XL.

TOUTE MANGÉ BON POUR MANGÉ MAIS TOUTES PAROLES PAS BON POUR À DI.

All food is good to eat, but all words are not fit to speak. Akin to this is the English proverb,

He who says what he likes shall hear what he don't like.

"Seest thou a man that is hasty in his words?" says Solomon; "there is more hope of a fool than of him.”1

If one might judge from the proverbs to which it has given rise, indiscretions of the tongue are the most besetting of human infirmities. Every one is familiar with this of the Persian, so often in the mouth of diplomatists :

Speech is silvern; silence is golden.

The Italian says, He who speaks, sows; he who keeps silence, reaps. Again, Silence was never written down.3 The Spaniards, in a yet

1 Proverbs, xxxix, 20.

Chi parla, semina; chi tace, ricoglie.

Il tacere non su mai scritte.

profounder strain, say, The evil which comes from thy mouth falls into thy bosom.1 The Hebrews say, If a word be worth one shekel, silence is worth a pair.

Think what you please; say what you ought. Words written are male; words spoken are female.

Verba volant; scripta manent.

The following inscription, which used to decorate the refectory of a Franciscan convent at Lyons, in France, includes discretion in speech among the four cardinal virtues of monastic life:

Garde toi

De désirer tout ce que tu vois;
De croire toute ce que tu entende;
DE DIRE TOUT CE QUE TU SAIS,
De faire tout ce que tu peux.1

I think my readers will not complain of its want of pertinence if I here introduce a

1 El mal que de tu boca sale en tu seno se cae.

2 Beware

Of wishing all you see,
Of believing all you hear,
Of saying all you know,
Of doing all you can.

memorable rebuke reported to have been once administered to an Indian monarch, for a hasty and indiscreet promise. The famous Brahmin, Sissa once conceived the idea of restoring to his senses a prince who had become intoxicated with his power and was disposed to disregard the advice of more experienced counselors. Feeling that his lessons would be ineffectual if the prince discovered that he was being tutored, he devised the game of chess where the king, although the most important of all the pieces, is powerless to attack, and even to defend himself without the aid of his subjects and soldiers.

The new game soon became famous; the prince heard of it and wished to learn it. Sissa was naturally chosen to teach it to him and in explaining its rules and showing with what art the other pieces had to be used for the king's defence, he made the prince perceive and realize the important truths to which till then he had been inaccessible.

Sincerely grateful for what the game had taught him the prince wished to testify his gratitude to its author, and asked him to name his recompense; whatever it might be he should have it. To show the danger of hasty and inconsiderate promises, and to teach the supreme importance to a prince of keeping his tongue under the control of his judgment, he replied that all he should ask for his recompense would be as many grains of wheat as would go to the sixty-four squares on the chess board, counting one for the first, two for the second, four for the third, eight for the fourth and so on, doubling every time to the last. The prince, astonished at the apparent modesty of the request, granted it at once. When his treasurer came to calculate what was to be paid to the Brahmin it was discovered that the prince had entered into an engagement which all the wealth of the kingdom could not discharge, that to contain the promised amount of grain would require 16,384 cities having each 1,024 granaries, each stored with 174,762

measures, and each measure with 32,768

grains.

The value of it all would be over

twenty thousand millions of dollars; more

Sissa

than all the wealth of the world. profited by the occasion to make the prince comprehend that no person is so powerful or so high placed as to be able to keep all the engagements which may be made by an indiscreet tongue.

XLI.

CE LANGUE CRAPAUD QUI CA TRAHI Crapaud.

'Tis the frog's own tongue that betrays him.

We all know what sort of a character it is desirable to be thought to have, but nothing is so difficult to counterfeit successfully. Those who talk much are liable, like frogs, to reveal what they would prefer to conceal. "There is nothing," says La Bruyère, "so inartificial, so simple, so imperceptible, in our character that our manners do not betray it. A fool neither enters nor leaves a room, he neither sits nor rises, he does not

'Freret, tom. xví, р. 121–140.