XV. THE INQUISITIVE. "The Inquisitive will blab: from such refrain; Their leaky ears no secret can retain."-- Horace.

The Inquisitive is a talker whose capacity is for taking rather than giving. To ask questions is his province, and not to give answers. He is more anxious to know than he is to make known. Though in some instances he may have the ability to speak good sense, yet he cannot or will not exercise himself in so doing. He must pry into other people’s stock of knowledge, and find out all that he can for his satisfaction. If he come to anything which is labelled “Private,” he is sure to be the more curious to ascertain what is within. He is restless and dissatisfied until he knows. He pauses—he resumes his interrogations—he circumlocutes—he apologizes, it may be, but make the discovery he will if possible. His inquisitiveness is mostly in regard to matters of comparatively minor importance in themselves, but which, at the same time, you do not care for him to know. Your pedigree—your relations—your antecedents—your reasons for leaving your former occupation—your prospects in life—your income—your wife’s maiden name and origin—with a hundred similar things.

His inquisitiveness often turns into impertinence and impudence, which one does well to resent with indignancy; or, if not, to answer him according to his folly.

The two or three following instances will illustrate this talker:—

A gentleman with a wooden leg, travelling in a stage-coach, was annoyed by questions relative to himself and his business proposed by his fellow-passengers. One of them inquired how he came to lose his leg. “I will tell you,” he replied, “on condition that you all ask me no other question.” To this there was no objection, and the promise was given. “As to the loss of my leg,” said he, “it was bit off!” There was a pause. No more questions were to be asked; but one of the party, unable to contain himself, exclaimed, “But I should like to know how it was bit off.” This is an old story, but here is one of a similar kind, of a more recent date. It occurred in San Francisco, where a genuine Yankee, having bored a new comer with every conceivable question relative to his object in visiting the gold country, his hopes, his means, and his prospects, at length asked him if he had a family.

“Yes, sir; I have a wife and six children in New York; and I never saw one of them.”After this reply the couple sat a few moments in silence; then the interrogator again commenced,—

“Was you ever blind, sir?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you marry a widow, sir?”

“No, sir.”

Another lapse of silence.

“Did I understand you to say, sir, that you had a wife and six children living in New York, and had never seen one of them?”

“Yes, sir; I so stated it.”

Another and a longer pause of silence. Then the interrogator again inquired,—

“How can it be, sir, that you never saw one of them?”

“Why,” was the response, “one of them was born after I left.”

A gentleman in America, riding in an eastern railroad car, which was rather sparsely supplied with passengers, observed, in a seat before him, a lean, slab-sided Yankee; every feature of his face seemed to ask a question, and a little circumstance soon proved that he possessed a more “inquiring mind.” Before him, occupying an entire seat, sat a lady dressed in deep black, and after shifting his position several times, and manoeuvring to get an opportunity to look into her face, he at length caught her eye.

“In affliction?”

“Yes, sir,” responded the lady.

“Parent?—father or mother?”“No, sir.”

“Child, perhaps?—a boy or a girl?”

“No, sir, not a child; I have no children.”

“Husband, then, I expect?”

“Yes,” was the curt answer.

“Hum! cholery? A tradin’ man may be?”

“My husband was a seafaring man, the captain of a vessel; he didn’t die of cholera; he was drowned.”

“O, drowned, eh?” pursued the inquisitor, hesitating for a brief instant. “Save his chist?”

“Yes; the vessel was saved, and my husband’s effects,” said the widow.

“Was they?” asked the Yankee, his eyes brightening up. “Pious man?”

“He was a member of the Methodist Church.”

The next question was a little delayed, but it came.

“Don’t you think that you have great cause to be thankful that he was a pious man, and saved his chist?”

“I do,” said the widow abruptly, and turned her head to look out of the window.

The indefatigable “pump” changed his position, held the widow by his glittering eye once more, and propounded one more query, in a lower tone, with his head slightly inclined forward, over the back of the seat,—

“Was you calculating to get married again?”

“Sir,” said the widow, indignantly, “you are impertinent!” And she left her seat and took another on the other side of the car.“’Pears to be a little huffy?” said the ineffable bore. Turning to our narrator behind him, “What did they make you pay for that umbrella you’ve got in your hand?”

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A person more remarkable for inquisitiveness than good-breeding—one of those who, devoid of delicacy and reckless of rebuff, pry into everything—took the liberty to question Alexander Dumas rather closely concerning his genealogical tree.

“You are a quadroon, Mr. Dumas?” he began.

“I am, sir,” replied M. Dumas, who had seen enough not to be ashamed of a descent he could not conceal.

“And your father?”

“Was a mulatto.”

“And your grandfather?”

“A negro,” hastily answered the dramatist, whose patience was waning.

“And may I inquire what your great-grandfather was?”

“An ape, sir,” thundered Dumas, with a fierceness that made his impertinent interrogator shrink into the smallest possible compass. “An ape, sir; my pedigree commences where yours terminates.”

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“Where have you been, Helen?” asked Caroline Swift of her sister, as Helen, with a package in one hand and some letters in the other, entered the parlour one severe winter’s day.Caroline had been seated near the fire, sewing; but as her sister came in with the package, up the little girl sprang; and, allowing cotton, thimble, and work to find whatever resting-place they could, she hurried across the room; and, without so much as “By your leave, sister,” she caught hold of the letters and commenced asking questions as fast as her nimble tongue could move.

“Which question shall I answer first?” asked Helen, good-humouredly, trying, as she spoke, to slip a letter out of sight.

“Tell me whose letter you are trying to hide there,” cried Caroline, making an effort to thrust her hand into her sister’s pocket.

Helen held the pocket close, saying gravely, “Suppose I should tell you that this letter concerns no one but myself, and that I prefer not to name the writer?”

“Oh dear! some mighty mystery, no doubt. I didn’t suppose there was any harm in asking you a question.”

Caroline’s look and tone plainly indicated displeasure.

“There is harm, Caroline, in trying to pry into anything that you see that another person wishes to keep to herself; for it shows a meddling disposition, and is a breach of the command to do as you would be done by.”

“You’re breaking that command yourself,” retorted Caroline, “for you won’t let me see what I want to see.”“God’s commands do not require us to forget our own rights. I am not bound to do to you what you have no right to require of me. We have all a perfect right to request of each other whatever is perfectly conducive to our welfare and happiness, provided it does not improperly infringe upon that of the person of whom the request is made. You trespass upon my rights when you attempt to pry into my private affairs.”

“Mercy, Helen! don’t preach any more. I guess I’m not the only meddlesome person in the world. One half the people I know need nothing more to make them take all possible pains to learn about a thing than to know the person whom it concerns wishes it kept secret. But where have you been, pray? and what have you in that bundle?” and Caroline tore off the paper cover from the package which Helen had laid upon the table.

“Caroline,” said the mother of the two young girls, “why do you not wait to see whether your sister is willing for you to open her package? From your tone, my dear, one would judge that you were appointed to cross-question Helen, and had a right to be angry if she declined explaining all her motives and intentions to you.”

“For pity’s sake! mother, haven’t I a right to ask my sister all the questions I please? I tell her everything I do, and I think she might show the same confidence in me.”

“You have a right, my daughter, to ask any proper question of any one; but it is unmannerly to ask too particularly about things that do not concern you; or to speak at all respecting a thing which you see that another desires should pass unobserved. It shows a small and vulgar mind to seek to pry into the affairs of another, unless there be some great necessity for doing so. Never press a matter where there is a disposition to be reserved upon the subject. Be refined, my child; remember that courtesy is as much a command of the Bible as is honesty. I have often heard you, my thoughtless Carrie, mention impatiently the annoying habits of one who is often here. You have said in great anger that no one of the family could have a new shoe, or a neck ribbon, or could go across the street twice, without being questioned and cross-questioned by that young lady, until she became possessed of all the particulars concerning the purchase or the walk. It is not well to be violent in condemning one’s neighbour, my children; but it is not wrong to take notice enough of their faults to determine to shun them in our own conduct, and also to try, if a proper season offers, to help them to amend. I never wish to hear you speak again so harshly of the person to whom I refer; but I very earnestly desire that you should begin in season to check habits which, if suffered to go on, will render you just as far from a favourite with your friends as she, poor orphan girl, is with hers. She had no one to point out to her her faults and her dangers; therefore the condemnation will be nothing to compare with yours, if you forget that the spirit of the golden rule, which is the true spirit of Christianity, requires attention just as close and constant to all the little hardly noticed habits of heart and life as to those of the more marked and noticeable:—

‘’Tis in these little things we all can do and say,
Love showeth best its gentle charity.’”

Boldness and impudence are the twin features in the inquisitive talker. Were these counterbalanced by education in the ordinary civilities of life, he would be more worthy a place in the company of those whom now he annoys with his rude and impertinent interrogatories. Few men care to have the secrets of their minds discovered by the probing questions of an intruder. The prudent man has many things, it may be, in his mind, in his family, in his business, which are sacred to him, and to attempt an acquaintance with them by stealth is what no one will do but he who is devoid of good manners, or, if he ever had any, has shamefully forgotten them. There are proper times and places in conversation for questions; but even then they should be put with discretion and frankness. A man should have common sense and civility enough to teach him when and what questions to ask, and how far to go in his questions, so that he may not seem to meddle with matters which do not concern him.

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