After the person who made the inquiry had gone, I
exclaimed, with horrified wonder, "How could you?"
Her reply was, "Oh, I only kind of said no." What a real lie was
to her, if she understood a distinct denial of the truth as only
"kind-of" lying, it perplexed me to imagine. The years proved
that this lack of moral perception was characteristic, and nearly
spoiled a nature full of beautiful gifts.
I could not deliberately lie, but I had my own temptations, which
I did not always successfully resist. I remember the very spot--
in a footpath through a green field--where I first met the Eighth
Commandment, and felt it looking me full in the face.
I suppose I was five or six years old. I had begun to be trusted
with errands; one of them was to go to a farmhouse for a quart of
milk every morning, to purchase which I went always to the money-
drawer in the shop and took out four cents. We were allowed to
take a "small brown" biscuit, or a date, or a fig, or a "gibral-
tar," sometimes; but we well understood that we could not help
ourselves to money.
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