Morning journal and courier., 1880-12-09
OFFICE 4oo-sTATE STREET.
Price Four Cents.
Small Treacheries.

small IreacherfeS.
 some of the Evils Conaeoueut mn socIaI
 Hypocrisy-Indiscreet Confdence-Hov
 Words ThoughtIessIy Spoken Turn
 Fr1endshtp into Enmfty-The Folly O1
 Credulity.
 GFrom the London Queen.l
 There IS little scope ordinary life for
 larger kind of actions, the darker passions.
 the nobler heroism, the grander sacrifices,
 Few of us can be saints so that the world 1 shall honor us living and revere us dead ::
 feWer stlll-at least in our own country
 where we have almost won the battle of free
 thought along the whole line-can be mar
 tyrs, whose suffering in the cause of once | popular truth shall fill future generations
 with pity and sorrow, with gratitude and ad- mlrat1on combined. Few of us again, happily, | have the temptation to be great criminals {;
 but all of us have in our power the small l charities of daily life, the minor social graces
 and the quiet domestic virtues; and by con- l sequence all of us are capable of committing
 the minor social sins, and those undeclared
 but most disastrous domestic vices which mar the happiness and the essential purity of | home. And of these most social sins, one of
 the most fatal to the peace of living and the higher reaches of honor is that habit-so
 much indulged in we are sorry to say mainly l by ,women-of little treacheries and il1-natur- l ed betrayal.
 1 We all know that many, nay, the majority l of women, fail in the wisdom of reticence; and that they speak too openly to each other
 of things of which they certainly do not wish to make the world at large present They
 will even tell on slight provocation those graVer secrets in their own lives which would
 ruin them forever if made known to the gen. eral publ1c-and which are known to many in an underground kind of way, like the mole's
 run or a rabbits burrow. And if they will do this they will do all that lies below that OY1f fbo o6o they will pour out their unorthodox thoughts
 on politics, morals and religion, their own
 people, and all their doubtful family affairs in general, believing that the fuidity which could not hold these dangerous matters in their own safe keeping will find adamantine hardness and solidity in another who has no interest in holding them at all. Granted then that the first link in the chain is weak and un- sound, and that women are inimitably silly in the readiness with which they betray them selves, still that does not excuse what follows. 1.-Two wrongs do not make one right" ac- cording to quaint old saying; and because A IS fluid, 5 may not be treacherous. A person has no right to accept confidence if con scious that by his or her constitutional want of reticence the secret cannot be kept. We all know ourselves well enough for this; and we all could, if we would, exercise so much self-control and so much finer sense of honor as to say: "Do not tell me your secrets. I cannot keep them for you better than you can keep them for yourself, and what you confide to me I shall be sure to pass on to others" This would save vast amount of suffering and wrong doing in the future; but, alas ! it is just these brave beginnings, these honorable precautions, which so difficult to practice and so almost impossible to en- force. People who think they will not when, if they would but be honest to themselves, they know they infallibly will. For the mere pleasure of fappearing to sympathize for the moment, or for the less respectable gratifca- tion of their curiosity they will allow others to put themselves into the very jaws of what is in one sense death, by giving them to keep safe and hold fast those dangerous condolences which sure to be squandered abroad to the whole world-in whisper r-because natural love of gossip has made them too bur densome to hold
 If the sacredness of absolute confidence Is violated-if grave and dangerous secrets are told-what is not done by all that of merely implied confidence which passes rent in society as private conversation? How few people have the principle of honorable loyalty so far developed as to make the small treacheries of repetition exaggeration and un- friendly comment impossible They will sit and quietly listen to all sorts of things with which they do not agree, and which maybe they actually condemn, but never give sign of their disfavor. They will not combat your views nor declare their own. The utmost 
 not to actively indorse what you say; but they will not run the risk of offending you by fighting you on your own ground, and thus defending their own. They will only stab you in the back as soon as you have turned away your face. They will run about among all your common friends and say from one to the other, What odd opin- ions Mrs Fourstars holds and what a dread full woman she must be to think as she does!" They themselves, accustomed to the broad, smooth plane of orthodoxy and conformity from abtruse theological doctrine to the ex- act width of a ruff1e a ashirt-unaccustomed to the freer field of discussion and to the deeper trench of examination-think that everything which is unusual to them must therefore be improper or untrue or odd in it. self. Their knowledge of human life is more limited than yours; but, you say that you have seen such types, and have learned to draw such and such inferences from a tain class of facts, they will hold that you have committed that greatest crime of all blasphemy against humanity-and that you yourself are responsible for the very defects, the very sins, of which you declare you see the outline and the resting place.
 But if they would only say so to yourself, you would then know where you stood and you might protect yourself against misrepre justify your opinion by proof of it's soundness. They will not do this. They sit there quite calmly, and as if great
  it so ?'' and all the rest of it; and only when you have left, and they have secured new audience do they then launch their thunder bolts of indignation and proclaim to the world ''What an awful man that MT Blank is really not fit to be known by any self-re- specting woman '" Or''What person that Mrs Blank has shown herself to be; such hypocrite, too, for one would suspect her of being such a wretch as she has just prov ed herself by her disgraceful opinions!" Now, this is small treachery that is enacted at all times and by almost all persons. For one honest and outspoken opponent, content to grapple with you there and then, and to leave you alone when you cannot defend we find hundreds who make no sign of dissent to your face and only wait for your absence to betray all you have said, and to rend your reputation into fragments so small that they can never be pieced together again.
 You are stupid enough to say sharp and bitter things of common friends, or may be of only acquaintances. You are in an irritable mood, and have seen certain matters which seemed to you more than doubtful, and you have slet fly" with more force than discre- tion We all see it. We all know are handled by our friends at times with lesslove than might be. But we all know also that it would be mean and cruel thing to tell and to be told ;and that these little clouds which scud across the sky have really no vital sig
  clouds, no more; mere masses of vapor, in- tangible and without weight. Speak of them, repeat, betray, and from vapor they become burning flame, from clouds they change to sharp cutting swords. We are foolish enough to believe in the honor, the common sense and the natural humanity of our inter Locutor We are foolish and we are wrong Still, those two wrongs come once more to the front, with no right hand behind them. And our folly does not excuse the treachery of that other who forthwith carries the little snake to the unsuspecting Cleopatra, and tells her all, and probably more than all, that you have just said of her. Henceforth you and Cleopatra are two" You never know why, because you do not remember what you said, and you never think you have been betrayed. Tn your turn you resent this, as 1t seems to you uncalled for coolness born of the un- ,alled-for animadversion on your own side. And so the breach widens till it comes to direct cut.
 Bob ToOmbs' BOurbOnfsm.
 lAs Described by senator-Elect Brown]
 The course taken by Gen. Toombs since