LIVES WRECKED BY GOSSIP.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2546, 22 February 1923, Page 4

LIVES WRECKED BY GOSSIP.

If only gossips realised the evil that they do! Would it deter them? I wonder.

The love of gossip is so deeply engrained in human nature that nothings less than a miracle would kill it. People, more than things, interest the majority. The most stirring events may be taking place in the outside world. But they fade into insignificance if there is a piece of spicy local gossip going on. “Have you heard!” “Do you know?” A mysterious whisper and the damage is done. Women are supposed to be the worst offenders. Almost every woman is a born gossip. She delights in tittle-tattle. She does not demand proof. It is enough for her to hear a good story which she can pass on. Her imagination gets to work. She remembers things or invents them. When she retells the i ale she had added a little colour to it.

But many men are quite as bad. You can hear in men’s clubs gossip just as slanderous and venomous as any that passes from woman’s mouth. The purveyor usually takes care to protect himself. “I have heard so-and-so from a reliable source,” he states. But he does not tell the source. There are certain men who -set themselves out always to hear “the latest” who delight in scandal, and are never so happy as when they have a fresh tit-bit of gossip with which to regale their listeners. They will disturb the simplest incident, or give it a sinister significance. Not that the gossips are always malignant. More often they are thoughtless and light-hearted. They start a story out of fun or from personal vanity and the desire to be regarded as well-informed. How many lives have been wrecked by gossip it is impossible to say. Constantly in the low courts one gets glimpses of the havoc wrought. But for every ease made public ten never see the light of .day.

There are calumnies that are hard or impossible to refute. And the successful refutation in a court of law often leaves the victim under a cloud.

“There is no smoke without fire,” people say. To bring an action, whether successful or unsuccessful, may "involve the prosecutor in ruinous costs. It may happen that the defendant is a person of straw, and the injured one has to pay the costs of litigation. A man may have to stand his trial any crimes from murder down - wards through gossip, and be absolutely free of any offence except, that he has got- himself talked about.

A woman may have her reputation torn to shreds and never have a chance to vindicate it —through gossip.

“Done to death by slanderous .tongues.” —“By One Who Has Suf’fered.” in a London paper.