The misunderstandings that arise even among the most open and confiding friends sufficiently illustrate this liability to error.
Sometimes the error becomes more palpable, as, for example, when we visit another country.

A foreign language, when heard, provokingly suggests all kinds of absurd meanings through analogies to our familiar tongue.

Thus, the Englishman who visits Germany cannot, for a time, hear a lady use the expression, "Mein Mann," without having the amusing suggestion that the speaker is wishing to call special attention to the fact of her husband's masculinity.

And doubtless the German who visits us derives a similar kind of amusement from such involuntary comparisons.
A fertile source of illusory insight is, of course, conscious deception on the part of others.

The rules of polite society require us to be hypocrites in a small way, and we have occasionally to affect the signs of amiability, interest, and amusement, when our actual sentiment is one of indifference, weariness, or even positive antipathy.