 On the Decay of the Art of Lying by Mark Twain This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Chilly von Wallachem On the Decay of the Art of Lying by Mark Twain Essay for discussion, read at the meeting of the historical and Anticarian Club of Hartford and offered for the $30 price. Did not take the price. Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption. No. For the lie as a virtue, a principle is eternal. The lie as a recreation, a solace, a refuge and time of need, the fourth grace, the tenth mute, man's best and surest friend is immortal and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains. My complaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this theme with diffidence. It is like an old maid trying to teach nursery matters to the mothers in Israel. It would not become to me to criticise you, gentlemen, who are nearly all my elders and my superiors in this thing. If I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it will in most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than thought-finding. Indeed, if this finest of the fine art had everywhere received the attention, the encouragement and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament or shred a single tear. I do not say this to flatter. I say it in a spirit of just and depreciative recognition. It had been my intention at this point to mention names and to give illustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonished me to beware of the particulars and confine myself to generalities. No fact is more firmly established than that lying is necessity of our circumstances. The deduction that it is in then a virtue goes without saying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful and diligent cultivation. Therefore it goes without saying that this one ought to be taught in the public schools, even in the newspapers. What chance has in the ignorant uncultivated liar against the educated expert? What chance have I against the lawyer? Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it were even better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. An awkward and scientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth. Now let us see what a philosopher say. Note that a venerable proverb, children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction is plain, adults and wise persons never speak it. Parkman the historian says, the principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity. In another place in the same chapters he says, The saying is old that truth should not be spoken at all times and those whom a sick conscience worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbeciles and nuisances. It is strong language but true, none of us could live with an habitual truth teller. Thank goodness none of us has to. A habitual truth teller is simply an impossible creature. He does not exist, he never has existed. Of course there are people who think they never lie but it is not so and this ignorance is one of the very things that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody lies, every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception and purposely, even in sermons, but that is a platitude. In a far country where ones lived, the ladies used to go around paying calls and the humane and kindly pretense of wanting to see each other and when they returned home they would cry out with a glad voice saying we made sixteen calls and found fourteen of them out. Not meaning that they found out anything important against the fourteen. No, that was only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not at home and their manner of saying it expressed the lively satisfaction in that fact. Now their pretense of wanting to see the fourteen and the other two whom they had been less lucky with was that commonest and mildest form of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflection from the truth. Is it justifiable? Most certainly. It is beautiful. It is noble. For its object is not to reprofit but to convey a pleasure to the sixteen. The iron-sword truth-monger would plainly manifest or even utter the fact that he didn't want to see those people and he would be an ass and inflict totally unnecessary pain. And next, those ladies in that far country, but never mind, they had a thousand pleasant ways of lying that grew out of gentle impulses and were accredited to their intelligence and none to their hearts. Let the particulars go. The men in that far country were liars, everyone. Their mere how-did-do was a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they were undertakers. To the ordinary inquire you lied in return, for you made no conscientious diagnostic of your case, but answered at random and usually missed it considerably. You lied to the undertaker and said that your health was failing, a wholly commendable lie since it cost you nothing and pleased the other man. If a stranger called and interrupted you, you said with your hearty tongue, I'm glad to see you, and said with your heartiest soul, I wish you were with the cannibals and it was dinnertime. When he went, you said regretfully, must you go and followed it with a call again, but you did no harm, for you did not deceive anybody nor inflict any hurt, whereas the truth would have made you both unhappy. I think that all this gorgeous lying is a sweet and loving art and should be cultivated. The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice built from the base to the dome of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying. What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth. Let