Does the child never break anything by accident?"
"Yes," said the father.
"And you have duly punished her for it?"
"Alas! sir, I fear I only told her she was a naughty girl, and must not
do it again."
"Then how can you expect your child to learn those petty arts of
deception without which she must fall an easy prey to any one who wishes
to deceive her? How can she detect lying in other people unless she has
had some experience of it in her own practice? How, again, can she learn
when it will be well for her to lie, and when to refrain from doing so,
unless she has made many a mistake on a small scale while at an age when
mistakes do not greatly matter? The Sunchild (and here he reverently
raised his hat), as you may read in chapter thirty-one of his Sayings,
has left us a touching tale of a little boy, who, having cut down an
apple tree in his father's garden, lamented his inability to tell a lie.
Some commentators, indeed, have held that the evidence was so strongly
against the boy that no lie would have been of any use to him, and that
his perception of this fact was all that he intended to convey; but the
best authorities take his simple words, 'I cannot tell a lie,' in their
most natural sense, as being his expression of regret at the way in which
his education had been neglected.
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