Charles Lamb wrote a series of essays upon popular fallacies. I do not， at the moment， carry them very clearly in my memory； but， unless that treacherous servant misleads me more even than she usually does， he did not write of one piece of proverbial so-called wisdom that has always seemed to me to be peculiarly pernicious. And this saw， this scrap of specious advice， this untruth masquerading as logic， is one that I remember to have had hurled at my head at frequent intervals from my earliest youth right up to my present advanced age. How many times have I not been told that “If a thing is worth doing at all， it is worth doing well”？