Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1885 — Saying and Doing. [ARTICLE]

Saying and Doing.

What is my opinion of saying and not doing ? It is a fault as universal as speech, , and it has done an incalculable amount of injury. The child learns it from its parents and hands it down to all posterity, so that it may be called an inherited blemish of character. The mother will tell her child she will do thus and thus if it does not do so and so, and the kid finds out, after one or two trials, that the mother is indulging in an allowable variety of mild lying, and, besides presuming upon that to do as it pleases, adopts it as a part of its early training, and in after years uses it as it has been taught to do. This habit has become so common among all classes that, in the rare cases where a person does or does not as he says once that he will, it is productive of all sorts of trouble. For instance, a man tells another that if he does not return promptly a certain sum of money he has borrowed, the will never let him have any mote. The borrower, presuming upon the universal practice, delays a day, or two or three, and comes up smiling, to make good the loan, for he is honest and will pay. He feels that he has done the fair thing, and is sure that the lender didn’t mean what he said, because nobody ever is that particular, etc. In a few days he may need another loan, and, of course, goes to. the same friend to procure it. Then the friend, doing what he has said plainly that he would, is roundly abused, not only by the bor- ’ rower but by the borrower’s friends, and the general opinion of all is that the lender should have impressed the borrower with the fact that he could get no money from him, and so prevented the poor borrower from getting into trouble.* All around in similar cases we hear the cry of those who are struck: “Yes, I know you said so, but I never thought you would do it. ” People make all sorts of threats about what they will or will not do, but those threatened laugh softly, and go right ahead, doing as they please; for they know that it will all end in mere talk, and it generally does. Even in ordinary every-day matters a person repeats a half-dozen or more times that he will do a thing, because he lacks confidence in himself, and he feels that he must brace up both sides by emphatic asseverations. Once saying a thing very seldom counts, and' it is usually given no attention. When the one-time-counts man does get a chance, though, and he stands fast to his word, he at once is given a character, and he is singled out from all his fellows as a person whom it will not do to fool with. He is not emphatic in words, but he is in action, and one act is worth more than a million words. The fault lies with parents, and if they taught their children the one-time theory, and brought them up to its practice, there would be more confidence among men, and the adage “his word is as good as his bond” would no longer be one of the landmarks of our language. As it now stands, one must go before a notary and make affidavit in order to properly emphasize his statements; in other words, people have become such spontaneous and handy liars that a fortysent affidavit is necessary to make them believed. Things have come to a pretty pass, indeed, under this rule of careless speech, and we need reform. P. 8. —I wish it understood by the readers of the foregoing that I have been duly sworn, and what I have said means business.—Mrs. Brown, in Merchant Traveler.