2
We surround ourselves with all the evil that we attribute to the victims of our gossip. It takes form at our own expense; it lives and feeds upon the best of our substance; it accumulates all about us, peopling and encumbering our atmosphere with phantoms, at first grotesque, inconsistent, docile, timid and ephemeral, which gradually become persistent, add to their strength and stature, speak with louder voice and develop into very real and imperious entities which ere long will issue orders and assume the direction of most of our thoughts and actions. We are less and less masters in our own houses; we feel our character slowly sapped of its strength; and we find ourselves sooner or later enclosed within a sort of enchanted circle which it is all but impossible to break, a circle in which we no longer know whether we are defaming our brethren because we are growing as bad as they, or whether we are growing bad because we defame them.