Do You Gossip?

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXVIII, Issue 3481, 9 August 1937, Page 7

Do You Gossip?

"You're a better mau than I am, Gunge Din." The line Is so hackneyed that we say it with a laugh, and yet it could be suggested as a splendid motto to hang in a conspicuous place on a wall when two or three are gathered together for a cosy talk. This type of conversation so soon becomes personal, and from that point goes on to discussion of people we know, their faults and fallings. None of us are deliberate gossips, but all of us fall Into the cunningly laid snare of saying what we think. So we find that we lay stress upon the weak points of a friend's character.

It may be someone whom we really like, but in this cosy chat first one person and then another turns the spotlight on the weak points of a friend. Then someone remembers, and for an instant the spotlight Is turned, but it is such, a momentary turn that our eyes are dazzled with the bright light on which we have been looking that one cannot see the good points before darkness descends upon them. In a cosy talk it is generally done thus: "Mrs. A.: "Yes, she is careless and thoughtless, and neglects her duty." Then realising that she really likes the person in question, Mrs. A. says: "Of course I like her, and I know she is a hard worker, and I'd never run her down, but one day last week —etc." Haven't we all heard a conversation something like this? And alas! haven't we all taken part in it? That is a sweeping assertion, for there is the smiling, gracious woman who never says a hard thing, but sighs many. The really malignant gossip is not so harmful as the innocent gossip. We are on our guard for the noted gossip, but we are so easily tempted to become innocent gossips.

Often it is our own desire to create a good impression which leads us Into harm. It is so easy to say a clever thing about an absent friend. A wellturned phrase brings us laughter and applause, and we, like the old packman in the Scottish poem, "Never spoil a story by considerin' 'gin 'twas true." The advice "if you can't say a nice thing say nothing at all" is dangerous, because silence can be fraught with many thoughts. Those who adopt this motto must conquer thought as well as speech. But the majority of us do not mean to be bad-tempered gossips. It is only the day after a cosy chat that we realise that we have been cats, and with our laughter-winning sentences have done harm to people for whom we have a genuine affection.

Regret overtakes us then, and we would say to any malignant gossips, "You're a better man (or woman) than I am, Gunga Din," simply because the malignant one is honest while we have carried our dagger under a cloak of friendship.