MY FIRST LIE, AND HOW I GOT OUT OF IT
BY MARK TWAIN
As I understand it, what you desire is
information about "my first lie, and how
I got out of it." I was born in 1835; I
am well along, and my memory is not as
good as it was. If you had asked about
my first truth it would have been easier
for me and kinder of you, for I remember
that fairly well; I remember it as if
it were last week. The family think it
was week before, but that is flattery and
probably has a selfish project back of
it. When a person has become seasoned
by experience and has reached the age of
sixty-four, which is the age of discretion,
he likes a family compliment as well as
ever, but he does not lose his head over
it as in the old innocent days.
I do not remember my first lie, it is too
far back; but I remember my second one
very well. I was nine days old at the
time, and had noticed that if a pin was
sticking in me and I advertised it in
the usual fashion, I was lovingly petted
and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable
way and got a ration between meals besides.
It was human nature to want to get these
riches, and I fell. I lied about the
pin--advertising one when there wasn't
any. You would have done it; George
Washington did it, anybody would have
done it. During the first half of my
life I never knew a child that was able
to rise about that temptation and keep
from telling that lie. Up to 1867 all
the civilized children that were ever
born into the world were liars--including
George. Then the safety-pin came in and
blocked the game. But is that reform
worth anything? No; for it is reform by
force and has no virtue in it; it merely
stops that form of lying; it doesn't
impair the disposition to lie, by a
shade. It is the cradle application
of conversion by fire and sword, or of
the temperance principle through prohibition.
To return to that early lie. They found
no pin and they realized that another liar
had been added to the world's supply. For
by grace of a rare inspiration a quite
commonplace but seldom noticed fact was
borne in upon their understandings--that
almost all lies are acts, and speech has
no part in them. Then, if they examined
a little further they recognized that all
people are liars from the cradle onwards,
without exception, and that they begin to
lie as soon as they wake in the morning,
and keep it up, without rest or refreshment,
until they go to sleep at night. If they
arrived at that truth it probably grieved
them--did, if they had been heedlessly
and ignorantly educated by their books
and teachers; for why should a person
grieve over a thing which by the eternal
law of his make he cannot help? He didn't
invent the law; it is merely his business
to obey it and keep still; join the
universal conspiracy and keep so still
that he shall deceive his fellow-conspirators
into imagining that he doesn't know that
the law exists. It is what we all do--we
that know. I am speaking of the lie of
silent assertion; we can tell it without
saying a word, and we all do it--we that
know. In the magnitude of its territorial
spread it is one of the most majestic lies
that the civilizations make it their sacred
and anxious care to guard and watch and
propagate.
For instance: It would not be possible
for a humane and intelligent person to
invent a rational excuse for slavery; yet
you will remember that in the early days
of the emancipation agitation in the North,
the agitators got but small help or
countenance from any one. Argue and
plead and pray as they might, they could
not break the universal stillness that
reigned, from pulpit and press all the
way down to the bottom of society--the
clammy stillness created and maintained
by the lie of silent assertion--the silent
assertion that there wasn't anything
going on in which humane and intelligent
people were interested.
From the beginning of the Dreyfus case
to the end of it, all France, except a
couple of dozen moral paladins, lay under
the smother of the silent-assertion lie
that no wrong was being done to a persecuted
and unoffending man. The like smother
was over England lately, a good half of
the population silently letting on that
they were not aware that Mr. Chamberlain
was trying to manufacture a war in South
Africa and was willing to pay fancy prices
for the materials.
Now there we have instances of three
prominent ostensible civilizations
working the silent-assertion lie. Could
one find other instances in the three
countries? I think so. Not so very
many, perhaps, but say a billion--just
so as to keep within bounds. Are those
countries working that kind of lie, day
in and day out, in thousands and thousands
of varieties, without ever resting?
Yes, we know that to be true. The universal
conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie
is hard at work always and everywhere,
and always in the interest of a stupidity
or a sham, never in the interest of a
thing fine or respectable. Is it the
most timid and shabby of all lies? It
seems to have the look of it. For ages
and ages it has mutely laboured in the
interest of despotisms and aristocracies
and chattel slaveries, and military
slaveries, and religious slaveries, and
has kept them alive; keeps them alive
yet, here and there and yonder, all
about the globe; and will go on keeping
them alive until the silent-assertion
lie retires from business--the silent
assertion that nothing is going on
which fair and intelligent men are
aware of and are engaged by their duty
to try to stop.
What I am arriving at is this: When
whole races and peoples conspire to
propagate gigantic mute lies in the
interest of tyrannies and shams, why
should we care anything about the
trifling lies told by individuals?
Why should we try to make it appear
that abstention from lying is a virtue?
