Receptiveness to Gossip

We have mentioned to many varieties of human ills, but there is one cankering practice, not peculiar to any time or place, that causes our thoughts, if not our words, to rise in eloquent protest. We have reference to that brand of whispering which travels like a wind-swept fire from ear to ear, and destroys, without conscience, the good name of a man, the reputation of an institution, the integrity of a nation, or whatever it chooses to blight and wither. To shout base things in public, to print a libelous statement, or to bear false witness in violation of the commandments of God and men are crimes traceable to their source and for which there is prescribed punishment. But he who lets his words loose on the breath of a whisper which sweeps from lip to lip, and which, by its innuendo, suggests more than it says, is most despicable. And because of our own receptiveness to gossip, and our own frail eagerness to be the first to tell something, we enlist ourselves in the spread of half-spoken untruth oftener than we should care to admit. May heaven keep a man and his possessions from the blight of those who whisper at his back.