opportunities for studying the properties of
venom and the law of projectiles. And one
thing I devoutly hope he will have an opportunity
for studying—the law of the moral boomerang,
which brings back upon his own pate, and
with a pretty sharp crack, too, the scandal and
the lie which he lias flung at another. If
people would but keep out of the vortex of
gossip a great many more lives than are
allowed to do so now would stand clear and free
of blame; for gossip, as a rule, deals in lies not
truths, and for one accusation with a root
grounded in fact there are thousands head
downwards, with all four feet in the air and
not a leg to stand on.

It is a mistake to suppose that gossip is
localised in its growth—that it is to be found in
the country among the gorse and bracken, and
not in the towns between the rows of red brick
houses, with windows staring into each other's
eyes, and idle wits watching curiously from
behind transparent blinds. The truth is, it is of
no special birthplace. Given the soil of ill nature
and the climate of idleness, and you will reap as
much scandal and gossip in one day as would
serve a moderate appetite for a year's digestion,
whether you go out into the lanes or into the
streets to shear and to glean. But it is a
harvest to be avoided; a reaping-hook to be
touched with hands cased in mail, and fingers
tipped with steel, unless you would be cut to
the bone in merited retaliation. Keep out of it.
Of all the shibboleths, defunct or extant, this
is the wisest, the most potent, and the most
renowned; keep out of it; especially in the
matter of scandal and gossip.

I have known a country society which
withered away all to nothing under the dry
rot of gossip only. Friendships once as firm
as granite dissolved to jelly and then ran away
to water, only because of this; love that
promised a future as enduring as heaven and as
stable as truth, evaporated into morning mist
that turned to a day's long tears, only because
of this; a father and a son were set foot to foot
with the fiery breath of an anger that would
never cool again between them, only because
of this; and a husband and his young wife,
each straining at the hated leash which in the
beginning had been the golden bondage of a God-
blessed love, sat mournfully by the side of the
grave where all their love and all their joy lay
buried, also only because of this. I have seen
faith transformed to mean doubt, hope give
place to grim despair, and charity take on itself
the features of black malevolence, all because of
the spell-words of scandal and the magic mutterings
of gossip. Great crimes work great wrongs,
and the deeper tragedies of human life spring
from its larger passions; but woful and
most melancholy are the uncatalogued tragedies
that issue from gossip and detraction; most
mournful the shipwreck often made of noble
natures and lovely lives by the bitter winds and
dead salt waters of slander. So easy to say, yet so
hard to disprove—throwing on the innocent all
the burden and the strain of demonstrating their
innocence, and punishing them as guilty if
unable to pluck out the stings they never see,
and to silence words they never hear—gossip
and slander are the deadliest and the cruellest
weapons man has forged for his brother's hurt.

Interference generally in things not personally
belonging to us, is to be kept out of as one
would keep out of scarlet fever and small-pox:
moral quixotism, and the fighting with wind-
mills not on our own estate, being a terrible
waste of wholesome energy, and of time which
is the capital of the future. And, above all,
interference in other people's conjugal difficulties
is to be avoided with the widest skirts and
the longest steps of any. What does it signify
to us in any way when Mr. and Mrs. Hatewell
jangle in public for the edification of their
unmarried friends, as wild birds, encaged, might
sing warning duets to their freer brethren
fluttering curiously round the limed twigs? So
long as they do not drag us into the fray, their
somewhat indiscreet way of testifying to the
disappointments of life are as the wind whistling
through the dead branches of the forest trees—
sounds full of mournful meaning truly, but in
no manner incumbent on us to criticise or to
end. Besides, even with Mr. and Mrs. Hatewell,
who seem ready to tear out each other's
eyes at a moment's notice, and who, you would
imagine, must infallibly come into the police
court or the divorce—perhaps both if their
present state of feeling continues much longer—
even with them active interference is simply
putting our fingers between the bark and the
tree, with a hearty nip for our pains and sole
reward. All that is required of us is a decent
mute assent to each when the flood-gates of
complaint are opened, and we are admitted into
the penetralia of their discontent; but expressed
sympathy? open speech? partisanship?
exhortation? denial of the bitter charge and ironing
down the seamy side?—my dear friends, if you
would save your skins, keep out of this hallucination,
and let Mr. and Mrs. Hatewell flourish
their own quarter-staves in their own way, without
any let, hindrance, or aid from you.

Out of anything like criticism on our friends'
servants, dress, acquaintances, dinners, children,
or housekeeping, it is incumbent on all the wise
to keep, as carefully as out of a lazaretto full
of the plague-smitten, or out of a battle-field
with more bullets than have billets. Here and
there one may light upon a candid soul with a
good digestion and an easy temper, who can hear
a hostile opinion without bitterness or wrath,
but the number is so exceedingly small, while the
tale of those ready to denounce you to the
Inquisition if you hint at a flaw in their perfectness,
so monstrously large—and you never know
which is which till you try by actual experiment
—that the sermon may be preached without an
if, and the rule made absolute independent of
exceptions. Keep out of it. Whatever we see
lying cross to our own ideas in the houses of
our private friends, it is our best wisdom to keep
out of it, and not to dream of the insane folly
of attempting to set it straight. People's eyes