This is the commonest of all. These people do not even
observe that they have _not_ observed nor remember that they have
forgotten.
Courts of justice seem to think that any body can speak "the whole truth
and nothing but the truth," if he does but intend it. It requires many
faculties combined of observation and memory to speak "the whole truth"
and to say "nothing but the truth."
"I knows I fibs dreadful: but believe me, Miss, I never finds out I have
fibbed until they tells me so," was a remark actually made. It is also
one of much more extended application than most people have the least
idea of.
Concurrence of testimony, which is so often adduced as final proof, may
prove nothing more, as is well known to those accustomed to deal with
the unobservant imaginative, than that one person has told his story a
great many times.
I have heard thirteen persons "concur" in declaring that a fourteenth,
who had never left his bed, went to a distant chapel every morning at
seven o'clock.
I have heard persons in perfect good faith declare, that a man came to
dine every day at the house where they lived, who had never dined there
once; that a person had never taken the sacrament, by whose side they
had twice at least knelt at Communion; that but one meal a day came out
of a hospital kitchen, which for six weeks they had seen provide from
three to five and six meals a day.
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