Mrs. Walters wonderingly read the following legend, running in an arch across the chimney: 

Good friend, around these hearth-stones speak
no evil word of any creature.

She wheeled towards me with instantaneous triumph.

“I’m glad you put it there!” she cried.  “I’m glad you put it there!  It will teach them a lesson about their talking.  If there is one thing I cannot stand it is a gossip.”

I have observed that a fowl before a looking-glass will fight its own image.

“Take care, Mrs. Walters!” I said, gently.  “You came very near to violating the law just then.”

“He meant it for me, Mrs. Walters,” said Georgiana, fondling our neighbor’s hand, and looking at me with an awful rebuke.

“I meant it for myself,” I said.  “And now it is doing its best to make me feel like a Pharisee.  So I hasten to add that there are other rooms in the house in which it will be allowed human nature to assert itself in this long-established, hereditary, and ineradicable right.  Our guests have only to intimate that they can no longer restrain their propensities and we will conduct them to another chamber.  Mrs. Moss and I will occasionally make use of these chambers ourselves, to relieve the tension of too much virtue.  But it is seriously our idea to have one room in the house where we shall feel safe, both as respects ourselves and as respects others, from the discomfort of evil-speaking.  As long as these walls stand or we dwell in them, this is to be the room of charity and kindness to all creatures.”

Although we exerted ourselves, conversation flagged during the visit of Mrs. Walters.  Several times she began to speak, but, with a frightened look at the fireplace, dropped into a cough, or cleared her throat in a way that called to mind the pleasing habit of Sir Roger de Coverly in the Gardens of Gray’s Inn.

Later in the evening other guests came.  Upon each the law of that fireside was lightly yet gravely impressed.  They were in the main the few friends I know in whom such an outward check would call for the least inner restraint; nevertheless, on what a footing of confidence it placed our conversation!  To what a commanding level we were safely lifted!  For nothing so releases the best powers of the mind as the understanding that the entire company are under bond to keep the peace of the finest manners and of perfect breeding.

And Georgiana—­how she shone!  I knew that she could perfectly fill a window; I now see that she can as easily fill a room.  Our bodies were grouped about the fireplace; our minds centred around her, and she flashed like the evening star along our intellectual pathway.

The next day Mrs. Walters talked a long time to Georgiana on the edge of the porch.