Hence the French say, "Il faut qu'un menteur ait bonne mémoire"--"Liars need to have good memories"; while the Scotch say very happily, "Frost and fausehood hae baith a dirty wa'-gang." Other adages are: "To conceal a fault is to add to it another,"[206:A] "The credit that is got by a lie only lasts till the truth comes out," "Ill doers are ill deemers," "No poverty like poverty of spirit," "Better lose good coat than good conscience," "Half a truth is often a whole falsehood," "He who breaks his word bids others be false to him." "Almost, and very nigh, saves many a lie," is a saw that is somewhat difficult to classify; it appears to be on the side of truth, and yet it seems to suggest a way of coming nearly to the boundary-line without actually crossing into the domain of falsehood. In an old book of morals we find the precept, "In relating anything extraordinary it is better, in case of doubt, to be within rather than beyond the line of fact"--a somewhat half-hearted precept this! "Travellers' tales" have long been under suspicion, and certainly some of the earlier explorers did expose the credence of their auditors and readers to a severe strain in some of their narrations. On the other hand, we must have the grace to admit that later explorers have verified many statements that were long held impossible. The Persians say that "Whoso seeth the world telleth many a lie"; while human nature is so essentially the same all the world over that in the sayings of a savage tribe in West Africa we meet with this, "He who travels alone tells lies." The common experience of mankind is unfortunately against the traveller, and he must sometimes be content to wait, years or centuries maybe, before his wonderful experiences are fully accepted. It is a true and far-reaching proverb that "Error, though blind herself, sometimes brings forth seeing children." Thus from alchemy, with its _elixir vitæ_ and _aurum potabile_, has sprung the science of chemistry; and astrology, a farrago of superstitious rubbish, had yet within it the seed that should afterwards develop into the grandest of all sciences, astronomy. "Flattery," Swift tells us, "is the food of fools," and Gray speaks of "Painted flattery with its serpent train," while Goldsmith dwells on the "Flattering painter who made it his care To draw men as thy ought to be, not as they are."