Not to be trusted then?
Posted October 6, 2009 3:23 pm by Steve Rigden
Toronto, 26 July 1837. Letter of Francis Head to John Murray II.
“As I know you like shining in society I send you a scrap which you may learn by heart and apply to the first person whose veracity you may think it adviseable to deny.”
The “scrap”, a cutting from a newspaper, has been pasted to the letter and reads :
“He is, without exception, the most notorious liar in all Mississippi. He lies out of every pore in his skin. Whether he be sleeping or waking on foot or on horse-back, at church or in the grog shop, talking with his neighbours or writing for the newspapers, a multitudinous swarm of lies, visible, palpable and tangible, are buzzing and settling around him like flies around a horse in August” -
Commercial Advertiser.
Head was in Canada as the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada. The letter has as a postscript the rather matter of fact comment :
“I am just going to meet again at Manatoulin Island in Lake Huron all the Indian Tribes of Canada.”
… as you do!
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