To be called a LIAR is a still greater affront, and you ARE A DAMNED
LIAR, is the very acme of vulgar abuse.
Just as in Germany, no one will bear the name of a SCOUNDREL, or
KNAVE, or as in all quarrels, the bestowing such epithets on our
adversary is the signal for fighting, so the term of a LIAR in
England is the most offensive, and is always resented by blows. A
man would never forgive himself, nor be forgiven, who could bear to
be called a LIAR.
Our Jackey in London once looked at me with astonishment, on my
happening to say to him in a joke, you ARE A LIAR. I assure you I
had much to do before I could pacify him.
If one may form a judgment of the character of the whole nation,
from such little circumstances as this, I must say this rooted
hatred of the word liar appears to me to be no bad trait in the
English.
But to return to my travelling companion, who further told me that
he was obliged to earn his livelihood, at some distance from home,
and that he was now returning for the first time, for these two
months, to his family.
He showed me a row of trees near the town which he said his father
had planted, and which, therefore, he never could look at but with
emotion, though he passed them often as he went backwards and
forwards on his little journeys to and from his birthplace.
