p. 37 | A Neighborhood Sin

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 21, 1886

A Neighborhood Sin.

An excellent way to stop gossip is to stop it. Make an end of the matter. Let it alone. Say no more about it, either to wonder, to excuse, to moralize, or to deplore. Drop the hissing secret into the cool well of indifference. Forget it.

There is a certain house set on a hill, where two or three charming women hold sway. Very animated and delightful is the conversation one enjoys at this house. Quick wit, delicate tact, tender feeling, high sentiment, all these have their part in it. Callers come smiling from that door. They have been amused, entertained, refreshed, often strengthened. The moral barometer has gone up. One element is noticeably lacking in the conversation of this family. The trivial discussion of other people's affairs, which forms so large a part of much of the conversation we hear, does not enter into the talk of these women. Personal matters seem by some magic never to get into it, never to be thought of. If, by any awkwardness, such matters are lugged in, the change of atmosphere is instantaneous and remarkable. These brilliant women become positively stupid. They are not interested. They have nothing to say. They look bored. One feels that he has committed a faux pas of the worst description if, unwittingly, in this parlor he drops into the familiar "they say," or "have you heard?" They never have heard. They never know anything about it. They look as dull as they know how to look. One does not even hear them bemoaning the fact that gossip is so prevalent, that reports will get about, and people will repeat and magnify and misjudge. They do not condemn gossip. It simply does not thrive in the atmosphere they live in. Very little of it goes into the house, and none comes out of it.

Gossip has been understood to be a feminine fault. A reference to the newspapers is perhaps the best comment on that opinion. Scandal comes after gossip. The ball, small and clean enough perhaps at first, rolls up huge, obstructive, black with the grime of the public street.

It is also a common belief that gossip prevails and flourishes in rural communities to a greater degree than in cities. That proposition is, however, yet to be demonstrated. Listen to the conversation of a group at a village sewing-circle, and then to that of a group of fashionable creatures on a hotel piazza. There is a difference of nomenclature. The rustic phrase is unlike the city jargon. But is not the substance of the conversation composed of much the same elements in each instance? The trouble is, gossip is the natural growth of poor and empty minds, be they country bred or city bred, masculine or feminine. Get richer soil, more oxygen in the air, choke out this tenacious little weed by planting larger things. "The best way," some one has said, "to eradicate a vice is to implant a virtue." If this is not sound horticulturally, it is morally.

A mother, listening to the daily conversation of her daughter's school-mates, was seriously troubled by the excessive amount of this small-talk poured forth from the mouths of these young girls. Trivial comments on the dress and appearance of their companions (too seldom seasoned with charity), reports of what she said and what he said, of where she went with one boy, and how she snubbed another, of what her mother let her do, and what another mother—awfully mean—would not let her daughter do,—these things formed the warp and woof of their conversation. And this was not occasionally, but daily, almost hourly, rarely and briefly interrupted by allusions to more important matters.

"Dear," said the mother to her daughter, "I don't like to have you get into the way of this contemptible gossip, this reporting and commenting on the affairs of others. If you have anything of the sort to say, I wish you would not say it to the girls, but come and say it to me. I know it is hard sometimes not to speak to some one about these things. We will have a little gossip together every day, if you please. But don't get into the habit of talking freely, in mixed company, of the concerns of others."

The daughter agreed, and the proposed gossip in the mother's chamber took place a few times. But one day the child came smiling. "Mamma," she said, "I've thought of a better plan than yours. Let us not talk about these things at all! I find they slip out of my mind more easily if I say nothing about them, even to you."

Wise girl! she had gone to the very root of the matter. Gossip is best left off, as the vigorous Hebrew proverb declares of another vice, "before it is meddled with."—Christian Union