A pet bird in a cage is sometimes the
only pleasure of an invalid confined for years to the same room. If he
can feed and clean the animal himself, he ought always to be encouraged
to do so.
[33] It is a much more difficult thing to speak the truth than people
commonly imagine. There is the want of observation _simple_, and the
want of observation _compound_, compounded, that is, with the
imaginative faculty. Both may equally intend to speak the truth. The
information of the first is simply defective. That of the second is much
more dangerous. The first gives, in answer to a question asked about a
thing that has been before his eyes perhaps for years, information
exceedingly imperfect, or says, he does not know. He has never observed.
And people simply think him stupid.
The second has observed just as little, but imagination immediately
steps in, and he describes the whole thing from imagination merely,
being perfectly convinced all the while that he has seen or heard it; or
he will repeat a whole conversation, as if it were information which had
been addressed to him; whereas it is merely what he has himself said to
somebody else.
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