p. 10 | CURIOSITY by L. E. Dobrée

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 14, 1892

CURIOSITY.

By L. E. Dobrée

IDLE curiosity should be repressed. Children, for instance, should not be allowed the habit of asking questions, as they often do, for talking’s sake. Children cannot be too much impressed with the fact that to ask curious questions is a sign of an ill-bred person. Never should they ask for whom one is in mourning, nor, excepting among their contemporaries, how old anyone is. Many people have a weakness on the latter subject, and for a child to ask a lady of uncertain age before others, or at any time, the pointed question, “How old are you?” is likely to rouse the inward wrath of the individual.

The amount of curiosity many people have concerning the incomes, ages, pursuits, and private affairs generally of their neighbors is amazing. People should be permitted to say for themselves as much about their concerns as they please, and once having let them take the initiative, you can manifest interest, and show that you care for their confidence. To seek to obtain information that they do not wish to give you is alike bad taste and wrong feeling. To indulge curiosity by listening to idle tales and conversation that can be characterized only as gossip—in the lower meaning of the word—is deteriorating to mind and heart. To investigate purposely the affairs of your neighbor is wrong, and one illegitimate weapon is chatting over those said concerns with your servants. The latter always take, sensibly or insensibly, their cue from their masters, and very soon know whether some item of news, some insinuation or innuendo, a surmise or a fact gossiped back by other servants, will be favorably received or not. It is for the well-being of every house that such retailing of the affairs of others should be checked, and not encouraged, and at least if you cannot prevent your servants from following the bent of their tastes in their conversation with their fellows, you can stop all gossip being repeated to you.—L. E. Dobrée, in Mothers’ Companion.