And upon the girls busily engaged in creating angels of loveliness and
gargoyles of ugliness, this sort of conversation works havoc. It does
not invigorate them, it does not inspire them. It belittles their
minds--thank fortune, that making kindling wood of the characters of
other people does do this!--and stunts their finer feelings. This sin,
that they "do by two and two," they pay for one by one. Gentle and
considerate feelings are lost, time is wasted, a vicious habit,--almost
no habit is more vicious,--is acquired. Such gossip can never become a
pure enjoyment; it remains at the best an ignoble, discreditable
excitement. Rolling these sweet morsels under their tongues, a taste for
ill-natured or exaggerated comment fixes itself in their mouths. Even if
they have consciences that, like good mothers, will occasionally wash
their mouths out with soap, they retain the disturbing memory of unkind,
coarse, or foolish words.

Yet school should be the last place in which to indulge in idle talk.
Such indulgence is against all the idealism of student life. Idle or
meddlesome talk never helps any one, either the one who talks or the one
who is discussed. If you have anything to say about other people, and if
going to them will help you, the only friendly thing to do--it is not an
easy thing--is to speak to the people concerned. If we really knew how
to put ourselves in other people's places, no unkind, unfriendly words
would ever be spoken again. There would be things hard to bear
said--rebuke or reproof are never easy to receive--but nothing
unfriendly. Think how idle, ill-natured talk flows around the world, and
then think what a different world it would be if there were none of it!
It is to human life what the blights, the scales, the insect pests are
to tree and flower. Fortunately, as people grow older they come to think
themselves less infallible, and as they grow wiser they become more