Confidential.

You being a girl, my dear, I will tell you a secret. w Most of these swell proverbs which we have fed on, morally, all our lives, are brim full of humor—you look & see if it isn’t so.

Don’t tell anybody I added a sentiment—it’s a thing which I can do only 2 or 3 times a year—for the rest of the time I am too busy.

“A lie carries with it its own antidote.”

There—I don’t know who is the author of it, but it is the most gravely humorous maxim that exists. The humor of it, is, that it is a palpable & impudent lie itself, yet carries no antidote with it, for every goose in Christendom believes it.