Women Who Gossip

( Originally Published 1892 )

"Why do you go to Mrs. Blank's house?" said to me once a very excellent woman who had always borne a spotless reputation. "She has been so talked about, I wonder what you find in her to attract you."

"Just what I do not find in you—charity for other women," I replied.

My friend looked somewhat nonplussed, but she hastened to reply,

"She has more reason to be charitable and lenient than I. Her past needs the mantle of charity thrown over it and mine does not—there is nothing in my life that would not bear the light."

"There is a narrow fissure of severe judgment in your heart that needs the light of love and sympathy thrown into it," I responded. "When I encounter such a hoplessly good woman as you, who never met temptation, I can understand why a tempted Christ is symbolized by religion as man's judge. He will show mercy; having been human, he understands human weakness.'

Yet as a rule I have not found to be the spotless good women who are the severe judges of weaker sisters—quite the contrary.

Innumerable instances occur to me as I think on the subject, in which the purest and sweetest of women have in my hearing defended some victim of gossip, made excuses for her weakness, or refused to believe the stories afloat about her until forced to do so, while in almost every instance these stories were set afloat by some woman whose own past had not been free from reproach.

It seems a remarkable fact that a woman who has ever been the object of scandal should wish to repeat or spread about an unkind report regarding another woman ; but such cases are too numerous in all our experiences to need verification.

This is an age of progress and freedom for woman. The day of the "Scarlet Letter" has passed with its endless martyrdom for the erring.

Public sentiment has become so liberalized and the world so busy with scientific discovery, and the growth of thought in all direction, that a woman who has committed some early error or folly is allowed in time to make amends, redeem her ways, and occupy a respectable position among cultivated and agreeable people, who do not bother themselves to study up her past life.

But the ever-increasing wonder in my mind is, that these are the women who most frequently unearth the skeletons of scandals beneath fair structures which other women are trying to build : and that the woman who has once herself been the object of scorn is the first to point her finger at a newcomer in the court of respectability.

Once upon a time I happened upon the sad sealed page in the early life of a bright woman whom I had known pleasantly for a few years. The knowledge of her youthful folly came to me quite by accident, and I felt only sympathy to think of all the suffering it must have caused one of her mental and affectional endowment, and I rejoiced to think that she had been able to live it down.

She was a devoted wife, a kind friend and an active worker in all good causes, and I respected her for having climbed on the ladder of her mistakes to her present position. What was my shocked surprise to hear that woman severely condemn shortly afterwards a young girl, and insist upon believing some gossip which had been set afloat by idle tongues. I would have expected her to be the first to defend her, or at least the last to condemn.

There are times when men and women who strive to lead worthy lives are obliged to speak words of warning to near friends regarding unworthy associates. It is a kindness to inform our friends when there is moral typhus in their midst. It is right that they should tell us when we are unconsciously harboring small-pox in our circle.