http://archive.org/details/AnOrderForAPicture-MothersDayPoemByAliceCary-RecitedByGrant

It’s very pretty, and tells a story about how mother glanced at a lying child, and the child never forgot that reproach.

I would love to discuss poetry like this in class.

This lesson reminded me of a lesson on truth-telling we had in Elder’s Quorum recently. We didn’t focus so much on little exaggerations, but on situations where telling the truth would have an undesirable outcome, pitting our Kantian leanings against our Utilitarian ones. I wonder whether such a change in focus is prompted by changing concerns over time (1900 v. 2012), by the likelihood that young women are likely to be tempted to tell falsehoods that are different from those elders are tempted to tell (adolescent females v. adult males), or some other thing.