He would not, with a peremptory tone,
Assert the nose upon his face his own;
With hesitation, admirably slow,
He humbly hopes—presumes—it may be so.”
I happened the other day to be travelling, in a first-class carriage, with half a dozen young people who were going to Hammersmith, to do a little boating on the Thames. One of the young men was smoking. Up comes the guard to the carriage door. “You are not in a smoking-compartment, sir,” said he to the young fellow, “and I see you are smoking.”
——“You make a mistake, I am not,” promptly replied my smoker, who had taken his pipe from his mouth at the approach of the guard, and was holding it out of sight.
He was right: while he was answering the guard, it was his pipe that was smoking, not he.
In a nation that boasts of its truthfulness, that punishes perjury with transportation, but which is not more virtuous than its neighbours, it was necessary to find avec le ciel des accommodements, and so white lies were invented: lies more or less innocent.
How many good Englishmen do I know who would not for the world say, “My God,” but who get over the difficulty by saying mon Dieu or mein Gott, as if the Deity only understood English!
But it is the Puritans that you should hear, if you would form an idea of the genius of the English language. Their phraseology hangs about their tongues like so much treacle.