White and Black Lies: Truth Better Than Falsehood

"JOSEPH SAUNDERS, take those glasses off this very minute! How many times have I told you never to touch my things!" Nevertheless, Aunt Clarissa laughed heartily.

"They aren't yours," answered the boy, saucily. "They're father's, and he says I may take them just as much as I have a mind to."

"Take care, Joseph; when your conscience gives a twinge like that, you had better recall your resolutions about lying."

Joseph Saunders was a motherless boy. His father was a master mason; that is, he did not work himself; but kept a number of men, who did the jobs, while he superintended them, to be sure the work was right. This is a very profitable business, and by it Mr. Saunders had become quite a rich man. He lived in a handsome house, in a street overlooking a pleasant park which in summer was filled with beautiful flowers. He had three children,—two daughters and one son.

Alice, the elder, was fifteen, and was away from home at a boarding school. Ellen was three years younger, and still remained with her father. Joseph, the baby, as his sisters teasingly called him, was but six, though he insisted he was old enough to wear suspenders, and have a watch-pocket.

Mrs. Saunders died when Joseph was little more than a year old, so that he could not remember her. But he had so often heard his father describe her sweet smile, her dark loving eyes, her broad polished forehead, over which her shining hair was so smoothly parted, that it seemed to him, he could remember her, and that when he went to heaven, he should know her at once. Then her voice, which his father told him was low and musical, like the chiming of silver bells, he often heard in his dreams. Sometimes he awoke, calling her, and it was difficult to convince him that she had not stood by his side, and that it was only a dream.

Soon after his mother died, Aunt Clarissa came to take care of the children, and to direct the servants in her nephew's family. Though aunt to Mr. Saunders, Miss Clarissa was only ten years older than he was, and would have felt quite insulted, had she even suspected that she was not considered a young lady. She was a very good housekeeper. The upper shelves in the china closet were always filled with jars of jelly and sweetmeats, neatly covered with white paper, and tied with pink cord. Her sponge cake, custards, and Washington pies, always came out of the oven done to a turn, and exactly the right shade of brown; and as to her waffles, why, nobody who had eaten Miss Clarissa's waffles ever expected to make any equal to them! So light, so rich, and covered with just the right quantity of butter and sugar.

Mr. Saunders was fond of inviting his friends to dinner, and this at first annoyed his aunt, who disliked hurry or confusion, such as the sudden appearance of a guest was likely to occasion; but she gradually became accustomed to this, and to all her duties, and even grew quite fond of being seated at the head of a luxuriously spread table, richly ornamented with its display of silver, china, and cut glass.

In the laundry, too, Miss Clarissa was quite as successful as in the china closet. The making up, as she called it, of her nephew's shirts was both her pride and delight; while her own laces—I do not say caps; she would consider me very presuming to hint that she wore caps—and her niece's muslins were the envy of all who saw them. Then this good lady was skilled in all kinds of preparations for the sick. Few, even of well persons, could refuse her chicken-broth or beef-tea; and those who came on to the sick list were willing to try her senna, her jalap, or her thoroughwort, for the sake of the delicacies which accompanied them.

If any one person in the world was neater than every other, that person was Aunt Clarissa. The least particle of dust on the furniture, or on the heavy mouldings; the slightest variation in the width of the snow-white sheet when it was turned down over the smoothly-spread counterpane; the tiniest speck upon the shining silver, or on the large panes of glass in the windows, was sure to attract her attention; and woe be to the servant who had so shamefully neglected her duty.