These, too, are secrets—the secrets of Nature; but Nature has [Sidenote: E] no grievance against those who find them out. Are the big things beyond you? Then pry into the smaller ones. Ask how it is that some plants are always flourishing and green, proudly displaying their wealth at every season, while others are at one moment as good as these, but at another have squandered their abundance all at once, like some human spendthrift, and are left bare and beggared. Why, again, do some plants produce elongated fruits, some angular, some round and globelike? But perhaps you will have no curiosity for such concerns, [Sidenote: F] because there is nothing wrong about them. Well, if inquisitiveness absolutely must be always browsing and passing its time among things sordid, like a maggot among dead matter, let us introduce it to history and story, and supply it with bad things in abundance and without stint. For there it will find _Fallings of men and spurnings-off of life_, seductions of women, assaults by slaves, slanderings of friends, concoctions of poisons, envies, jealousies, shipwrecks of homes, overthrows of rulers. Take your fill, enjoy yourself, and cause no annoyance or pain to any of those with whom you come in contact. Apparently, however, inquisitiveness finds no pleasure in scandals which are stale; it wants them hot and fresh. And [Sidenote: 518] while it enjoys the spectacle of a novel tragedy, it takes no sort of interest in the comedy or more cheerful side of life. Consequently the busybody lends but a careless and indifferent ear to the account of a wedding, a sacrifice, or a complimentary ‘farewell’. He says he has already heard most of the details, and urges the narrator to cut them short or omit them. But if any one will sit by him and tell him the news about the corruption of a girl or the unfaithfulness of a wife or an impending action at law or a quarrel between brothers, there is no sleepiness or hurry about him, but _More words still doth he ask, and proffers his ears to receive them._ As applied to the busybody, the words _How much more apt to reach the ear of man An ill thing than a happy!_ are a true saying. As a cupping-glass sucks from the flesh what [Sidenote: B] is worst in it, so the inquisitive ear draws to itself the most undesirable topics. To vary the figure: cities have certain ‘Accursed’ or ‘Dismal’ gates, through which they take out criminals on their way to death and throw the refuse and offscourings of purification, while nothing sacred or undefiled goes in or out through them. So with the ears of the busybody. They give passage to nothing fine or useful, but serve only as the pathway of gruesome communications, with their load of foul and polluted gossip. _No chance brings other minstrel to my roof, But always Lamentation._