I said, solemnly-- "I give you my honor, a pin was never stuck into me without causing me cruel pain." She only said-- "It is thirty-five years.

I believe you do think that, _now_, but I was there, and I know better.

You never winced." She was so calm! and I was so far from it, so nearly frantic.
"Oh, my goodness!" I said, "let me _show_ you that I am speaking the truth.

Here is my arm; drive a pin into it--drive it to the head--I shall not wince." She only shook her gray head and said, with simplicity and conviction-- "You are a man, now, and could dissemble the hurt; but you were only a child then, and could not have done it." And so the lie which I played upon her in my youth remained with her as an unchallengeable truth to the day of her death.

Carlyle said "a lie cannot live." It shows that he did not know how to tell them.