On our return home my wife and sister seemed to have enjoyed their company. The one certainly never suspected that her consort was my father, her father-in-law. Though now aged, he was an accomplished man of society. I say it, though he was my villain of a father, he could pose anywhere with the outward grace of a gentleman. Outwardly in “society” he observed the decencies of life, but his hypocrisy was a sufficient cloak to conceal his immoralities. The other did not realize that her escort was her half brother and mine as well. Why tell them? This question often came to me during years afterward. Why did I allow them to go out with these men? I cannot tell. We are not always able to give a reason why we do thus and so. Another question. What would these ladies have said and done had they known who their gentlemen were? I can surmise about my wife. Had she learned at table who he was, my venerable parent would have thought himself in a hurricane storm off the Irish coast, as she would have given him such cutting strokes of her native wit that he would have preferred a dish of bitter herbs to the elaborate spread before him, so her ignorance was bliss to him. It appeared that my sister in her agitation at seeing Smith Sr. did not catch the name of the other man when she was introduced, so after our return home she asked his name. I quickly replied Smythe, Smithers, or some other name commencing with S. She asked no further and I was content. Now comes a question in morals, whether it is ever right to deceive. One of the maxims of the Roman church is that “it is an act of virtue to deceive and lie when the church might be promoted.” If the church can do this by a pious fraud, why not an individual mislead another for his good? But I will not discuss the subject. Had she suddenly become aware that she was seated by her half brother, the son of her father, she would have fainted or rushed away in fright and disgust. It is well we do not know everything about others, nor in fact all about ourselves. Any one will loathe his own skin when seen through a microscope. A traveler once dined well and heartily, praising the roast, but on being informed that it was monkey, was suddenly afflicted with a mal de mer, and was ill for a week afterward. To make him turn pale it was only to say “monkey.” But how did the gentlemen feel? I don’t know. The one I think was so blasé in sin that he would have bluffed either an angel of light or the devil himself, and without a blush. I have often imagined a little scene, a catastrophe that I might have made by some introductions, as “Mr. Smith, my father, your daughter-in-law, my wife,” or “Mr. Smith, your daughter, my sister,” or “Mr. Smith, my brother, this is your sister.” I am glad now that I was not fool or rogue enough to have done it. Yet there would have been lots of fun to me in the doing of it, and lots of misery to two of them at least. We get pain and trouble enough without trying to make it.