Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1916-11-03
HOW GOSSIP
MAKES SCANDAL
Beatrice Fairfax Points Out
Wrongs of Knocking on
Fellows
BY BEATRICE FAIRFAX

by BEATRICE FAIRFAX
The critical faculty is one in which
no human being is lacking. No mat
ter how lowly the station of an in
diviouai or how under-developed his
mentality, he finds someone to look
down upon and criticise. 1t seems a
foregone conclusion that everyone in
the world of to-day is going to
Knock just about everyone else.
How could she do this?' How
dare he do that" How under the
sun could they be guilty of such
conduct - such comments fairly fly
whenever two are gathered together.
Human beings confess readily enough
that they like harmless bit of gos-
sip, and fail utterly to realize that
harmless bit OF gossip" grows in the
telling and assumes the proportions
of harmful bit of scandal.
With every breath a reputation
dies" Hideously true! We have
often discussed in the little circle of
ours the evils of gossip : it's unfair
ness to others, its cruelty to its OBJ
Jects. But now 1t is worth while to
consider its greater harmfulness -
which is subjective.
None of us can be sure what we
would do were we in the position in
which some one else is placed. The
old story of John Bunyan and the
criminal who was going to be hanged
applies all through life. Said he:
There, but for the grace of God, goes
John Bunyan." And there, but for
the grace of God, goes any one of us
in any set of circumstances, however
unimaginable, or contemplate, or
painful.
How is any one of us to know
what we would have done in cir
cumstances which tempted some one
else to wrong-doing or even to his
undoing?
Any one who has poor heredity,
who is brought up in bad environ
ment, who has the handicap of
physical ill-health to swing his
mentality from the healthful, and
who meets the particular set of
temptations best calculated to break
down his own set of defenses, is
pathetically likely to yield to
temptation.
To one of us money is the temp
tation that is practically irresistible.
Hasn't each of us heard some sturd-
lily honest individual say to a bank
cashier or to the handler of money
in any large concern, II wouldn't
want to be in your place. Doesn't
handling all that money every day
drive you almost mad with the
longing to have it for your own?"
Now, probably. the particular in
dividual who was advanced to that
|
cause he is an individual of COM
mercial honesty. Most absconding
treasurers and cashiers run away
not because they have yielded to
the temptation directly due to their
money responsibility, but because
races cards. drink or even an il
licit love affair. And probably an
individual who meant to he honest
and who thought he was honest
yielded to just the particular
temptation an inherited and culti-
waited tendency toward a certain
sort of weakness made too big for
| his power of resistance.
Cultivating strong inhibition and
strong power over ourselves is
likely to help any one of us to re-
sist temptation. But not all of us
know this. Not all of us train our
selves early in life to resist our own
weaknesses. The self-indulgent boy
whose parents let him have his own
way and who makes everybody else
let him have his own way is train
ing himself for a manhood in which
he will want something to which he
has no right, but which his own
wants when he wants it will make
him the victim.
How can any of us know what
set of circumstances makes one man
a thief and another an honored citi-
zen? The thing for us to do is to
get at the foundations, help raise
standards of honesty and virtue,
help make other rewards possible
for virtue than merely virtue it
self. What we need is to get at
causes of crime. So at once we
eliminate to an even greater extent
our own cruel tendency to judge it,
And that swings us back full cir
| Icln tn 10
of it all which each of us may find
| in the Book of Books:
Judge not, that ye be not
Judged"