TALKS TO WOMEN.

Auckland Star, Volume XLV, Issue 188, 8 August 1914, Page 15

TALKS TO WOMEN.

THE EVILS OF IDLE GOSSIP. (By a Noted Lady Writer.) Mts. Asquifch, the clever, intellectual wife of the British Prime Minister, is known to keep a diary, in which she enters not only persona.l thoughts and impressions, bub records of political crises unknown to. the ordinary newspaper reader. Happily, Mrs. Asqirit'li i= a woman who can keep secrets; whilt she eonlides to her diary is confided to no one else. Not even the most iutimate friend has been permit ted to peeip at ;i single pa-ge of what must eertaiuly be one of the most interesting accounts of great sociaJ and .political events that has ever 'been peDned. Another woman to whom many secrets were confided by her husband was Mrs. Gladstone. When she married the distinguished statesman be said to her: '■( cay. it'll you nothing so that you can betray nothing. Or 1 can ■tell you everything, and you must betray nothing. ' Which rfhall it be? 7, Mrs. Viladstone chose the latter course, and ajl l.he -world knows how zealously she guarded those little bits of information given to her <>y her husband, and wiitr-h many men -would have paid hundreds of pounds to hear. Perhaps Mrs. Gladstone -vras an exception. Certainly, Mrs. Asquith is a woman much out of bhe ordinary. I fear that the every-day wife is not nearly so particular us she ought to >be in observing scrupulous reserve concern - ing her JnUband's affairs. A private man cannot possibly keep all his secrets from his -wife, however much hi; may desire so to do. Take the case of a .popular doctor. Though he may do his best to respect the very necessary medical etiquette that a doctor must not discusshis i]Kitients. his wife is bound to know who his patients are. She sees wellknown people coming to the house, or hears the parlourmaid announce them. And there arc times when her husband, without going into details, must give some explanation of a long absence from home. In such an instance infinite harm is often done to the doctor's practice if his -wife, in silly, indiscreet fashion, gossips about her husband's patients to other women. Such a tragedy did actually happen to an extremely , clever doctor, whose name, for obvious reasons, must be shrouded in anonymity. lie had a great numiber of women patients, and his wife was an aibsurdry jealous creature, who lived in constant dread lest one of these ipalieats should steal away her husband. She •had access to his desk, and acquired the reprehensible habit of looking through letters that had oome to him from women who valued his professional advice. Without- the least intending to injure Jier husband, the doctor's wife, in chat ting .to her friends, let slip little bits of information concerning his patients. Mrs. A. had such and suc-h a thing the matter with her-, she feared that Mr*. B. would not live v< ry long, and so on. Gradually this senseless gossip reached •the ears of the patients. They wrote indignant letters to the innocent doctor, and called in other medical men. The man was obliged lo leave the town where his reputation had hitherto been so splendid; his career as a doctor was practically ruined, for all hU colleagues had predicted a -brilliant future for him. He had to begin work again in a country village where he was unknown, and trust to his now repentant, remorseful wife to observe the utmost secrecy regarding hU patients in tihe future. ' Clergymen and. solicitors, as well as doctors, have secrets to guard, and their duty t<i their clients is very difficult to discharge if their wives are not content to trust their huebande implicitly. What so many women tind it impossible to realize is that a man's relations with another woman mny ,be absolutely innocent, and yet, in fairness to the" woman, must not be discussed even with tha wife. A clergyman, whose spiritual counsel has been especially requested by a fair member of his flock, is bound to help and soothe and sympathise if he can. His task is made extraordinarily heavy if, every time he returns home from "such a visit, he lias to evade replies to the curious questions hurled at him by his jealous wife. Students of past and present history must often have been struck by the meteoric careers of men who promised great things; politicians whose public lives ended dramatically at the very moment when great things were expected of them; kings whose Influence seemed suddenly to wane; scientists who were on the eve of great discoveries, when they ceased to exist for the world. Is not the explanation of suieh apparent paradoxes to be found in the fact that these men liad gossiping wives whose foolish tittle-tattle irreparably injured their husbands" life-work?

A woman ne*>d not even be jealous to harm her husband's career. A little story of Fleet Street life will illustrate what I mean. A young journalist, whom I will call A.Z.. was extremely anxious to demonstrate his ability as a special reporter by securing a "scoop , * for the paper to which he belonged. He managed one day to obtain a piece of exclusive information that only needed a little investigation to provide him with material for one of the most sensational journalistic stories of the day. He dashed home to his little flat to obtain some papers he needed, and told his wife that the chance of his life had oome, giving lipt t.lK> briefest outline of his discovery. Off he went again to work up his story, and his wife went to her cluib. where she was so ineredibry foolish as to allude, with obvious pride, if in veiled terms, to her husband , * forthcoming "scoop" It bo happened that *.he •was overheard by the wife of another journalist, who, more ahrewd than A. Z.s wife, 'phoned what, ehe had heard to her hu&baud. who immediately got on the sicent and secured the whole story before the unhappy iA.Z. Without defending the methods of the second wife, it was quite clear that A.Z. lost the chance of making a name for himself through the tittletattle of his wife. Gossip not only injures the careers of men who might be great: it ruins homes. Tittle-tattle is a crime in a woman that a man finds hard to forgive, and there Is nothing more likely to cause domestic misery than the widespread harm accomplished by gossiping wives. Certainly, one effect of higher education for girls has been to raise tlie minds of many women above such trivialities. You rarely find the woman who is keenly interested in modern life and thought descending to vulgar gossip. The safest discussions are invariably .those in wliich art or literature or politics are discussed—instead of people. Men meet and be<rin talking politics. And isn't it a goad thing? Would that women did ilm same There would be less scandal and' slander and unkind criticism in the worl<l if women found something besides their fellow-t-.reaturps lo talk about. Men have suflicient topirai of conversation in. modern life and thought: they have no need to resort to analysing the 'characters of their neighbours. T very strongly advise nil women who know they are gossips to take the same interest in the world around them as their husbands do. It is the only permanent cure for gossip.