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Don't you remember, clerical reader of thirty-two, having seen a good deal of an old parson, rather sour in aspect, rather shabby-looking, sadly pinched for means, and with powers dwarfed by the sore struggle with the world to maintain his family and to keep up a respectable appearance upon his limited resources; perhaps with his mind made petty and his temper spoiled by the little worries, the petty malignant tattle and gossip and occasional insolence of a little backbiting village? and don't you remember how for days you felt haunted by a sort of nightmare that there was what you would be, if you lived so long?
I write on my own doubts, you see, and you will smile at them, or understand all through them that if the book had not interested me like a piece of real life, I should not find myself backbiting as if all these were 'my neighbours. The pure tender feeling of the closing scenes touched me to better purpose, believe me, and I applaud from my heart and conscience your rejection of that low creed of 'poetical justice' which is neither justice nor poetry which is as degrading to virtue as false to experience, and which, thrown from your book, raises it into a pure atmosphere at once.
It is said that in other society there is sometimes a great scramble for the first place, for the leadership, as it is called, and that women, and men too, fight for what is called position; and in order to be first they will injure their neighbors by telling stories about them and by backbiting, which is the meanest kind of biting there is, not excepting the bite of fleas.
If we would stop our ears, we should stop the slanderer's mouth; if we would resist the calumniator, he would fly from us; if we would reprove him, we should repel him. For, "as the north wind driveth away rain, so," the wise man telleth us, "doth an angry countenance a backbiting tongue."
For four years he practised his art, chilled by no shadow of suspicion, and his immunity was due as well to his excellent bearing as to his sleight of hand. In one of the countless chap-books which dishonour his fame, he is unjustly accused of relying for his effects upon an elaborate apparatus, half knife, half scissors, wherewith to rip the pockets of his victims. The mere backbiting of envy!
"Yes, but not for that" she jerked a thumb back at Keno "that place is pretty small. What's left, of course; but it seems to me sometimes they're all of them lame, halt and blind. Always quarreling and backbiting and jumping each other's claims but what do you think of the Paymaster?" She shot the question at him and it occurred suddenly to Wiley that perhaps she had a programme, too.
Tell me why are cards wicked? Drinking, and stealing, and lying, and backbiting, and naughty love-making, but especially backbiting backbiting backbiting, those are the things that the Bible says are wicked. I shall go on playing cards, my dear, till Mr Stumfold can send me chapter and verse forbidding it."
But when they see Catholics be they ever so few cursing, quarrelling, backbiting, drinking, lying, stealing, cheating, etc. in a word, indulging in the same vices as those who claim to have no religion, what must they think of the moral influence of Catholic faith?
Jennings espied my father's carriage, and stepped to speak a word to the footman. He returned, saying, with a puff of his cheeks: 'The Grand Monarque has been sending his state equipage to give the old backbiting cripple Brisby an airing. He is for horse exercise to-day they've dropped him in Courtenay Square. There goes Brisby.
This is the very temper of a prosperous and pampered life: which seeks lust or cruelty not to forget itself, as a stunted and tortured nature may be forgiven for doing, but in order to work off its superfluous blood. Observe, too, how much sins of the tongue are mentioned,, lying, backbiting and the love of swallowing men's reputations whole.
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