Why should we want to beguile ourselves
in that way? Why should we without
shame help the nation lie, and then
be ashamed to do a little lying on
our own account? Why shouldn't we
be honest and honorable, and lie every
time we get a chance? That is to
say, why shouldn't we be consistent,
and either lie all the time or not
at all? Why should we help the nation
lie the whole day long and then object
to telling one little individual
private lie in our own interest to
go to bed on? Just for the refreshment
of it, I mean, and to take the rancid
taste out of our mouth.
Here in England they have the oddest
ways. They won't tell a spoken
lie--nothing can persuade them.
Except in a large moral interest, like
politics or religion, I mean. To tell
a spoken lie to get even the poorest
little personal advantage out of it
is a thing which is impossible to them.
They make me ashamed of myself sometimes,
they are so bigoted. They will not
even tell a lie for the fun of it;
they will not tell it when it hasn't
even a suggestion of damage or advantage
in it for any one. This has a restraining
influence upon me in spite of reason,
and I am always getting out of practice.
Of course, they tell all sorts of
little unspoken lies, just like anybody;
but they don't notice it until their
attention is called to it. They have
got me so that sometimes I never tell
a verbal lie now except in a modified
form; and even in the modified form
they don't approve of it. Still, that
is as far as I can go in the interest
of the growing friendly relations
between the two countries; I must keep
some of my self-respect--and my health.
I can live on a low diet, but I can't
get along on no sustenance at all.
Of course, there are times when these
people have to come out with a spoken
lie, for that is a thing which happens
to everybody once in a while, and would
happen to the angels if they came down
here much. Particularly to the angels,
in fact, for the lies I speak of are
self-sacrificing ones told for a generous
object, not a mean one; but even when
these people tell a lie of that sort it
seems to scare them and unsettle their
minds. It is a wonderful thing to see,
and shows that they are all insane.
In fact, it is a country which is full
of the most interesting superstitions.
I have an English friend of twenty-five
years' standing, and yesterday when we
were coming down-town on top of the bus
I happened to tell him a lie--a modified
one, of course; a half-breed, a mulatto;
I can't seem to tell any other kind now,
the market is so flat. I was explaining
to him how I got out of an embarrassment
in Austria last year. I do not know
what might have become of me if I hadn't
happened to remember to tell the police
that I belonged to the same family as
the Prince of Wales. That made everything
pleasant, and they let me go; and apologized,
too, and were ever so kind and obliging
and polite, and couldn't do too much for
me, and explained how the mistake came
to be made, and promised to hang the
officer that did it, and hoped I would
let bygones be bygones and not say
anything about it; and I said they
could depend on me. My friend said,
austerely:
"You call it a modified lie? Where is
the modification?"
I explained that it lay in the form of
my statement to the police.
"I didn't say I belonged to the Royal
Family; I only said I belonged to the
same family as the Prince--meaning the
human family, of course; and if those
people had had any penetration they
would have known it. I can't go around
furnishing brains to the police; it is
not to be expected."
"How did you feel after that performance?"
"Well, of course I was distressed to
find that the police had misunderstood
me, but as long as I had not told any
lie I knew there was no occasion to sit
up nights and worry about it."
My friend struggled with the case several
minutes, turning it over and examining it
in his mind; then he said that so far as
he could see the modification was itself
a lie, being a misleading reservation of
an explanatory fact; so I had told two
lies instead of only one.
"I wouldn't have done it," said he: "I
have never told a lie, and I should be
very sorry to do such a thing."
Just then he lifted his hat and smiled a
basketful of surprised and delighted smiles
down at a gentleman who was passing in a
hansom.
"Who was that, G---?"
"I don't know."
"Then why did you do that?"
"Because I saw he thought he knew me
and was expecting it of me. If I hadn't
done it he would have been hurt. I
didn't want to embarrass him before
the whole street."
"Well, your heart was right, G---, and
your act was right. What you did was
kindly and courteous and beautiful; I
would have done it myself; but it was
a lie."
"A lie? I didn't say a word. How do
you make it out?"
"I know you didn't speak, still you
said to him very plainly and enthusiastically
in dumb show, 'Hello! you in town?
Awful glad to see you, old fellow; when
did you get back?' Concealed in your
actions was what you have called 'a
misleading reservation of an explanatory
fact'--the fact that you had never seen
him before. You expressed joy in
encountering him--a lie; and you made
that reservation--another lie. It was
my pair over again. But don't be
troubled--we all do it."
Two hours later, at dinner, when quite
other matters were being discussed, he
told how he happened along once just in
the nick of time to do a great service
for a family who were old friends of
his. The head of it had suddenly died
in circumstances and surroundings of a
ruinously disgraceful character. If
know, the facts would break the hearts
of the innocent family and put upon
them a load of unendurable shame.
There was no help but in a giant lie,
and he girded up his loins and told it.
"The family never found out, G---?"
"Never. In all these years they have never
suspected. They were proud of him, and
always had reason to be; they are proud
of him yet, and to them his memory is
sacred and stainless and beautiful."
"They had a narrow escape, G---."
"Indeed they had."
"For the very next man that came along
might have been one of these heartless and
shameless truth-mongers. You have told
the truth a million times in your life,
G---, but that one golden lie atones for
it all. Persevere."
Some may think me not strict enough in
my morals, but that position is hardly
tenable. There are many kinds of lying
which I do not approve. I do not like
an injurious lie, except when it injures
somebody else; and I do not like the lie
of bravado, nor the lie of virtuous
ecstasy: the latter was affected by
Bryant, the former by Carlyle.
Mr. Bryant said, "Truth crushed to earth
will rise again."
I have taken medals at thirteen world's
fairs, and may claim to be not without
capacity, but I never told as big a one
as that which Mr. Bryant was playing to
the gallery; we all do it. Carlyle
said, in substance, this--I do not
remember the exact words: "This gospel is
eternal--that a lie shall not live." I
have a reverent affection for Carlyle's
books, and have read his Revolution
eight times; and so I prefer to think he
was not entirely at himself when he told
that one. To me it is plain that he said
it in a moment of excitement, when chasing
Americans out of his back yard with brickbats.
They used to go there and worship. At
bottom he was probably fond of them, but
he was always able to conceal it. He
kept bricks for them, but he was not a
good shot, and it is matter of history
that when he fired they dodged, and carried
off the brick; for as a nation we like
relics, and so long as we get them we do
not much care what the reliquary thinks
about it. I am quite sure that when he
told that large one about a lie not being
able to live, he had just missed an
American and was over-excited. He told
it above thirty years ago, but it is alive
yet; alive, and very healthy and hearty,
and likely to outlive any fact in history.
Carlyle was truthful when calm, but give
him Americans enough and bricks enough
and he could have taken medals himself.
As regards that time that George Washington
told the truth, a word must be said, of
course. It is the principal jewel in the
crown of America, and it is but natural
that we should work it for all it is worth,
as Milton says in his "Lay of the Last
Minstrel." It was a timely and judicious
truth, and I should have told it myself
in the circumstances. But I should have
stopped there. It was a stately truth, a
lofty truth--a Tower; and I think it was
a mistake to go on and distract attention
from its sublimity by building another
Tower alongside of it fourteen times as
high. I refer to his remark that he
"could not lie." I should have fed that
to the marines; or left it to Carlyle;
it is just in his style. It would have
taken a medal at any European fair, and
would have got an Honorable Mention even
at Chicago if it had been saved up. But
let it pass: the Father of his Country
was excited. I have been in those
circumstances, and I recollect.
With the truth he told I have no objection
to offer, as already indicated. I think
it was not premeditated but an inspiration.
With his fine military mind, he had
probably arranged to let his brother Edward
in for the cherry-tree results, but by an
inspiration he saw his opportunity in time
and took advantage of it. By telling the
truth he could astonish his father; his
father would tell the neighbors; the
neighbors would spread it; it would
travel to all firesides; in the end it
would make him President, and not only
that, but First President. He was a
far-seeing boy and would be likely to
think of these things. Therefore, to my
mind, he stands justified for what he did.
But not for the other Tower: it was a
mistake. Still, I don't know about that;
upon reflection I think perhaps it wasn't.
For indeed it is that Tower that makes
the other one live. If he hadn't said
"I cannot tell a lie" there would have
been no convulsion. That was the earthquake
that rocked the planet. That is the
kind of statement that lives forever,
and a fact barnacled to it has a good
chance to share its immortality.
To sum up, on the whole I am satisfied
with things the way they are. There is
a prejudice against the spoken lie, but
none against any other, and by examination
and mathematical computation I find that
the proportion of the spoken lie to the
other varieties is as 1 to 22,894. Therefore
the spoken lie is of no consequence, and
it is not worth while to go around fussing
about it and trying to make believe that
it is an important matter. The silent
colossal National Lie that is the support
and confederate of all the tyrannies and
shams and inequalities and unfairnesses
that afflict the peoples--that is the one
to throw bricks and sermons at. But let
us be judicious and let somebody else
begin.
And then--But I have wandered from my text.
How did I get out of my second lie? I
think I got out with honor, but I cannot
be sure, for it was a long time ago and
some of the details have faded out of my
memory. I recollect that I was reversed
and stretched across some one's knee, and
that something happened, but I cannot now
remember what it was. I think there was
music; but it is all dim now and blurred
by the lapse of time, and this may be only
a senile fancy.
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