p. 519 | THE CURE FOR GOSSIP by J. G. Holland

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 25, 1880

THE CURE FOR GOSSIP.

By J. G. Holland

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. As we write, there comes to us the picture of a family of young ladies. We have seen them at home; we have met them in galleries of art; we have caught glimpses of them going from a bookstore or library with a fresh volume in their hands. When we meet them, they are full of what they have seen and read. They are brimming with questions. One topic of conversation is dropped only to give place to another in which they are interested. We have left them, after a delightful hour, stimulated and refreshed; and during the whole hour not a neighbor's garment was soiled by so much as a touch. They had something to talk about. They knew something, and wanted to know more. They could listen as well as they could talk. To speak freely of a neighbor's doings and belongings would have seemed an impertinence to them, and, of course, an impropriety. They had no temptation to gossip, because the doings of their neighbors formed a subject very much less interesting than those which grew out of their knowledge and their culture.

And this tells the whole story. The confirmed gossip is always either malicious or ignorant. The one variety needs a change of heart, and the other a change of pasture. Gossip is always a personal confession either of malice or imbecility, and the young should not only shun it, but by the most thorough culture relieve themselves from all temptation to indulge in it. It is low, and frivolous, and too often a dirty business. There are country neighborhoods in which it rages like a pest. Churches are split in pieces by it. Neighbors are made enemies by it for life. In many persons it degenerates into a chronic disease, which is practically incurable. Let the young cure it while they may.—J. G. Holland, in Scribner.