Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 March 1887 — LYING AS A HABIT. [ARTICLE]

LYING AS A HABIT.

The Career of Ananias, and How It Is Retarded. [London Saturday Review.] In Europe lying is considered on the whole "objectionable, and not to be practiced by any except politicians, travelers, and tlie newspaper people. Skilled wiinesses, of course, do not belong to nnv continent or climate. In the United States, on the contrary, lying is considered a gteat set-oil to conversation ; without it no one can aspiro to be considered better than a mere fossil ; it is the hunting-grbund .of the humorist, and the journalist occasionally makes a greaf hit by telling a plain, unvarnished tale. In Asia none but a rude, uneducated boor would ever think of telling ■ the truth. Lying is a sign of culture aud polite breeding, in Africa the natives are not yet Sufficiently civilized to have any definite notions on tlie subject. They are on the lotvest possible level. They lie or not, accordingly as they think it is to their advantage or the reverse. Rum and religion, Bibles and bayonets, have yet to do a great work before the poor African can rise to the dignity of forming a definite policy on tho matter. The Australians lean to the American side. In Europe Ananias is branded as a bad man; in America lie is a funny man; in Asia, where he is known, he would be canonized as the polished man; while in -Africa- Ire is no-better -mn*, worse -than—any man—Be is tlie mere average mortal ;he drifts with the tide of events, and is not worth making an occasional fetish of. On the whole, the career of Ananias must be considered a failure. Where he is known he is not respected, and where he might be respected he is not known. In Sunday-schools and in the pages of tracts he points a moral, but the position is inadequate to the tiesires of a true ambition, or the requirements of a discriminating philosophy. To sporting journals aud to the entire American press he is iu valuable, but this is unfeeling, thankless ground. He merely represents a record which no one is desirous to break. Not a man of those who cite him regards him with gratitude, not to speak of honest esteem. If Ananias had his rights he would occupy tm important-place among the Hindoos’ 1,000,000 gods. In China he would figure prominently among Confucian worthies. Ho ought, certainly, to be considered the particular deceased ancestor of tho Chinese and Indo-Chinese races. In cdliTcc-untries lying is charitably supposed to be the result of superabundance of imagination, of a misdirected energy of exaggeration, or of a careful anil judiejous spirit of economy, as in the case of the gentleman who had far too much regard for tho truth to be using it on every paltry occasion. In the East, however, whatever other exuberance there may be it is not that of imagination, and economy is far from being a leading characteristic. The profusion is, nevertheless, certainly not the truth. That commodity is econo-' mized down to the vanishing point. The Eastern statesman or diplomatist considers it beneath him, whether, from a professional or an aesthetic point of view. Any man can tell the truth. As an assertion of his superiority to the supposed average man it is therefore imperative "that he should tell lies. It is only when an oriental; leader has reached the level of absolute genius that lie ventures to state things as they really are. It is then extremely good policy, for no one believes him, and he attains his object much more easily and rapidly than he possibly could by an elaboration of misstatements. This measure is, however, only open to the most eminent, and therefore to the most practiced in the other thing, for a politician would very rapidly lose his reputation for good manners if he were commonly, or even on an appreciable percentage of occasions, to tell the truth. If it cannot be done without, it must be doled out in the most chary fashion, for the sake of good name and breeding. They all do it, down to the very lowest, with the utmost equanimity and zest, and they do it simply because they are incapable of doing anything else. When the Hindoo durzi, the household tailor, comes to the niemsahib‘ \vith a request for leave off account of the sudden and unexpected death of liis mother, the tenth time that that relative has expired within the year, it is not so much the Tack of inventive faculty that-is-present in him as the consciousness that it would be indelicate, not to say impertinent, to blurt out the real truth. Moreover, he knows that a refusal will give him an opening for loud demonstrations of woe which are likely to be effectual, and at any rate would not be justified by auy other plea for leave of absence. But it is far more often the desire to please - that leads to lying among the lower classes in the East, more especially in India. Tlie anxiety of the native to avoid in any way annoying any one of teg leads him to the most reckless statements. You are fagged after a long day’s shooting. You ask him how far it is to the nearest railway station or to the village where your tents are. He will answer with the utmost alacrity and sympathy tliat it is babul nazdik, quite close, and indicates the shortest way. When you have walked four or five miles, and have not arrived, you begin to realize the beauty of exactitude. You rail at the mild Hindoo, and. think that missionary labor is not so successful as it ought be. The fictions of the dak bungalow butler are too familiar to need more than an illusion. The “everything have got” which fillips your appetite after a long stage fades away through visions of beef and mutton to the inevitable murghi Still, the butler rejoices in the fact that he has pleased you with anticipations and kept up your hopes to the last moment. He is as invariable with his “everything have igot” as the household servant is with the death of his mother.