us do what we can to eradicate it. An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks an injurious truth lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth a saving. The man who tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble is one of whom the angels doubtless say, Lo, here is a heroic soul who casts his own welfare in jeopardy to suck his nameers. Let us exorve this magnanimous liar. An injurious lie is an incommendable thing, and so also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth, a fact that is recognized by the law of libel. Among other common lies we have the silent lie, the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie they lie not at all. In that far country where one's lived there was a lovely spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high and pure and whose character answered to them. One day I was there at dinner and remarked in a general way that we are all liars. She was amazed and said, Not all? It was before Pinafore's time, so I did not make the response which would naturally follow in our day, but frankly said, Yes, all. We are all liars. There are no exceptions. She looked almost offended. Why? Do you include me? Certainly, I said. I think you even rank as an expert. She said, The children. So the subject was changed in difference to the children's presence and who went on talking about other things. But as soon as the young people were out of the way the lady came warmly back to the matter and said, I have made a rule of my life to never tell a lie and I have never departed from it in a single instance. I said, I don't mean the least harm or disrespect, but really you have been lying like smoke ever since I've been sitting here. It has caused me a good deal of pain because I'm not used to it. She required of me an instance just a single instance. So I said, Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank which the Oakland Hospital people sent to you by the hand of the sick nurse when she came here to nurse your little nephew through his dangerous illness. This blank asks all manner of questions as to the conduct of that sick nurse. Did she ever sleep on a watch? Did she ever forget to give the medicine? Answer forth and so on. You are warned to be very careful and explicitly in your answers for the welfare of the service requires that the nurses be promptly fined or otherwise punished for dereliction. You told me you were perfectly delighted with this nurse that she had a thousand perfections and only one fault. You found you never could depend on a wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently while he waited in a chilly chair for her to rearrange the warm bed. You filled up the duplicate of this paper and sent it back to the hospital by the hand of the nurse. How did you answer this question? Was the nurse at any time guilty of a negligence which was likely to result in the patients taking cold? Come, everything is decided by bed here in California. Ten dollars to ten cents you lied when you answered that question. She said, I didn't. I left it blank. Just so, you have told a silent lie. You have left it to be inferred that you had no fault defined in that matter. She said, oh, was it that a lie? And how could I mention her one single fault and she is so good it would have been cruel? I said, one ought always to lie when one can do good by it. Your impulse was right, but your judgment was crude. This comes of an intelligent practice. Now observe the results of this inexpertory deflection of yours. You know Mr. Jones Willie is lying very low with scarlet fever. Well, your recommendation was so enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him and the worn out family have all been trustingly sound asleep for the last fourteen hours leaving their darling with full confidence in those fatal hands because you, like young George Washington, have a repute. However, if you are not going to have anything to do I will come around tomorrow and we'll attend the funeral together for, of course, you'll naturally feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case as personal one in fact as in The Undertaker. But that was not all lost. Before I was halfway through the carriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones Mansion to save what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadly nurse all of which was a necessary as Willie wasn't sick. I had been lying myself. But that same day all the same she sent a line to the hospital which filled up the neglected blank and stated the facts too in the squarist possible manner. Now you see this lady's fault was not in lying but in lying injudiciously. She should have told the truth there and made it up to the nurse with the fraudulent compliment further along in the paper. She could have said, in one respect this sickness is perfection. When she is on the watch she never snores. Almost any little present lie would have taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary expression of the truth. Lying is universal. We all do it. Therefore the wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully judiciously. To lie with a good object and not an evil one. To lie for others' advantage and not our own. To lie healingly, geritably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously. To lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily. To lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect. Not haltingly, torturously, with putilanimous mean as being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid of the rank and pestilent truth that is rotting the land. Then shall we be great and good and beautiful and worthy dwellers in a world where even benign nature habitually lies except when she promises execrable weather. Then, but am I but a new and feeble student and this gracious aunt, I cannot instruct this club. Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise examination into what sorts of lies are best and wholesome as to be indulged, seeing we must all lie and we do all lie and what sorts it may be best to avoid and this is a thing which I feel I can confidently put into the hands of this experienced club, a right body who may be termed in this regard and without undue flattery, old masters. End of On the Decay of the Art of Lying by Mark Twain. This is a LibriVox recording and all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, more LibriVox recordings or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This recording read for you by Perry Clayton. Punch Brothers Punch by Mark Twain. Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following lines and see if he can discover anything harmful in them? Conductor, when you receive a fare, punch in the presence of the passenger, a blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare, punch in the presence of the passenger. Punch Brothers Punch with Care Punch in the presence of the passenger. I came across these jingling rhymes in a newspaper a while ago and read them a couple of times. They took instant and entire possession of me. All through breakfast they went waltzing through my brain and when at last I rolled up my napkin I could not tell whether I had eaten or not. I had carefully laid out my day's work the day before, thrilling tragedy in the novel which I am writing. I went to my den to begin my deed of blood. I took up my pen, but all I could get it to say was punch in the presence of the passenger. I fought hard for an hour, but it was useless. My head kept humming. A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, and so on and so on without peace or respite. The day's work was ruined. I could see that plainly enough. I gave up and drifted downtown and presently discovered that my feet were keeping time to that relentless jingle. When I could stand it no longer I altered my step, but it did no good. Those rhymes accommodated themselves to the new step and went on harassing me just as before. I returned home and suffered all the afternoon, suffered all through an unconscious and unrefreshing dinner, suffered and cried and jingled all through the evening, bed and rolled, tossed and jingled right along the same as ever. Got up at midnight frantic and tried to read, but there was nothing visible upon the whirling page except punch, punch in the presence of the passenger. By sunrise I was out of my mind, and everybody marveled and was distressed at the idiotic burden of my ravings. Punch, oh punch, punch in the presence of the passenger. Two days later, on a Saturday morning, I arose a tottering wreck and went forth to fulfill an engagement with a valued friend, the Reverend, to walk to Talcott Tower ten miles distance. He stared at me, but asked no questions. We started. The Reverend talked, talked, talked as is his want. I said nothing, I heard nothing. At the end of a mile the Reverend said, Mark, are you sick? I never saw a man look so haggard and worn and absent-minded. Say something, do. Jurally, without enthusiasm, I said, Punch, brothers, punch with care. Punch in the presence of the passenger. My friend eyed me blankly, looked perplexed, and then said, I do not think I get your drift, Mark. There does not seem to be any relevancy in what you have said. Certainly nothing sad, and yet maybe it was the way you said the words. I never heard anything that sounded so pathetic. What is—but I heard no more. I was already far away in my pitiless, heartbreaking blue-trip slip for an eight-cent fare, buff-trip slip for a six-cent fare, peak-trip slip for a three-cent fare, Punch in the presence of the passenger. I do not know what occurred during the other nine miles. However, all of a sudden the Reverend laid his hand on my shoulder and shouted, Oh, wake up, wake up, wake up, don't sleep all day. Here we are at the tower, man. I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind and never got a response. Just look at this magnificent autumn landscape. Look at it, look at it. Feast your eye on it. You have traveled. You have seen boasted landscapes elsewhere. Come now, deliver an honest opinion. What do you say to this? I sighed wearily and murmured. A buff-trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink-trip slip for a three-cent fare, Punch in the presence of the passenger. The Reverend stood there very grave, full of concern, apparently, and looked along at me. And then he said, Mark, there is something about this that I cannot understand. Those are about the same words you said before. There does not seem to be anything in them, and yet they nearly break my heart when you say them. Punch in the—how does it go again? I began at the beginning and repeated all the lines. My friend's face lighted with interest. He said, Why, what a captivating jingle it is. It is almost music. It flows along so nicely. I have nearly caught the rhymes myself. Say them over just once more, then I will have them sure. I said them over. Then the Reverend said them. He made one little mistake, which I corrected. The next time and the next he got them right. Now a great burden seemed to tumble from my shoulders. That torturing jingle departed out of my brain, and a grateful sense of rest and peace descended upon me. I was light-hearted