Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/833

Rh So much as to the several manners and circumstances of childish lying. In order to understand still better what it amounts to, how much of conscious falsehood enters into it, we must glance at another and closely related phenomenon—the pain which sometimes attends and follows it.

There is no doubt that a certain number of children experience qualms of conscience in uttering falsehood. This is evidenced in the well-known devices by which the intelligence of the child thinks to mitigate the lie, as when on saying what he knows to be false he adds mentally, "I do not mean it," "in my mind," or some similar palliative. Such dodges show a measure of sensibility—a hardened liar would despise the shifts—and are curious as illustrations of the childish conscience and its unlearned casuistry.

The remorse that sometimes follows lying, especially the first lie which catches the conscience at its tenderest, has been remembered by many in later life. Here is a case: A lady friend remembers that when a child of four she had to wear a shade over her eyes. One day, on walking out with her mother, she was looking, child-wise, sideward instead of in front, and nearly struck a lamp-post. Her mother then scolded her, but presently, remembering the eyes, said, "Poor child, you could not see well." She knew that this was not the reason, but she accepted it, and for long afterward was tormented with a sense of having told a lie. Miss Wiltse, who tells the story of the mythical snake, gives another recollection which illustrates the keen suffering of a child when it becomes fully conscious of falsehood. She was as a small child very fond of babies, and had been permitted by her mother to go, when invited by her aunt, to nurse a baby cousin. One day, wanting much to go when not invited, she boldly invented, saying that her aunt was busy and had asked her to spend an hour with the baby. "I went," she adds, "not to the baby, but by a circuitous route to my father's barn, crept behind one of the great doors, which I drew as close to me as I could, vainly wishing that the barn and the haystacks would cover me; then I cried and moaned I do not know how many hours, and when I went to bed I said my prayers between sobs, refusing to tell my mother why I wept."

Such examples of remorse are evidence of a child's capability of knowingly stating what is false. This is strikingly shown in Miss Wiltse's two reminiscences, for she distinctly tells us that in the case of her confident assertion about the imaginary snake with ring and bell she felt no remorse, as she was not conscious of uttering a lie. But these sufferings of conscience point