Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

ThackerayWe gave this good Tomkins wine and medicine for hisfamily when sick—we supplied him with little comfortsand extras which need not now be remembered—andthe grateful creature rewarded us by informing some ofour tradesmen whom he honored with his custom, “Mr.Roundabout? Lor’ bless you! I carry him up to bed drunkevery night in the week.” He, Tomkins, being a man ofseven stone weight and five feet high; whereas his employerwas—but here modesty interferes, and I declineto enter into the avoirdupois question.Now, what was Tomkins’s motive for the utterance anddissemination of these lies? They could further no conceivableend or interest of his own. Had they been truestories, Tomkins’s master would still, and reasonably,have been more angry than at the fables. It was butsuicidal slander on the part of Tomkins—must come toa discovery—must end in a punishment. The poor wretchhad got his place under, as it turned out, a fictitiouscharacter. He might have stayed in it, for of courseTomkins had a wife and poor innocent children. He mighthave had bread, beer, bed, character, coats, coals. Hemight have nestled in our little island, comfortably shelteredfrom the storms of life; but we were compelled tocast him out, and send him driving, lonely, perishing,tossing, starving, to sea—to drown. To drown? There beother modes of death whereby rogues die. Good-by,Tomkins. And so the nightcap is put on, and the bolt isdrawn for poor T.Suppose we were to invite volunteers amongst ourrespected readers to send in little statements of the lieswhich they know have been told about themselves; whata heap of correspondence, what an exaggeration ofmalignities, what a crackling bonfire of incendiary falsehoods,might we not gather together! And a lie onceset going, having the breath of life breathed into it bythe father of lying, and ordered to run its diabolicallittle course, lives with a prodigious vitality. You say,“Magna est veritas et praevalebit.” Psha! Great lies areas great as great truths, and prevail constantly, and dayafter day. Take an instance or two out of my own littlebudget. I sit near a gentleman at dinner, and the conversationturns upon a certain anonymous literary per-121