_THE WHISPERER._
"And when they talk of him they shake their heads,
And whisper one another in the ear;
And he that speaks doth gripe the hearer's wrist,
Whilst he that hears makes fearful action
With wrinkled brows, with nods, and rolling eyes."
SHAKESPEARE.
His stock of information is always of the most original kind, and no
want of it into the bargain. No one is acquainted with the facts
treasured in his memory but himself. Nor does he want any one else to
know, excepting a particular friend in whom he has the greatest
confidence. And he will only inform him in a whisper, lest any other
should hear; and this upon the sacred condition that he will never
discover the secret to his nearest friend, not even to the wife of his
bosom. And lo, when the grand secret is divulged into his inclining and
attentive ear, it is either an old story which everybody knows, or a
communication of gossip about some one in whom he has no interest
whatever.
Peter Hush is a Whisperer often met with in the ranks of life. He is a
descendant from an ancient family of that name, which has lived so long
that the origin can scarcely be traced out. He stands related to a vast
number of Hushes located in different parts of the world. It is the
business of Peter, in the first place, to walk around in the
neighbourhood where he resides in order to pick up what scraps of
information he can find. He cares not where he finds them, nor how, nor
what they are; he has a use for them. He collects stories in the private
history of individuals, mixed up with a slight degree of scandal. The
sickness of persons, evening parties, clandestine visits, secret
courtships, elopements, marriages, difficulties of tradesmen, quarrels
of husbands and wives, rumours from abroad respecting a newly located
neighbour, with such-like things, constitute the commodity which he
gathers. He is seldom or ever without a stock on hand; if he cannot give
you of one kind, he can of another. Sometimes I have met him in a
bye-road, and, before he told me what he had to say, he came close to
me, and being a little shorter than myself, stood on tip-toe, and
whispered in my ears; then telling me aloud, "Be sure now you say
nothing about it; I wouldn't have it repeated for all the world." Poor
Peter need not have been alarmed, for I knew the thing long before he
did. I have been alone with him in a large room, and he would take me up
one corner to whisper something in my ears. He has a way sometimes of
ending his whispering revelations with a loud, "Do not you think so?"
then whisper again, and then aloud, "But you know that person," then
whisper again. The thing would be well enough if Peter whispered to keep
the folly of what he says among friends; but, alas! he does it to
preserve the importance of his own thoughts. It is a wonderful thing
that, although he is never heard to talk about things in nature, and
never seen with a book in his hand, yet he can whisper something like
knowledge of what has and of what now passes in the world, which one
would think he learned from some familiar spirit that did not think him
worthy to receive the whole story. But the truth is, he deals only in
half accounts of what he would entertain you with. A help to his
discourse is, "That the town says, and people begin to talk very freely,
and he had it from persons too considerable to be named, what he will
tell you when things are riper." He informs you as a secret that he
designs in a very short time to reveal you a secret; you must say
nothing to any one. The next time you see him the secret is not yet
ripened, he wants to learn a little more of it, and in a fortnight's
time he hopes to tell you everything about it.
You may sometimes see Peter seat himself in a company of eight or ten
persons whom he never saw before in his life; and after having looked
about to see that no one overheard, he has communicated unto them in a
low voice, and under the seal of secrecy, the death of a great man in
the country, who was perhaps at that very moment travelling in Europe
for his pleasure. If upon entering a room you see a circle of heads
bending over a table, and lying close to one another, it is almost
certain that Peter Hush is among them. Peter has been known to publish
the whisper of the day by eight o'clock in the morning at one house, by
twelve at a second, and before two at a third. When Peter has thus
effectually launched a secret, it is amusing to hear people whispering
it to one another at second hand, and spreading it about as their own;
for it must be known that the great incentive to whispering is the
ambition which every one has of being thought in the secret and being
looked upon as a man who has access to greater people than one would
imagine.
Besides the character of Peter Hush, as a whisperer, there is Lady
Blast, about whom a word or two must be said. She deals in the private
transactions of the sewing circle, the quilting party, with all the
arcana of the fair sex. She has such a particular malignity in her
whisper that it blights like an easterly wind, and withers every
reputation it breathes upon. She has a most dexterous plan at making
private weddings. Last winter she married about five women of honour to
their footmen. Her whisper can rob the innocent young lady of her
virtue; and fill the healthful young man with diseases. She can make
quarrels between the dearest friends, and effect a divorce between the
husband and wife who never lived on any terms but the most peaceful and
happy. She can stain the character of the clergymen with corruption,
against which no one could ever utter the faintest moral delinquency.
She can beggar the wealthy, and degrade the noble. In short, she can
whisper men base or foolish, jealous or ill-natured; or, if occasion
requires, can tell you the failings of their great-grandmothers, and
traduce the memory of virtuous citizens who have been in their graves
these hundred years.
A few words more respecting the Whisperer taken from the Bible. The
Psalmist regarded those who whispered against him as those who hated
him. "All that hate me whisper together against me: against me do they
devise my hurt" (Ps. xli. 7). "A whisperer separateth chief friends," is
the declaration of the wise man (Prov. xvi. 28). And again, he says,
"Where there is no whisperer (marginal reading) the strife ceaseth"
(Prov. xxvi. 20). "Whisperers" is one of the names given by St. Paul to
the heathen characters which he describes in the first chapter of
Romans. Let my reader, then, beware of the Whisperer. Give no ear to his
secrets. Guard against an imitation of his example. Favour the candid
and honest man who has nothing to say but what is truthful, charitable,
and wise. Cultivate the same disposition in your own bosom, and so avoid
in yourself the disreputable character of a Whisperer, and prevent the
mischievous consequences in others.