The Deadly Evils of Gossip

1874

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 away to water, only because of this; love that promised a future as enduring as heaven, and are stable as truth, evaporated into a 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 anger that would never cool again between them, only because of this; and a husband and his young wife, each straining at the heated 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 joy lay buried, and 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 fell words of scandal, and the magic mutterings of gossip.

Great crimes work great wrongs, and the deeper tragedies of life spring from its larger passions; but woeful 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 refute — throwing blame on the innocent, and punishing them as guilty, if unable to pluck out the stings they never see, and to silence words they never heard. Gossip and slander are the deadliest and cruelest weapons man has for his brother's hurt.