enough to sing, and I did sing for half an hour straight along as we went jogging homeward. Then my freed tongue found blessed speech again, and the pent-up talk of many a weary hour began to gush and flow. It flowed on and on joyously, jubilantly until the fountain was empty and dry. As I rung my friend's hand at parting, I said, Haven't we had a royal good time? But now I remember you haven't said a word for two hours. Come. Come out with something. The Reverend turned a lackluster eye upon me, drew a deep sigh, and said, without animation, without apparent consciousness, punch brothers, punch with care, punch in the presence of the passenger. A pang shot through me as I said to myself, poor fellow, poor fellow, he's got it now. I did not see the Reverend for two or three days after that. Then on Tuesday evening he staggered into my presence and sank dejectedly into a seat. He was pale, worn. He was a wreck. He lifted his faded eyes to my face and said, Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartless rhymes. They have ridden me like a nightmare day and night. Hour after hour to this very moment. Since I saw you I have suffered the torments of the lost. Saturday evening I had a sudden call by telegraph and I took the night train for Boston. The occasion was the death of a valued old friend who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon. I took my seat in the car and set myself to framing the discourse. But I never got beyond the opening paragraph. For then the train started and the car wheels begin there. Clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. And right away those odious rhymes fitted themselves to that accompaniment. For an hour I sat there and I set a syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clack the car wheels made. While I was fagged out then as if I had been chopping wood all day. My skull was splitting with headache. It seemed to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer. So I undressed and went to bed. I stretched myself out in my berth and, well, you know what the result was. The thing went right along just the same. Clack, clack, clack, a blue trip slip. Clack, clack, clack, for an eight cent fare. Clack, clack, clack, above trip slip. Clack, clack, clack, for a six cent fare. And so on and so on and so on and punching the prisons of the passenger. Sleep? Not a single wink. I was almost a lunatic when I got to Boston. Don't ask me about the funeral. I did the best I could, but every solemn individual's sentence was meshed and tangled and woven in and out with punch brothers, punch with care, punch in the prisons of the passenger. And the most distressing thing was that my delivery dropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing rhymes and I could actually catch absentminded people nodding time to the swing of it with their stupid heads. And, Mark, you may believe it or not, but before I got through, the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing their heads in solemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all. The moment I had finished I fled to the anti-room in a state bordering on Frenzy. Of course it would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of the deceased there who had arrived from Springfield too late to get into the church. She began to sob and said, Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone. I did not see him before he died. Yes, I said, he is gone, he is gone, he is gone. Oh, will the suffering never cease? You loved him too, then? Oh, you too loved him? Loved him, loved who? Why, my poor George, my poor nephew, oh, him, yes, oh, yes, yes, certainly, certainly, punch, punch, oh, the misery, will kill me. Lest you, lest you, sir, for these sweet words, I too suffer in this dear loss, were you present during his last moments? Yes, I, whose last moments? His, the dear departed's. Yes, oh, yes, yes, yes, I suppose so, I think so, I don't know, certainly, I was there, I was there. Oh, what a privilege, what a precious privilege and his last words, oh, tell me, tell me his last words, what did he say? He said, he said, oh, my head, my head, my head, he said, he said, he never said anything, but punch, punch, punch, punch, in the presence of the passenger, oh, leave me, madam, in the name of all that is generous, leave me to my madness, my misery, my despair, about a trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare, endurance can no further go, punch in the presence of the passenger. My friend's hopeless eyes rested upon mine for a pregnant minute, and then he said impressively, Mark, you do not say anything, you do not offer me any hope, but ah, me, it is just as well, it is just as well, you could not do me any good, the time has long gone by which words could comfort me, something tells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that remorseless jingle, there, there it is coming on me again, a blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a thus murmuring faint and fainter, my friend sank into a peaceful trance and forgot his sufferings in a blessed respite. How did I finally save him from an asylum? I took him to a neighboring university and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymes into the eager ears of the poor unthinking students. How is it with them now? The result is too sad to tell. Why did I write this article? It is for a worthy, even a noble purpose. It was to warn you, reader, if you should come across those merciless rhymes to avoid them. Avoid them as you would a pestilence. End of Punch Brothers Punch by Mark Twain. Read by Perry Clayton.