"There is another abuse of speech. It is not slander, but very like it. It has much of its meanness, and partakes of its guilt. They who indulge in it are the retailers of scandal. Their business argues a very morbid and sickly state of moral feeling. They are the snatchers up of inconsiderable trifles, who deal them out with infinite relish. They are traders in the small ware of slander, who magnify the value of their wares until they come to believe them real. The practice now referred to is that of reporting whatever one hears, adding, perhaps, a gloss of one's own; reporting it not perhaps upon the house-top--he might as well--but in the ears of others, until it becomes a common topic of conversation. What is peculiar to this is, that it is generally something prejudicial to the reputation or interests of his neighbor. To pry into that which is no concern of mine is mean. To report what I thus see and hear is contemptible. If this become general, no one is safe. All men would turn spies and scandal-mongers. No one will be safe, because no one's character will bear all kinds of exposure. "Every man has his faults. Add to this that every man more quickly discovers his neighbor's than his own; then, that he is in a measure blind to his own, when discovered a beam is in his eye! and that this blindness is a magnifier to his neighbor's, and you have a sum total of probabilities, which renders it extremely likely that he who desires subjects for scandal will have realized his most sanguine expectations. Says the Latin fabulist, as I have some time read, speaking of the faults of men, 'Jupiter gives to every man two sacks: one with his own faults, to be carried on his back; another, with his neighbor's, to hang upon his breast'-- 'On this account, man never can behold His own, but can his neighbor's faults unfold.' Phædrus knew men. His fable is not all a fable. If not a fact, it casts the shadow of one. It is easier to unfold the faults of others than our own. And, if all should delight to do it, none would be safe.