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THE FALSES.
The list would be large, should we attempt to enumerate
them, prevailing as they do everywhere. The falses
would be found to far exceed the trues. They enter
the world with us at our birth, beset every avenue to
our education, and stick to us very tenaciously till we
are called for, and go. The falses are our pets. We
fondle them, and cherish them, and enshrine them, and,
through their speciousness, often, the devil becomes
transformed to an angel of light. They come in the
guise of false appetites, false tastes, false ideas, and false
intentions, — the worst of all, where we make falsity
a virtue knowingly, leading us to concealments and
covert action, which makes the hypocrite, what he is,
the most detestable of men. What a hideous spectacle
it would be, if we could see each other as we are! If
the scales should fall from our eyes, what scaliness
would be apparent where we now are assured of goodness!
The shrines where we have brought our offerings
would be found in ruins, and we should long for
our blindness again. But, speaking of falses, awakens
man: the false eyes, the false legs, the false teeth,
the false noses, the false hair, the false lips, the false
complexion! Suppose these falses should be removed,
what a mumming among the toothless, and what a stumbling
among the lame, there would be! How the roses
of beauty would wither, and what a lank longitude the
human form divine would assume! Almost every other
man we meet has some false feature in his external
making-up. Timms, with his false teeth from Cummings
and Flagg's, — the very climax of dental art, — grins at
Toby, who uses Roathe's hair-dye; and Toby revenges
himself by pointing at Hardup, whose bald head is
covered with one of Bogle's wigs, who, in his turn,
winks significantly, as Beau Nipchin passes wearing one
of Page's mechanical legs! Thank fortune, we say, that
we have been preserved from a necessity for any such
resorts.
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