_"YES" AND "NO."_
"Let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is
more than these cometh of evil."--JESUS CHRIST.
Although in length "yes" and "no" are among the smallest and shortest
words of the English language, yet they often involve an importance far
beyond "the most centipedal polysyllables that crawl over the pages of
Johnson's dictionary." Did persons stop to reflect upon the full import
of these monosyllables, so easily uttered, they would undoubtedly use
them with less frequency and more caution.
I shall make no apology for quoting on this subject from a letter out of
the "Correspondence of R. E. H. Greyson, Esq.," written by him to Miss
Mary Greyson.
"You remember the last pleasant evening in my last visit to Shirley,
when I accompanied you to the party at Mrs. Austin's. Something occurred
there which I had no opportunity of _improving_ for your benefit. So as
you invite reproof--an invitation which who that is mortal and senior
can refuse?--I will enlarge a little.
"The good lady, our hostess, expressed, if you recollect, a fear that
the light of the unshaded camphine was too bright, in the position in
which you sat, for your eyes. Though I saw you blinking with positive
pain, yet, out of a foolish timidity, you protested, 'No; oh no; not at
all!' Now that was a very unneighbourly act of the tongue, thus to set
at nought the eye; the selfish thing must have forgotten that 'if one
member suffer, all the others must suffer with it.' My dear, never
sacrifice your eyes to any organ whatever; at all events, not to the
tongue,--least of all when it does not tell the truth. Of the two, you
had better be dumb than blind.
"Now, if I had not interposed, and said that you _were_ suffering,
whether you knew it or not, you would have played the martyr all the
evening to a sort of a--a--what shall I call it?--it must out--a sort of
fashionable fib. You may answer, perhaps, that you did not like to make
a fuss, or seem squeamish, or discompose the company; and so, from
timidity, you said 'the thing that was not.' Very true; but this is the
very thing I want you to guard against; I want you to have such presence
of mind that the thought of absolute truth shall so preoccupy you as to
defy surprise and anticipate even the most hurried utterances.
"The incident is very trifling in itself; I have noticed it because I
think I have observed on other occasions that, from a certain timidity
of character, and an amiable desire not to give trouble, or make a fuss,
as you call it (there, now, Mary, I am sure the medicine is nicely
mixed--that spoonful of syrup ought to make it go down), you have
evinced a disposition to say, from pure want of thinking, what is not
precise truth. Weigh well, my dear girl, and ever act on, that precept
of the Great Master, which, like all His precepts, is of deepest import,
and, in spirit, of the utmost generality of application, 'Let your yea
be yea, and your nay, nay.'
"Let truth--absolute truth--take precedence of everything; let it be
more precious to you than anything else. Sacrifice not a particle of it
at the bidding of indolence, vanity, interest, cowardice, or shame;
least of all, to those tawdry idols of stuffed straw and feathers--the
idols of fashion and false honour.
"It is often said that the great lesson for a young man or a young woman
to learn is how to say 'no.' It would be better to say that they should
learn aright how to use both 'yes' and 'no,'--for both are equally
liable to abuse.
"The modes in which they are employed often give an infallible criterion
of character.
"Some say both doubtfully and hesitatingly, drawling out each
letter--'y-e-s,' 'n-o,'--that one might swear to their indecision of
character at once. Others repeat them with such facility of assent or
dissent, taking their tone from the previous question, that one is
equally assured of the same conclusion, or, what is as bad, that they
never reflect at all. They are a sort of parrots.
"One very important observation is this--be pleased to remember, my
dear, that 'yes,' in itself, always means 'yes,' and 'no' always means
'no.'
"I fancy you will smile at such a profound remark; nevertheless, many
act as if they never knew it, both in uttering these monosyllables
themselves and in interpreting them as uttered by others. Young ladies,
for example, when _the_ question, as it is called, _par excellence_ (as
if it were more important than the whole catechism together) is put to
them, often say 'no' when they really mean 'yes.' It is a singular
happiness for them that the young gentlemen to whom they reply in this
contradictory sort of way have a similar incapacity of understanding
'yes' and 'no;' nay, a greater; for these last often persist in thinking
'no' means 'yes,' even when it really means what it says.
