There is one way in which leisure is very generally misspent in school—­and alas, outside, too!—­not in managing one’s own affairs, but in managing and discussing the affairs of others.  At such times the remarks may be superlatively pleasant, but they are more often superlatively disagreeable.  It may be said with truthfulness that they are almost never moderate or just.  Everything is all black or all white, with no gray.  It makes one think of the little girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead: 

    “When she was good, she was very, very good,
    And when she was bad, she was horrid.”

But, alas! the poor wretches discussed are not allowed even the natural and somewhat happy human alternation between badness and goodness.  No, indeed, they are monsters of a desperate character—­they may at the moment be broken-heartedly conscious of their own faults—­or they are shining six-winged angels.  And, woe! this sort of thing comes almost as hard upon the angels.  They can’t endure it; so much goodness breaks down their wing arches, and the glorious ones crumple together like tissue-paper.

And upon the girls busily engaged in creating angels of loveliness and gargoyles of ugliness, this sort of conversation works havoc.  It does not invigorate them, it does not inspire them.  It belittles their minds—­thank fortune, that making kindling wood of the characters of other people does do this!—­and stunts their finer feelings.  This sin, that they “do by two and two,” they pay for one by one.  Gentle and considerate feelings are lost, time is wasted, a vicious habit,—­almost no habit is more vicious,—­is acquired.  Such gossip can never become a pure enjoyment; it remains at the best an ignoble, discreditable excitement.  Rolling these sweet morsels under their tongues, a taste for ill-natured or exaggerated comment fixes itself in their mouths.  Even if they have consciences that, like good mothers, will occasionally wash their mouths out with soap, they retain the disturbing memory of unkind, coarse, or foolish words.

Yet school should be the last place in which to indulge in idle talk.  Such indulgence is against all the idealism of student life.  Idle or meddlesome talk never helps any one, either the one who talks or the one who is discussed.  If you have anything to say about other people, and if going to them will help you, the only friendly thing to do—­it is not an easy thing—­is to speak to the people concerned.  If we really knew how to put ourselves in other people’s places, no unkind, unfriendly words would ever be spoken again.  There would be things hard to bear said—­rebuke or reproof are never easy to receive—­but nothing unfriendly.  Think how idle, ill-natured talk flows around the world, and then think what a different world it would be if there were none of it!  It is to human life what the blights, the scales, the insect pests are to tree and flower.  Fortunately, as people grow older they come to think themselves less infallible, and as they grow wiser they become more tender and more lenient in their judgments.