A little is added here or left out there to give the
story a more entertaining turn or the satire a keener point. As the
habit grows stronger, invention becomes more ready and copious, till at
length truth is covered up and lost under an accumulation of fiction.
There is a very common form of insincerity used by a class of
well-meaning but injudicious persons, who, rather than wound the
feelings of their friends, conceal the truth from them, sometimes by
prevarication and sometimes by positive falsehood; doing wrong, that, as
they imagine, good may come of it; as though an evil tree could by
any possibility bear good fruit.
Another class of persons converse as though the chief sin of
Conversation were the wounding the self-love of those to whom they
speak, by expressing any difference of opinion from them. Thus they
are continually temporizing, and often contradicting themselves, and
exhibiting a cowardly meanness of spirit, which is one of the most
contemptible of all the varied forms of duplicity.
There is a common form of embarrassment resulting in a hesitation of
speech, which often springs from a want of genuine sincerity. The
speaker is fancying what others will think of his remarks, instead of
fixing his mind entirely on the subject of discourse. In this divided
state, his mind loses half its power, and he utters himself in a manner
satisfactory neither to himself nor to his hearers.
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