Illustrations of Lying in All Its Branches

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAP. V. LIES OF FEAR. I Once believed that the lie of fear was confined to the low and uneducated of both sexes, and to children; but further reflection and observation have convinced me that this is by no means the case; but that, as' this lie springs from the want of moral courage, and as this defect is by no means confined to any class or age, the result of it, that fear of man which prompts to the lie of fear, must be universal also; though the nature of the dread may be various, and of different degrees of strength. For instance; a child or a servant (of course I speak of ill-educated children) breaks a toy or a glass, and denies having done so. Acquaintances forget to execute commissions intrusted to them ; and either say that they are executed, when they are not, or make some false excuses for an o