quite possible to tell a tale of theft in such a way as to leave an impression that it is a venial offense and to weaken in the reader the moral inhibition that must be his chief reliance in time of temptation. And for “theft” here we may substitute any form of moral dereliction that you may desire. One of the most potent vehicles of moral downfall of any kind is the impression that “everybody does it”--that some particular form of wrongdoing is well-nigh universal and is looked upon with leniency by society in general. The man who steals from his employer or who elopes with his neighbor’s wife is nine times out of ten a willing convert to this view. A book that conveys such an idea is really more dangerous than one which openly advocates wrong doing. There can be little difference of opinion here. There may be more in regard to the policy of telling the whole truth regarding a state of things that is morally very bad. It may be fatal to a patient to let him know how ill he is. And may it not also be injurious to a young man or a young woman to expose the amount of evil that really lies before them in this world? There is plausibility in this argument, but it is out of date. There is much philosophy in the modern paradoxical slang phrase: “Cheer up! the worst is yet to come!” And indeed if there is any superlative badness ahead of us, it is better that we should know it, rather than cultivate a false cheerfulness, based on misinformation, with the certainty of disillusionment. The Egyptians were right when they set a skeleton at their feasts. It was not to make the feasts gloomy, but to make the skeleton a familiar object by association; to accustom the feasters to think about death, how to avoid it as long as possible and how to meet it when inevitable. We should therefore welcome the truth in any book, unless it is that “half truth,” which the poet tells us is “ever the blackest of lies,” or unless it is so stated as to violate the canons of decency, in which case, as we have already seen, its rejection must be based on different considerations entirely.