"'Pray, my dear,' said a mamma to her daughter of eighteen, 'what was
your cousin saying to you when I met you blushing so in the garden?'
"'He told me that he loved me, mamma, and asked if I could love him.'
"'Upon my word! And what did you say to _him_, my dear?'
"'I said yes, mamma.'
"'My dear, how could you be so----'
"'Why, mamma, what else _could_ I say? it was the--_truth_.'
"Now I consider this a model for all love-passages: and when it comes to
your turn, my dear, pray follow this truth-loving young lady's example,
and do not trust to your lover's powers of interpretation to translate
a seeming 'no' into a genuine 'yes.' He might be one of those simple,
worthy folk who are so foolish as to think that a negative is really a
negative!
"I grant that there are a thousand conventional cases in which 'yes'
means 'no,' and 'no' means 'yes;' and they are so ridiculously common
that every one is supposed, in politeness, not to mean what he says, or,
rather, is not doubted to mean the contrary of what he says. In fact,
quite apart from positive lying--that is, any intention to deceive--the
honest words are so often interchanged, that if 'no' were to prosecute
'yes,' and 'yes' 'no,' for trespass, I know not which would have most
causes in court. Have nothing to do with these absurd conventionalisms,
my dear. 'Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay.' If you are asked
whether you are cold, hungry, tired, never, for fear of giving trouble,
say the contrary of what you feel. Decline giving the trouble if you
like, by all means; but do not assign any false reason for so doing.
These are trifles, you will say; and so they are. But it is only by
austere regard to truth, even in trifles, that we shall keep the love of
it spotless and pure. 'Take care of the pence' of truth, 'and the pounds
will take care of themselves.'
"Not only let your utterance be simple truth, as you apprehend it, but
let it be decisive and unambiguous, according to those apprehensions.
Some persons speak as falteringly as if they thought the text I have
cited ran, 'Let your yea be nay, and your nay, yea.' And so they are apt
to assent or dissent, according to the tenor of the last argument:
'Yes--no--yes--no.' It is just like listening to the pendulum of a
clock.
"It is a great aggravation of the misuse of 'yes' and 'no,' that the
young are apt to lose all true apprehension of their meaning, and think,
in certain cases, that 'yes' cannot mean 'yes,' nor 'no' 'no.'
"I have known a lad, whose mother's 'no' had generally ended in 'yes,'
completely ruined, because when his father said 'no' in reply to a
request for unreasonable aid, and threatened to leave him to his own
devices if he persisted in extravagance, could not believe that his
father meant what he said, or could prevail on justice to turn nature
out of doors. But his father meant 'no,' and stuck to it, and the lad
was ruined, simply because, you see, he had not noticed that father and
mother differed in their dialects--that his father's 'no' always meant
'no,' and nothing else. You have read 'Rob Roy,' and may recollect that
that amiable young gentleman, Mr. F. Osbaldistone, with less reason,
very nearly made an equally fatal mistake; for every word his father had
ever uttered, and every muscle in his face, every gesture, every step,
ought to have convinced him that his father always meant what he said.
"In fine, learn to apply these little words aright and honestly, and,
little though they be, you will keep the love of truth pure and
unsullied.
"Ah me! what worlds of joy and sorrow, what maddening griefs and
ecstacies have these poor monosyllables conveyed! More than any other
words in the whole dictionary have they enraptured or saddened the human
heart; rung out the peal of joy, or sounded the knell of hope. And yet
not so often as at first sight might appear, for these blunt and honest
words are, both, kindly coy in scenes of agony.
"There are occasions--and those the most terrible in life--when the lips
are fairly absolved from using them, and when, if the eye cannot express
what the muffled tongue refuses to tell, the tongue seeks any stammering
compassionate circumlocution rather than utter the dreaded syllable. 'Is
there no hope?' says the mother, hanging over her dying child, to the
physician, in whose looks are life and death. He dare not say 'yes;' but
to such a question silence and dejection can alone say 'no.'"