taining praise. There is but one thing we can say—that in common kindness, in Christian charity, her education should be studiously rendered such as to strengthen her under this weakness, not to involve her more deeply in its worst consequences—the loss of her integrity.
Few persons are aware, until they have entered into a full and candid examination of this subject, how very minute, and apparently insignificant, are those beginnings, from whence flow some of the deepest channels of deception. Falsehood makes a serious beginning at school, when the master helps out a drawing, and the pupil obtains the praise, as if the whole work was her own. The master has most probably added only a few effective touches, so extremely small as not to be detected by an unpractised eye; and while the proud and triumphant mother exhibits the drawing to her flattering friends, it would be difficult indeed for the little girl to say it was not her own doing, because all the patience, all the labour, and a great deal of the merit, were unquestionably hers. Yet, to let it pass with these unqualified commendations bestowed upon her as the author, is a species of lying to God. Her young heart knows it to be so, and she feels either humbled, or confirmed in the deception. Happy! thrice happy, if it be the former!
Nor is home-education by any means exempt from its temptations to falsehood. There are many little deceptions practised upon unsuspecting mothers and absent fathers, which stain the page of youthful experience, and lead to farther and more skilful practice in the school of deception. There are stolen sweets, whose bitter fruit has been deliberate falsehood ; excuses made, and perhaps wholly believed, which were perhaps only half true; and sly thefts committed upon household property, to serve a selfish end; all which have had a degrading effect upon
