Orleans County Monitor

GOSSIP AND ITS CURE.

The very simple reason why the world is full of gossip is that those who indulge in it have nothing else in them. They must interest themselves in something. They know nothing but what they learn from day to day, in intercourse with, and observation of, their neighbors. What these neighbors do—what they say—what happens to them in their social and business affairs, what they wear—these become questions of supreme interest. The personal and social life around them—this is the book under constant perusal, and out of this comes that pestiferous conversation which we call gossip. The world is full of it, and in a million houses, all over this country nothing is talked of but the personal affairs of neighbors. All personal and social movements and concerns are arranged before the high court of gossip, retailed at every fireside, are sweetened with approval or embittered by spite, and are gathered up as the common stock of conversation by the bankrupt brains that have nothing else to busy themselves with but tittle tattle. The moral aspects of gossip are bad enough. It is a constant infraction of the golden rule; it is full of all uncharitableness. No man or woman likes to have his or her personal concerns hawked about and talked about; and those who engage in this work are meddlers and busybodies who are not only doing damage to others—are not only also engaged in a most unneighborly office—but are inflicting a great damage on themselves. They sow the seeds of anger and animosity and social discord. Not one good moral result ever comes out of it. It is thoroughly immoral practice, and what is worst and most hopeless about it is, that those who are engaged in it do not see that it is immoral and detestable. To go into a man's house, stealthily when he is away from home, and overhaul his papers, or into a ladies' wardrobe and examine it, would be deemed a very dishonorable thing; but to take up a man's or a woman's name, and smutch it all over with gossip—to handle the private affairs of a neighbor around a hundred firesides—why, this is nothing! It makes conversation. It furnishes a topic. It keeps the wheels of society agoing. What is the cure for gossip? Simply, culture. There is a great deal of gossip that has no malignity in it. Good natured people talk about their neighbors because, and only because, they have nothing else to talk about.—Dr. Holland in Scribner's Magazine for January.