When lying
was detected, he treated it as a great moral offence; but when a
pupil made an assertion, he accepted it with confidence. "If you
say so, that is quite enough; OF COURSE I believe your word." By
thus trusting and believing them, he educated the young in
truthfulness; the boys at length coming to say to one another:
"It's a shame to tell Arnold a lie--he always believes one." (10)
One of the most striking instances that could be given of the
character of the dutiful, truthful, laborious man, is presented in
the life of the late George Wilson, Professor of Technology in the
University of Edinburgh. (11) Though we bring this illustration
under the head of Duty, it might equally have stood under that of
Courage, Cheerfulness, or Industry, for it is alike illustrative
of these several qualities.
Wilson's life was, indeed, a marvel of cheerful laboriousness;
exhibiting the power of the soul to triumph over the body, and
almost to set it at defiance. It might be taken as an
illustration of the saying of the whaling-captain to Dr. Kane, as
to the power of moral force over physical: "Bless you, sir, the
soul will any day lift the body out of its boots!"
A fragile but bright and lively boy, he had scarcely entered
manhood ere his constitution began to exhibit signs of disease.
As early, indeed, as his seventeenth year, he began to complain of
melancholy and sleeplessness, supposed to be the effects of bile.
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