friend advised me, if ever I took a house in a terrace a little way
out of town, to be very careful that it was the centre one, at least if
I had any regard for my reputation. For I must be well aware that a
story never loses by telling; and consequently, if I lived in the middle
of a row of houses it was very clear that the tales which might be
circulated to my prejudice would only have half the distance to travel
on either side of me, and therefore could only be half as bad by the
time they got down to the bottom of the terrace as the tales that might
be circulated by the wretched individuals who had the misfortune to live
at the two ends of it, so that I should be certain to have twice as good
a character in the neighbourhood as they had. For instance, I was
informed of a lamentable case that actually occurred a short time since.
The servant of No. 1 told the servant of No. 2 that her master expected
his old friends, the Bayleys, to pay him a visit shortly; and No. 2 told
No. 3 that No. 1 expected to have the Bayleys in the house every day;
and No. 3 told No. 4 that it was all up with No. 1, for they couldn't
keep the bailiffs out; whereupon No. 4 told No. 5 that the officers were
after No. 1, and that it was as much as he could do to prevent himself
being taken in execution, and that it was nearly killing his poor dear
wife; and so it went on increasing and increasing until it got to No.
32, who confidently assured the last, No. 33, that the Bow-street
officers had taken up the gentleman who lived at No. 1 for killing his
poor dear wife with arsenic, and that it was confidently hoped and
expected that he would be executed."

* * * * *

Mr. Eadie, of the village of Handley, was a man very much addicted to
the practice of collecting tales and then disposing of them wherever he
could. It was his habit whenever he had a spare hour (and this was
rather often, for it must be understood he was not any too industrious),
to go at one time into the house of neighbour A., and at another time
into the house of neighbour B. Sometimes he would sit gossiping in these
houses for hours together. He managed to keep on good terms with both of
them, although between B. and A. there existed anything but a good
feeling. And, by-the-by, Eadie was the agent of producing it, through
carrying tales to each respecting the other. If A. ever happened to
show temper at a tale which he repeated as originating with