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.
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