It was true, Miss Prissy, like most of her nomadic compeers, was a little given to gossip; but, after all, it was innocent gossip,--not a bit of malice in it; it was only all the particulars about Mrs. Thus-and-So's wardrobe,--all the statistics of Mrs. That-and-T'other's china-closet,--all the minute items of Miss Simpkins's wedding-clothes, --and how her mother cried, the morning of the wedding, and said that she didn't know anything how she could spare Louisa Jane, only that Edward was such a good boy that she felt she could love him like an own son,--and what a providence it seemed that the very ring that was put into the bride-loaf was one that he gave her when he first went to sea, when she wouldn't be engaged to him because she thought she loved Thomas Strickland better, but that was only because she hadn't found him out, you know,--and so forth, and so forth. Sometimes, too, her narrations assumed a solemn cast, and brought to mind the hush of funerals, and told of words spoken in faint whispers, when hands were clasped for the last time,--and of utterances crushed out from hearts, when the hammer of a great sorrow strikes out sparks of the divine, even from common stone; and there would be real tears in the little blue eyes, and the pink bows would flutter tremulously, like the last three leaves on a bare scarlet maple in autumn. In fact, dear reader, _gossip_, like romance, has its noble side to it. How can you love your neighbor as yourself and not feel a little curiosity as to how he fares, what he wears, where he goes, and how he takes the great life tragi-comedy at which you and he are both more than spectators? Show me a person who lives in a country-village absolutely without curiosity or interest on these subjects, and I will show you a cold, fat oyster, to whom the tide-mud of propriety is the whole of existence. As one of our esteemed collaborators in the ATLANTIC remarks,--"A dull town, where there is neither theatre nor circus nor opera, must have some excitement, and the real tragedy and comedy of life _must_ come in place of the second-hand. Hence the noted gossiping propensities of country-places, which, so long as they are not poisoned by envy or ill-will, have a respectable and picturesque side to them,--an undoubted leave to be, as probably has almost everything, which obstinately and always insists on being, except sin!"