“I don’t want them, then,” she answered shortly. “If you can’t recommend them yourself, they won’t suit me.” A moment later she opened the window to speak to him on the sidewalk. “You may come to-morrow, tho, or the next time that you do have nice ones. It’s something to be able to trust you to tell the truth about them.”—Selected.
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Trustworthiness, Human—See [Confidence in Men].
Truth—See [Lying].
TRUTH AND CRITICISM
Once Mr. Beecher, preaching on war, and the tax burden, spoke of Russia as having a standing army of fifteen hundred billions. One hearer laughed, Mr. Beecher grew red, stamped on the floor, and exclaimed, “I say Russia has fifteen hundred billions of men in her standing army”—that settled it! Well, but Mr. Beecher’s error in mathematics did not invalidate his arguments for patriotism, or duty, or home, or the love of God; nor need you be disturbed by the geology or astronomy or history of the Old Testament.—N. D. Hillis.
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TRUTH FATAL
Of the great caution with which truth must often be handled, I can not give you a better illustration than the following from my own experience. A young man, accompanied by his young wife, came from a distant place, and sent for me to see him at his hotel. He wanted his chest examined, he told me. Did he wish to be informed of what I might discover? He did. I made the ante mortem autopsy desired. Tubercles; cavities; disease in full blast; death waiting at the door. I did not say this, of course, but waited for his question. “Are there any tubercles?” he asked presently. “Yes, there are.” There was silence for a brief space, and then like Esau, he lifted up his voice and wept; he cried with a great and exceedingly bitter cry, and then the twain, husband and wife, with loud ululation and passionate wringing of hands, shrieked in wild chorus like the keeners of an Irish funeral, and would not be soothed or comforted. The fool! He had brought a letter from his physician, warning me not to give an opinion to the patient himself, but to write it to him, the medical adviser, and this letter the patient had kept back, determined to have my opinion from my own lips, not doubting that it would be favorable. In six weeks he was dead, and I never questioned that his own folly and my telling him the naked truth killed him before his time.
Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid. An old gentleman was sitting at a table when the news that Napoleon had returned from Elba was told him. He started up, repeated a line from a French play, which may be thus Englished: