BUSYBODIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2260, 24 June 1897, Page 43

BUSYBODIES.

There are a large nnmber of persons who find their greatest joy in attending to the concerns of others. Spring, summer, autumn, and winter the interest they take in other people's business is unflagging. But the interest they take is of various kinds, just as the Busybody, both male and female, is of widely different type?. There is the harmless an\3 good-natured Busybody who plunges into her neighbours' affairs with a heart actually brimming over with kindliness, and neglects her own home and children with the happy unconsciousness of a Mrs Jellaby attending to the needs of " BDrrioboola Gba." It is not because she does not love her home that she relogat.es.it to neglectful oblivion while she pervades half a dozan other homes, full of suggestions, advice, and help, It is because her nature craves for excitement and change, which her own home is natnrally powerless to supply; because she has never disciplined herself to any steady concentration of effort ; because it is easier far, and pleasanter, to live in an atmosphere of thanks, approbation, and gratitude from outsiders than to patiently perform her own household duties, which receive no thanks because they are her duties, and it is only a part of her life to attend to them. How much more stimulating and pleaeurably exciting is that constant trotting in and out, brimful of kindly help and suggestion, than the long monotonous routine of mornings spent at home, doing to-day what must all be done over again to-morrow. Yes, that always seems to me the disheartening part of housework — so much of it is merely the provision for one day, the cleaning for one day, the putting tidy and preparing for one day. There is no finality in it ; one is never done ; the same thing must be gone through to-morrow and the next day, and always with only the variation of larger details afforded by spriDg cleaning, jam making, the winter sewing, &c. Upon my word I sympathise with the good-natured Busybody ! I love her portly figure — she is always stout — her ready tears, her sunny smile, her comforting voice with its fanny little modulations

-—TV I don't wonder that she finds ift more inteV resting to " just run across and see how" poo? Mrs Smith's, baby is," regardless of the fact ; that measles are catching and her own" chil^ dren have not had them ! I sympathise I with her when she Bfcarts of£ at 9 in the j morning to aßk what sort of a night old Mi? Cross ha« had, even though she has not; | washed the dishes up or made the beds ! No doubt she will oall in just to see bow Janey Bluett is getting on, or will "just' step round the corner " to hear how little James Thompson's whooping cough is. I know how surprised she will be when she reached home at last to find that she has been away two hours instead of 10 minutes, for " it's strange how a body does get kept, first with one and then with another 1 And oh, my gracious ! is that the time ? Those children will be out of school and home for their dinner directly, and there's the fire out I." Probably the children will be teen spending the dinner hoar hanging over the front fence consuming slices of bread and jam and. eating bananas — & form of picnic they are by no means averse to, sinoe it gives them an undoubted right to demand " something nice," and they are already discussing whether it shall be pork sausages or steab and onions. . Naturally the good-natured Busybody ia an extravagant housewife — how could she be otherwise ?-=-and a much greater blessing to other people than to her own husband, who, poor man, wonders vaguely why there is never anything in the house in case of emergency, and yet the bills are always so large. I The solution of the enigma is easy enough. The medical sbores of the Ensybody, her tinctures, pills, eucalyptus, and sticking plaster, are in constant requisition on her little excursions among afflicted friends and ' neighbours. Her bundles of old rag, scraps I of linen, lint, oil-silk, and bandages go ; a-wandering in the same road, and the I woman of endless suggestion and resource ; abroad is the woman beggared of helpfulness jat home. When her own Tommie cuts his - finger there is neither sticking [piaster nor linen to be found, though certainly there are some cobwebs ! When Bob has a sore throat . there is no borax, and when father com OS home with a bad cold, "as sure an fate the eucalyptus bottle is empty." They have | pathetic little jokes among themselves about everybody else coming first with mother, and her own children last. Mother only smiles her sweet superior smile and pursues her varied way, merely taking ocoaaion to rebuke the family for a distinct tendency to | selfishness I . ■ [ Then there is the disagreeable Busybody - — quite a different type ; and while the . good-natured Busybody i« usually of the feminine gender, the occupation of disagree- • able Busybody gains quite as many male, recruits as female. The tongue is mere : busy than the bands with theise people, and ■ they take co heed of a certain old proverb i about " Pity without relief is like mustard without beef." They have plenty o£ pity at your disposal, but somehow they never [ think of relief. And even their pity ?—? — j bless me 1 it's strange how irritating we find . j ic. Can there be something spurious in its ; quality ? i When such people come to tell us how ' sorry thoy are for us in oar misfortunes, they somehow irritate us more than we care to think. Ib the fault all our own ? They sre ! the firet to come — how kind of them ! We | nevsr knew before that they were bo fond of I UK. And yet — and yet I Well, some sympathy seems to be so un- | daly tinged with curiosity. - There is a suspicion, too, of " I told you so " about those I 100 complacent tones; there is a calrunesß and sell- concentration about the keenly observant eyes that seam to repel one. Our natural impure is to say we are " onl;," " iis," "lying down," "engaged," — anything ! We | know by intuition that the real motive for ! this friendly visit is to collect the latest bulletin in order to retail soma interestifig personal items among mutual friends. | "Poor Mrs Smith? Ye*, dear. Well, I ! can tell you all about her. I just ran in thi& | morning to see if I could do anything. Sac* j cases like these, you know, one mu&t; not ! consult one's own feelings. Terribly upset?' | Not at aU, I assure yon. No, I waa quite | surprised to see bow caltnly they take it. ; Of course it would not do to say no to everyone, but really there seemed to me an absolute want of feeling." ' ,' " Calmly ! Wart of f c.cling I " Yet what does it matter ? Our grief is our own ;' and since it is too deep; too sacred, to make the theme of a ten minutes' chat, we must be content to be labelled; calm and unfeeling — we who are groping in the dark, too sore wounded yet to say, " Thy way, not mine " ; we who are trying with all our rebellions souls to remember that " he whom He ioveth He chasteneth " : nay, we must be content to" bear the Busybody's verdict, for " the heart knoweth its own bitterness and the stranger intermeddleth not." If it is disgrace which hath fallen upon n» — that most bitter trial of all — we must be content to be doubly misjudged. We shall not eocape the Busybody (he will be more faithful than many a friend) bent on securing a thoroughly up-to-date version, but we may be sure that whatever is the fashion in which we bear ourselveß it will be the wrong fashion. If we are sad, making no effort to diguise the blackness of the shadow that shame, however undeserved, has wrought upon us, then we are visibly to blame, and weighted with the sense of our justly-merited dißgrace, says the Busybody. " I very much fear even the worst rumours are true. They must be, or the JoneEes would not look bo wretched. I should be inclined to thin* there is worse behind." If we try to carry off the matter with th« calm self-respect which still is ourright.no matter how much the faults of others may affect us, making no confidences, sbowing no difference in our ordinary bearing, then we are still wrong. " I never Baw such unfeeling people in my life ; they have no shame, no heart, no sense of propriety ."- Oh ! I assure you it is as hard to please the censorious Basybody as ever the old man of the fable found it to enre hie smoky chimney. The moral is : Don't try. Lire your own life, always keeping your ideal high and your conscience clear, and set the Busybody at naught. Do not bo soothed by his praise or wounded by bis sneers. Life has greater aims than that for even the humbles* OSOfe