When Mr. B. was suddenly prostrated by an alarming attack of pneumonia, his sister, a noble woman who had taken up as her life-work the duties of a trained nurse in a Boston hospital, was telegraphed for.  As she had a serious case in charge, it was impossible to obey the summons, and a New York nurse was engaged.  Mr. B.’s physician had, early in his illness, prepared some powders, each containing a minute portion of morphine, and several had been administered to the patient.  Of late, he had taken five grains of quinine each morning.  A few days before the above mentioned harangue, the doctor ordered the nurse to double the usual dose of quinine.  She, carelessly, or misunderstanding the directions, gave two of the morphine powders.  The dose was not large enough to cause more serious injury than throwing the patient into a long and heavy sleep, and frightening his family.  The doctor, who had engaged the nurse, discharged her, as Mr. B. was so far improved as to need only such care as his wife and daughter could give him.

My curiosity prompted me to inquire of Mrs. B. and Miss B., without divulging my motive, the particulars of the call they had received from the horse-car orator.  I learned that Mrs. B. had told the girl’s mother the facts of the case while the two daughters were talking together.  Miss B. said that they, now and then, overheard a few words of the conversation between the older women, and that her companion had made several inquiries concerning it.  Among others was the query: 

“How many grains of the medicine does your father take every day?”

Miss B., supposing she referred to the quinine, answered: 

“Five, generally; but on the day of which mamma speaks, ten grains were prescribed.”

And from this scanty amount of rapidly acquired information had grown the story to which I had been an amazed listener.

“Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth!”

Yet this girl did not intend to lie.  She gleaned scraps of a conversation, and allowed a vivid imagination to supply the portions she did not hear.  Add to this the love of producing a sensation, which is an inherent trait of many characters, and behold potent reasons for seven-tenths of the cases of exaggeration which come to our notice, romances constructed upon the “impressionist-picture” plan—­a thing of splash and glare and abnormal perspective that vitiates the taste for symmetry and right coloring.

We all like to be the first to tell a story, and are anxious to relate it so well that our listeners shall be entertained.  That a tale loses nothing in the telling is an established fact, especially if the narrator thereof observes a lack of interest on the part of his listeners.  Then the temptation to arouse them to attention becomes almost irresistible and unconsciously one accepts the maxim at which we all sneer,—­that it is folly to let the truth spoil a good story.  Every day we have occasion to hold our heads, reeling to aching with conflicting accounts of some one incident, and repeat the question asked almost nineteen hundred years ago: