I cared nothing about the gloves that the loss of a hundred pairs would be nothing if unaccompanied by any deceit. She perceived that I was grieved, and going to leave her to her own thoughts, and clung to me as if in terror of being alone. I was forced however to inflict the pain upon her.

Her teachers and the persons most immediately about her, were requested to manifest no other feeling than that of sorrow on her account; and the poor creature going about from one to another for comfort and for soy, but finding only sadness, soon became agonized with grief. When left alone she sat pale and motionless, with a countenance the very image of sorrow and so severe seemed the discipline, that I feared lest the memory of it should be terrible enough to tempt her to have recourse to the common artifice of concealing one prevarication by another, and thus insensibly get her into the habit of falsehood. I therefore comforted her by assurances of the continued affection of her friends, tried to make her understand that their grief and her suffering were the simple and necessary consequences of her careless or wilful -sic- misstatement, and made her reflect upon the nature of the emotion she experienced after having uttered the untruth; how unpleasant it was, how it made her feel afraid, and how widely different it was from the fearless and placid emotion which followed truth.

It was easy enough to make her see the consequences which must result from habitual falsehood, but difficult to give her an idea of all the moral obligations to be truthful; perhaps however the intellectual perception of these obligations is not necessary to the perfect truthfulness of a child, for such is his natural tendency to tell the truth at all times, that if his education can keep him from the disturbing force of any strong temptations we may count upon his speaking straight-forward as surely as we may calculate upon a projectile moved by one force, going in a straight line.

Words are the natural and spontaneous representations of the thoughts; the truth is ever uppermost in the mind; it is on the surface, it is a single object, and cannot be mistaken; but for a lie, we must dive below the surface and hesitatingly fetch up one of the many that may be found at the bottom. There is little fear of Laura's losing that character for ingenuousness and truthfulness which she has always deservedly possessed.