"There now, go down to the
bottom of the class and try not to be so extremely truthful in future."
Then, turning to my father, he said, "I hate caning them, but it is the
only way to teach them. I really do believe that boy will know better
than to say what he thinks another time."
He repeated his question to the class, and the head-boy answered,
"Because, sir, extremes meet, and extreme truth will be mixed with
extreme falsehood."
"Quite right, my boy. Truth is like religion; it has only two
enemies--the too much and the too little. Your answer is more
satisfactory than some of your recent conduct had led me to expect."
"But, sir, you punished me only three weeks ago for telling you a lie."
"Oh yes; why, so I did; I had forgotten. But then you overdid it. Still
it was a step in the right direction."
"And now, my boy," he said to a very frank and ingenuous youth about half
way up the class, "and how is truth best reached?"
"Through the falling out of thieves, sir."
"Quite so. Then it will be necessary that the more earnest, careful,
patient, self-sacrificing, enquirers after truth should have a good deal
of the thief about them, though they are very honest people at the same
time. Now what does the man" (who on enquiry my father found to be none
other than Mr.
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