Even in sermons--but that is a
platitude.
In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around paying
calls, under the humane and kindly pretense of wanting to see each other;
and when they returned home, they would cry out with a glad voice,
saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out"--not
meaning that they found out anything against the fourteen--no, that was
only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home--and their
manner of saying it--expressed their lively satisfaction in that fact.
Now, their pretense of wanting to see the fourteen--and the other two
whom they had been less lucky with--was that commonest and mildest form
of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflection from the truth.
Is it justifiable? Most certainly. It is beautiful, it is noble; for
its object is, not to reap profit, but to convey a pleasure to the
sixteen. The iron-souled truth-monger would plainly manifest, or even
utter the fact, that he didn't want to see those people--and he would be
an ass, and inflict a totally unnecessary pain.
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