Relatives and intimate friends should be careful, in their associations with others, not to make an indiscreet or ungenerous use of the knowledge they have gained of one another. The wise man is silent in regard to the weaknesses of those with whom he stands in close relations. Indeed, there is something generous and noble in the endeavor to make men think as well of one another as a regard for truth will permit. The habitual depreciator is one of the weakest and most unlovable of men.
One of the things we should be most studious to avoid in conversation is perversity. There are men that seem to think it their special mission in this world to set others right. Say what you may, and say it as you may, they will immediately proceed to show you that you are at least partly, if not wholly, wrong. As for agreeing with you, they never do, unless, in disagreeing with a third person, they agree with you accidentally. It is hardly necessary to say that this perverseness is not a characteristic of persons of a generous nature or a large understanding. It is the product of a feeling closely allied to envy, and is peculiar to men of overweening conceit and inordinate love of adulation. Quite unconsciously they oftentimes do little else than assail whatever is advanced by others, solely because they cannot brook the thought that the attention of the company be diverted from themselves.
The old injunction, “If you cannot speak well of people, speak of them not at all,” has never yet been heeded by any one, nor should it be, for it is by exchanging opinions of our acquaintances and by discussing their faults and weaknesses that we add to our knowledge of human nature, than which few things are more desirable. “There are two kinds of gossip,” says an English writer--“the good-humored and the scandalous--the gossip that touches lightly on faults and foibles, and amusing incidents and curious contrasts, and the gossip that peers into the privacy of domestic life, and invents or misrepresents. The latter no right-thinking person will indulge in or listen to; the former is the salt of ordinary conversation. We cannot help taking an interest in our fellows, and there is no reason why we should not, so long as that interest is not malignant.”