Life and Literature Part 141

1965

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.

1966

To love truth for truth's sake, is the princ.i.p.al part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

--_Locke._

1967

Truth, when not sought after, sometimes comes to light.

--_Menander._

1968

A thousand probabilities don't make one truth.

1969

TRUE TO TRUTH.

In an Eastern land a boy once set out from his mother's home for a distant city, where he was to begin life and earn his livelihood. Before parting with him, his mother gave him forty gold dinars, which, for safety, she sewed inside his waistcoat. Her last counsel to him was, to seek and to follow always the truth. On his way he had to cross part of a desert, infested by robbers. One of these saw him and came galloping up "Boy, what money have you got?" he sternly demanded. The boy looked up at him, and said, "I have forty gold dinars sewed up in my waistcoat." The robber burst into a fit of laughter; he thought the boy was joking. And, turning his horse, he galloped back to his troop.

By-and-by, another horseman rode up to the boy as he trudged on, and made the same demand: "Boy, what have you got?" "Forty gold dinars, sewed up in my waistcoat," said the boy again. This robber, too, burst out laughing, and turned away, thinking the boy was making fun of him.

They had some talk in their band about the boy's strange reply. Their leader turning it over in his mind, said he would like to see him, and, leaving the troop, soon overtook the young traveler. He put the same question as the others, and again the boy gave the same answer. The captain leapt off his horse, and began to feel the boy's clothes, till he counted--one, two, three--the forty gold dinars just as he had been told. "What made you tell the truth, my boy?" he asked. "My G.o.d and my mother, sir," was the reply. "Wait for me here a little," said the captain, and galloped back to his troop. In a few minutes he returned, but so changed that the boy hardly knew him. By removing a false beard and other disguises, his appearance was quite altered. "Come with me, my lad," he said; and he pointed to the spires of a distant city. "I cannot go with you," said the boy; "you are a robber!" "I was," the man said, "but all that is over now! I have given it up forever. I have a large business in yonder city, and I wish you to come with me and share it."

And so they went on together; and when they arrived at the city the boy entered his employment, and ultimately became very wealthy and influential.

1970

My aim is not so much to say things that are new, as things that are true.

1971

TRUTH.

Seize upon the truth, where'er 'tis found, Among your friends, among your foes, On Christian or on heathen ground, The flower's divine, where'er it grows.

1972

Better suffer for truth, than profit by falsehood.

--_From the Danish._

1973

A TOUCHING SCENE AT SEA.

Two weeks ago on board an English steamer, a little ragged boy, aged nine years, was discovered on the fourth day of the voyage out from Liverpool to New York, and carried before the first mate, whose duty it was to deal with such cases. When questioned as to his object of being stowed away, and who brought him on board, the boy, who had a beautiful sunny face, and eyes that looked like the very mirrors of truth, replied that his step-father did it, because he could not afford to keep him, nor pay his pa.s.sage out to Halifax, where he had an aunt who was well off, and to whose house he was going. The mate did not believe the story, in spite of the winning face and truthful accents of the boy. He had seen too much of stow-aways to be easily deceived by them, he said; and it was his firm conviction that the boy had been brought on board and provided with food by the sailors. The little fellow was very roughly handled in consequence. Day by day he was questioned and re-questioned, but always with the same result. He did not know a sailor on board, and his father alone had secreted him and given him the food which he ate. At last the mate, wearied by the boy's persistence in the same story, and perhaps a little anxious to inculpate the sailors, seized him one day by the collar, and, dragging him to the fore, told him that unless he would tell the truth in ten minutes from that time, he would hang him from the yard-arm. He then made him sit down under it on the deck. All around him were the pa.s.sengers and sailors of the midway watch, and in front of him stood the inexorable mate, with his chronometer in his hand, and the other officers of the s.h.i.+p by his side.

It was the finest sight, said our informant, that he ever beheld--to see the pale, proud, sorrowful face of that n.o.ble boy, his head erect, his beautiful blue eyes bright through the tears that suffused them. When eight minutes had fled, the mate told him he had but two minutes to live, and advised him to speak the truth and save his life; but he replied with the utmost simplicity and sincerity by asking the mate if he might pray. The mate said nothing, but nodded his head and turned deadly pale, and shook with trembling like a reed with the wind, and there, all eyes turned on him, the brave and n.o.ble little fellow, this poor waif, whom society owned not, and whose own step-father could not care for him--there he knelt, with clasped hands, and eyes turned to heaven, while he repeated audibly the Lord's prayer, and prayed the Lord Jesus to take him to heaven. Sobs broke from strong, hard hearts, as the mate sprang forward to the boy, and clasped him to his bosom, and kissed him and blessed him, and told him how sincerely he believed his story, and how glad he was that he had been brave enough to face death and be willing to sacrifice his life for the truth of his word.

--_E. Davies._

1974

He who does not fully speak the truth is a traitor to it.

--_From the Latin._

1975

REWARD OF TRUTHFULNESS.

When Aristotle, the Grecian philosopher, who was tutor to Alexander the Great, was asked what a man could gain by uttering falsehoods, he replied, "Not to be credited when he shall tell the truth." On the other hand, it is related that when Petrarch, the Italian poet, a man of strict integrity, was summoned as a witness, and offered in the usual manner to take an oath before a court of justice, the judge closed the book, saying, "As to you, Petrarch, your _word_ is sufficient."

1976

Nature hath appointed the twilight as a bridge to pa.s.s us out of night into day.

--_Fuller._

U

1977

The unexpected often happens.

1978

The unfinished is nothing.