The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1934-08-30
Happiness
Shattered
by Gossip
Instance Cited to Show
How Act of Mercy
Branded Woman.
BY HELEN WELSHIMER
NEA Service stan Writer

CTRANGE what an evil tongue
~ can do, isn't it? No wonder the
prediction was once given that he
that holdeth his tongue deserves
several more stars in his crown than
he that merely fires some guns,
drops some tear gas bombs and or
ders some other soldiers to hand
over the city keys.
The tongue that needs to be held
usually belongs to a person who
feels that it is his or her-sad to
say it's usually a feminine urge
duty to make little speech for your
own good.
MY dear, I won't mince matters.
I'm doing this for your own well
fare!"
Thereby, the speaker ruins life,
love and happiness and goes home
to the sweet music of the crashing
pieces as somebody's heaven falls.
Good Deed Starts Talk
Most normal, healthy adults, for
tunately, are possessed Of sufficient
intelligence to know what they are
doing and why they are doing it.
They are not going to deliberately
work injury to themselves and those
dear to them. If they do have that
design, then an intruder hasn't a
ghost of a chance, any way.
Quite often persons are doing con-
trary to their own standard of wise
living, even when appearances are
against them. 1t was that way with
the unmarried woman in a small
town who disappeared recently. Her
neighbors talked about her for be-
friending some homeless people.
The group happened to include a
man who had a small child.
Well, the neighbors who talked
had perfectly good husbands to pro-
tect them, but they didn't offer to
befriend the poverty -stricken fam
lily. They left the matter to woman
who lived alone and then made
comments. Now nobody in the vi
Cinity except the gossips gave a
boot about the matter. Real per-
sons were too busy to care what
other people were doing.
The woman disappeared. The
sharp-edged tongues said it was
because she had done wrong,
wrong with a capital w, which is
supposed to spell something very
bad. The woman was blameleSs.
The tongues drove her away. Even
if she had varied the conventions,
it wasn't the goSsips' business.
Gossip Destroys Happiness
Life and happiness are precious,
Heaven doesn't last long on this
earth. We are asked to help build,
not destroy, another's castle. The
Spanish architecture of our dreams
will 60 down swiftly enough in a
storm without clutching fingers
tearing apart the chimneys and
breaking the window glass.
Christ, you will remember, dined
at the home of a publican and was
gracious to Mary Magdalene. Even
if the perfectly kind and honest
woman had been less kind and less
honest, certainly she was human
being worthy of being treated as
one.
The proposed criminal code in
Germany suggests that criminals
who must die be given a poison cup
or a gun to use as suicide inStru-
ments if the criminals prefer. There
are plenty of persons in Germany
and America and any other pink
or green spot on this terrestrial
globe whose suicides or disappear
ances are the result of a forced
hemlock cup.
We arrest persons for burning
houses and stealing pocketboOkS.
But we have no punishment for
those who crush happiness and wreck
lives. Happiness. after all, is worth
more than a burned bungalow or a
lost half dollar.
Duty and sympathetic kindness
are two different things. If we
can't be gracious let's keep our
mouths closed.
Copyright. 1884. NEA Service. Incl
Mr.. and Mrs. T. M. Rybolt and