interest for all of us. Personal
chat is the current coin of conversational capital. Society lives by
gossip as it lives by bread. The most absurd rule in the world is to
avoid personalities in conversation. To annihilate gossip would be to
cut conversational topics in half. There is musical gossip, art gossip,
theatrical gossip, literary gossip, and court gossip; there is political
gossip, and fashionable gossip, and military gossip; there is mercantile
gossip and commercial gossip of all kinds; there is physicians' gossip
and professional gossip of every sort; there is scientists' gossip; and
there is the gossip of the schools indulged in by masters and students
all over the educational world. Of all the gossip in the world the most
prodigious and prolific is religious gossip. Archbishops, bishops,
deans, rectors, and curates are discussed unreservedly; and the
questions put and answered are not whether they are apostolic teachers,
but whether they are high, low, broad, or no church; whether they wear
scarlet or black, intone or read, say "shibboleth" or "sibboleth."

The roots of gossip are deep in human interest; and, despite the nearly
universal opinion of moralists, great reputations are more often built
out of gossip than destroyed by it. Discriminating people do not create
enemies by personalities, nor separate friends, because they gossip with
a heart full of love, with charity for all, and with malice toward none.
Gossip as a legitimate part of conversation is defended by one of the
greatest of present-day scholars; and I cannot do better than to quote,
in closing, what Mr. Mahaffy has said about it: "The topic which ought
to be always interesting is the discussion of human character and human
motives. If the novel be so popular a form of literature, how can the
novel in real life fail to interest an intelligent company? People of
serious temper and philosophic habit will be able to confine themselves
to large ethical views and the general dealings of men; but to average
people, both men and women, and perhaps most of all to busy men who
desire to find in society relaxation from their toil, that lighter and
more personal kind of criticism on human affairs will prevail which is
known as gossip. It is idle to deny that there is no kind of
conversation more fascinating than this. But its immorality may easily
become such as to shock honest minds, and the man who indulges in it too
freely at the expense of others w