The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1913-07-11
"Have You Heard ar

Pictorial Review: They say"
Have you heard?" Two wee phrases!
Five short words! But they have
done more damage than all the rest
of the dictionary rolled together!
They have wrecked homes and broken
hearts. They have ruined promising
careers and thrown business firms
into bankruptcy. They have disrupt
ed churches and plunged old friends
into bitter legal fights. They have
driven men to drink and women to
insanity. They have robbed innocent
children OF their parents and sent
young girls, broken-hearted and un-
welded to their graves. They have
turned merely foolish girls into wick
ed ones and they have sent innocent
men to prison. And they belong par.
ticularly to the vocabulary Of women.
They are peculiarly the weapons of
the so-called gentler sex.
Marshal Briggs arrested Jim Jones
for beating his wife, remarks a man
to tho circle Of loungers In the post
office. And it is 80. Jim Jones is
tried and fined in open court. This Is
not gossip. It is a plain, brutal state
ment of fact.
Have you heard that Mrs. Blank
has left her husbard?" inquiries Mrs.
Meddlesom at the sewing circle.
They do say he treats her something
awful Last night coming home from
prayer meeting my Mary heard her
carrying on fearfully, and this morn
ing I saw her, bag in hand, hurrying
for the TAO train. They say she's
gone back to her folks"
And so Tom Blank, silent, perhaps
even surly, but adored by his under
standing wife, acquires a reputation
for cruelty, when in reality Mrs.
Bland was carrying on" over a tele-
gram announcing the death of her
favorite sister. In her grief, she had
forgotten to announce to her curious
neighbors that she was going home
to the funeral!
Had the meddlesome and magma.
tive mother Of Mary the eavesdrop,
per, been pinned down to facts, she
must have admitted that no one had
really heard of Mrs. Blanks leaving
her husband, and that no one had
said that he treated his wife lily. The
entire story was built on the imagi-
nation and sensational tastes OF a
gossip-monger. Innocent II surly, Mr..
Blank wonders why his neighbours
look at him coldly in his hour Of lone
liness. When Mrs. Blank returns, she
must add to the burden of her grief
that Of denying an ugly story about
her home life.
All this does not mean that men are
devoid Of curiosity or malice, only
that they have a more direct and a
safer way OF justifying both. They
go after facts. Men do gossip but
they repeat what they know. Women
take a chance on repeating the little
they have seen, plus the much they
have heard, and color the result with
a thick application Of Imagination
Men rarely use the phrase, "They
say" Rather 1t is, Brown told me- .
And then Brown is held responsible
for the rumor or the statement Men
may be curious about the doings OF
their neighbors or what goes on in
the offices and stores of his competi-
tors, but they also have wholesome
respect for scandal and libel laws,
and simple and practical way of
demanding facts concerning current
stories.
The story which is built on facts,
or the bit of gossip which Is cruel but
true. will not work an injustice nor
inture the innocent. But the tale
prefaced by the little phrase. "They
say" is reasonably sure to drag some
guiltless party through the mire Of
scandal and suffering.