It's very discouraging to find that when you are straining every

nerve to tell the truth, that people do not believe you, and fancy that you

are exaggerating. It makes you feel inclined to go and exaggerate on

purpose, just to show them the difference. I know I often feel tempted to do so myself: it is my early training that saves me.

We should always be very careful never to give way to exaggeration; it is a habit that grows upon one.

And it is such a vulgar habit too. In the old tomes when poets and dry-goods salesmen were the only people who exaggerated, there was something clever and distingue about a reputation for "a tendency to over- rather than to under-estimate the mere bald facts." But everybody exaggerates now-a-days. The art of exaggeration is no longer regarded as "extra" in the modern bill of education; it is an essential requirement, held to be most needful for the battle of life.

The whole world exaggerates. It exaggerates everything, from, the yearly number of bicycles sold, to the yearly number of heathens converted 0 into the hope of Salvation and more whisky. Exaggeration is the basis of our trade, the fallow-field of our art and literature, the groundworkof our social life, the foundation of our political existence. As schoolboys, we exaggerate our fights and our marks and our father's debts. As men we exaggerate our wares, we exaggerate our feelings, we exaggerate our incomes - except to the tax-collector, and to him we exaggerate our "outgoings", - we exaggerateour virtues; we even exaggerate our vices, and, being in reality the mildest men, pretend we are being dare-devil scamps.

We have sunk so low that we try to act our exaggerations, and to live up to our lies. We call it "keeping appearances"; and no more bitter phrase could, perhaps, have been invented to describe our childish folly.

If we possess a hundred pounds a year, do we not call it to? Or larder may be low and our grates be chill but we are happy if the "world" (six acquaintances and a prying neighbor) give us credit for one hundred and fifty. And, when we have five hundred, we talk of thousand, and the all-important and beloved "world" (sixteen fiends, and two of them carriage-folk!) agree that we really be spending seven hundred, or, at all events, running into debt up to that figure; but the butcher and baker, who have gone into the matter with housemaid, know better.

After a while. having learnt the trick, we launch out boldly and spend like Indian Princes - or rather seem to spend; for we know, by the time, how to purchase the seeming with seeming, how to buy the appearance of wealth with the appearance of cash. And the dear old world, Beelzebub bless it! for it is his own child, sure enough: there is no mistaking the likeness, it has all his funny little ways, - gathers round applauding and laughing at the lie, and sharing in the cheat, and glating over the thought of the blow that it knows must sooner or later fall on us from the Thor-like hammer of truth.

And all this goes merry as witches' frolic - until the gray morning dawns.

Truth and fact are old-fashioned and out-of-date, my friends, fit only for the dull and vulgar to live by. Appearance, not reality, is what the clever dog grasps at in these clever days. We spurn the dull-brown solid earth; we build our lives and homes in the fair-seeming rainbow-land of shadow and chimera.

To ourselves, sleeping and waking there, behind the rainbow, there is no beauty in the house; only a chill, damp mist in every room, and, over all, a haunting fear of the hour when gilded clouds will melt away, and let us fall - somewhat heavy, no doubt - upon the hard world underneath.

But there! of what matter is our misery, our terror? To the stranger, our home appears fair and bright. The workers in the fields below look up and envy us our adobe of glory and delight! If they think it pleasant, surely we should be content. Have we not been taught to live for others and not for ourselves, and are we not acting up bravely to the teaching - in most curious method?

Ah! yes, we are self-sacrificing enough, and loyal enough to this new-crowned king, the child of Prince Imposture and Princess Pretence. Never before was despot so blindly worshiped! Never had earthly sovereign yet world-wide sway!

Man, if he would live, must worship. He looks around, and what to him, within the vision of his life, is the greatest and the best, that he falls down and does reverence to. To him whose eyes have opened on the nineteenth century, what nobler image can the universe produce than the figure of Falsehood in stolen robes. It is cunning and brazen and hollow-hearted, and it realizes his soul's ideal, and he falls and kisses its feet, and cling to its skinny knees, swearing fealty to it for evermore!

Ah! he is a mighty monarch, bladder-bodied King Humbug! Come, let us build up temples of hewn shadows wherein we may adore him, safe from the light. Let us raise him aloft upon our Brummagem shields. Long live our coward, false-hearted chief! - fit leader for such soldiers as we! Long live the Lord-of-Lies, anointed! Long live poor King Appearances, to whom all mankind bows the knee!

But we must hold him aloft very carefully, O my brother warriors! He needs much "keeping up". He has no bones and sinews of his own, the poor old flimsy fallow! If we take our hands from him, he will fall a heap of warn-out rags, and the angry wind will whirl him away, and leave us forlorn. Oh, let us spend our lives keeping him up, and serving him, and making him great - that is, evermore puffed out with air and nothingness - until he burst, and we along with him!

Burst one day he must, as it is in the nature of bubbles to burst, especially when they grow big. Meanwhile, he still reigns over us, and the world grows more and more a world of pretence and exaggeration and lies; and who pretends and exaggerates and lies the most succesfully, is the greatest of us all.

The world is a gingerbread fair, and we all stand outside booths and point to the gorgeous-colored pictures, and beat the big drum and brag. Brag, Brag! Life is one great game of brag!

"Buy my soap, O ye people, and ye will never look old, and the hair will grow again on your bald places, and ye will never be poor or unhappy again and mine is the only true soap. Oh, beware of spurious imitations!"

"By my lotion, all ye that suffer from pains in the head, or the stomach, or the feet, or that have broken arms, or broken hearts, or objectionable mothers-in-law; and drink one bottle a day, and all your troubles will be ended."

"Come to my church, all ye that want to go to Heaven, and buy my penny weekly guide, and pay my pew-rates, and, pray ye, have nothing to do with my misguided brother over road. This is the only safe way!"

"Oh, vote for me, my noble and intelligent electors, and send our party into power, and the world shall be new place, and there shall be no sin or sorrow any more! And each free and independent voter shall have a bran-new Utopia made on purpose for him, according to his own ideas, with a good-sized extra-unpleasant Purgatory attached, to which he can send everybody he doesn't like. Oh, do not miss this chance!"

Oh! listen to my philosophy, it is the best and deepest. Oh! hear my songs, they are sweetest. Oh! buy my pictures, they alone are true art. Oh! read my books, they are the finest.

Oh! I am the greatest cheese-monger, I am the greatest soldier, I am the greatest, statesman, I am the greatest poet, I am the greatest showman, I am the greatest mountebank, I am the greatest editor, and I am the greatest patriot. We are the greatest nation. We are the only good people. Ours is the only true religion. Bah! how we all yell!

How we all brag and bounce, and beat the drum and shout! And nobody believes a word we utter; and the people ask one another, saying:

"How can we tell who is the greatest and the cleverest among all these shrieking braggarts?"

And they answer:

"There is none great or clever. The great and clever men are not here; there is no place for them in this pandemonium of charlatans and quacks. The men you see here are but crowing cocks. We suppose the greatest and the best of them, are they who crow the loudest and the longest; that is the only test of their merits."

Therefore, what is left to us to do, but to crow? And the best and greatest of us all, is he who crows the loudest and the longest on this little dunghill that we call our world!



1892
(да да, тысяча восемьсот девяносто второй!)