XXX.
“YES” AND “NO.”
“Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.”—Jesus Christ.
Although in length “yes” and “no” are among the smallest and shortest words of the English language, yet they often involve an importance far beyond “the most centipedal polysyllables that crawl over the pages of Johnson’s dictionary.” Did persons stop to reflect upon the full import of these monosyllables, so easily uttered, they would undoubtedly use them with less frequency and more caution.
I shall make no apology for quoting on this subject from a letter out of the “Correspondence of R. E. H. Greyson, Esq.,” written by him to Miss Mary Greyson.
“You remember the last pleasant evening in my last visit to Shirley, when I accompanied you to the party at Mrs. Austin’s. Something occurred there which I had no opportunity of improving for your benefit. So as you invite reproof—an invitation which who that is mortal and senior can refuse?—I will enlarge a little.
“The good lady, our hostess, expressed, if you recollect, a fear that the light of the unshaded camphine was too bright, in the position in which you sat, for your eyes. Though I saw you blinking with positive pain, yet, out of a foolish timidity, you protested, ‘No; oh no; not at all!’ Now that was a very unneighbourly act of the tongue, thus to set at nought the eye; the selfish thing must have forgotten that ‘if one member suffer, all the others must suffer with it.’ My dear, never sacrifice your eyes to any organ whatever; at all events, not to the tongue,—least of all when it does not tell the truth. Of the two, you had better be dumb than blind.
“Now, if I had not interposed, and said that you were suffering, whether you knew it or not, you would have played the martyr all the evening to a sort of a—a—what shall I call it?—it must out—a sort of fashionable fib. You may answer, perhaps, that you did not like to make a fuss, or seem squeamish, or discompose the company; and so, from timidity, you said ‘the thing that was not.’ Very true; but this is the very thing I want you to guard against; I want you to have such presence of mind that the thought of absolute truth shall so preoccupy you as to defy surprise and anticipate even the most hurried utterances.
“The incident is very trifling in itself; I have noticed it because I think I have observed on other occasions that, from a certain timidity of character, and an amiable desire not to give trouble, or make a fuss, as you call it (there, now, Mary, I am sure the medicine is nicely mixed—that spoonful of syrup ought to make it go down), you have evinced a disposition to say, from pure want of thinking, what is not precise truth. Weigh well, my dear girl, and ever act on, that precept of the Great Master, which, like all His precepts, is of deepest import, and, in spirit, of the utmost generality of application, ‘Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.’