Gossiping is a bad habit. How many people were dragged into courts because of gossiping? How many marriages were broken forever on that account? How many misfortunes and murders caused by slander are noted almost every week in Polish newspapers. It is easy to fabricate gossip, to blacken the good name of a woman or man, but how hard it is to repair the evil caused by it.

Not very long ago, in one of our Polish settlements in America, women, who like to gossip, slandered some woman accusing her of unfaithfulness to her husband. It does not matter whether the woman was guilty or not. It was enough; for as soon as her husband, a jealous man, had learned about it, he started to reproach her and while doing so grabbed his revolver and shot her. The woman died, in a hospital, and the man was sent to jail.

Don't you think, dear readers, that in reality those gossipers should have gone to jail? They saw the faults of others and forgot about their own. Who was the cause of the crime if not those gossipers? The jealous husband 2was used only as an instrument in the gossipers' hands. Today we have not yet severe punishment for such women who cause crimes by gossiping. Perhaps the time will come when such slander will be punished the same as any crime. Guilty is the hand that committed the crime, not the instrument with which the crime was committed. Therefore, in cases when slander causes any kind of crime, not only those should be punished who committed the crime, but also those who caused it with their tongues.

Women who have very little to do or those who are not interested in books, or in reading, spend much time in talking about their neighbors with whom they are angry and sometimes they do not spare their own friends.

One of the women will say that this or that woman does not get along very well with her husband; another will add that there must be something to that; and the third one will say that that woman does not lead a good life but her husband does not see it. The gossip spreads rapidly. The fourth neighbor will tell her closest friend, as a secret, that probably that woman is betraying her husband.

The fifth woman will say that she has reliable information, and also proofs, that that woman is betraying her husband. Another woman will advertise that the friend of her friend told her that "she saw a man going to her house while the husband was not home." The gossip is started. The good name of that woman has been ruined without any consideration as to the great harm that has been done to her. There are thousands of such cases in every Polish settlement.

Fortunately, not all women like gossiping for a majority of them find better engagements than slandering their neighbors. How can we tell a gossiper? When she goes to a grocer or a butcher to buy something, she stays there two hours talking about all the neighbors and telling something about every one of them. When she meets an acquaintance on the street she will stop and talk for hours, forgetting that the children are all alone at home. The house of such a woman is dirty. The children are not clean; their hair is not combed; everything is in disorder. There is a pile of rubbish in the corner - for such a gossiper has no time for taking care of her house she 4is busy talking about her neighbors; "under strict secrecy" she promises not to tell but as soon as her tongue starts to itch she cannot hold a secret but will tell it to another woman, "under strict secrecy."

As I stated in the beginning, gossiping is a nasty habit, and we have to cure ourselves of it. If we happen to meet such gossipers as we have described above, we should avoid them as something very bad.