Once I remember having been led into a lie at the instigation, and through the contrivance of a servant- girl, for whose benefit it was told. Suspicion instantly arose, from my dreadful embarrassment of manner; a strict investigation commenced; the girl told me to face it out, for that nobody else knew of it, and she would not flinch. But my terrors of conscience were insupportable; I could ill bear my father's steady eye fixed on mine, still less the anxious, wondering, incredulous expression of my brother's innocent face, who could not for a moment fancy me guilty. I confessed at once; and with a heavy sigh my father sent to borrow from a neighbor an instrument of chastisement never before needed in his own house. He took me to another room, and said, "Child, it will pain me more to punish you thus, than any blows I can inflict will pain you; but I must do it; you have told a lie--a dreadful sin, and a base, mean, cowardly action. If I let you grow up a liar, you will reproach me for it one day; if I now spared the rod, I should hate the child." I took the punishment in a most extraordinary spirit: I wished every stroke had been a stab; I wept because the pain was not great enough; and I loved my father at that moment better than even I, who almost idolized him, had ever loved him before. I thanked him, and I thank him still; for I never transgressed in that way again. The servant was called, received her wages and a most awful lecture, and was discharged the same hour. Yet, of all these things what sunk deepest into my very soul were the sobs and cries of my fond little brother, and the lamentable tones of his soft voice, pleading through the closed door, "O, papa, don't whip Charlotte. O forgive poor Charlotte."