Who would live in one, if he could help it? And who wants to throw stones?

But who lives in any thing else, nowadays? And how much better off are they who never threw a stone in their lives than the rude mob who throw them all the time?

Really, the proverb might as well be blotted out from our books and dropped from our speech. It has no longer use or meaning.

It is becoming a serious question what shall be done, or rather what can be done, to secure to fastidious people some show and shadow of privacy in their homes. The silly and vulgar passion of people for knowing all about their neighbors' affairs, which is bad enough while it takes shape merely in idle gossip of mouth, is something terrible when it is exalted into a regular market demand of the community, and fed by a regular market supply from all who wish to print what the community will read.

We do not know which is worse in this traffic, the buyer or the seller; we think, on the whole, the buyer. But then he is again a seller; and so there it is,--wheel within wheel, cog upon cog. And, since all these sellers must earn their bread and butter, the more one searches for a fair point of attacking the evil, the more he is perplexed.

The man who writes must, if he needs pay for his work, write what the man who prints will buy. The man who prints must print what the people who read will buy. Upon whom, then, shall we lay earnest hands? Clearly, upon the last buyer,--upon him who reads. But things have come to such a pass already that to point out to the average American that it is vulgar and also unwholesome to devour with greedy delight all sorts of details about his neighbors' business seems as hopeless and useless as to point out to the currie-eater or the whiskey-drinker the bad effects of fire and strychnine upon mucous membranes. The diseased palate craves what has made it diseased,--craves it more, and more, and more. In case of stomachs, Nature has a few simple inventions of her own for bringing reckless abuses to a stand-still,--dyspepsia, and delirium-tremens, and so on.

But she takes no account, apparently, of the diseased conditions of brains incident to the long use of unwholesome or poisonous intellectual food. Perhaps she never anticipated this class of excesses. And, if there were to be a precisely correlative punishment, it is to be feared it would fall more heavily on the least guilty offender. It is not hard to fancy a poor soul who, having been condemned to do reporters' duty for some years, and having been forced to dwell and dilate upon scenes and details which his very soul revolted from mentioning,--it is not hard to fancy such a soul visited at last by a species of delirium-tremens, in which the speeches of men who had spoken, the gowns of women who had danced, the faces, the figures, the furniture of celebrities, should all be mixed up in a grotesque phantasmagoria of torture, before which he should writhe as helplessly and agonizingly as the poor whiskey-drinker before his snakes. But it would be a cruel misplacement of punishment. All the while the true guilty would be placidly sitting down at still further unsavory banquets, which equally helpless providers were driven to furnish!

The evil is all the harder to deal with, also, because it is like so many evils,--all, perhaps,--only a diseased outgrowth, from a legitimate and justifiable thing. It is our duty to sympathize; it is our privilege and pleasure to admire. No man lives to himself alone; no man can; no man ought. It is right that we should know about our neighbors all which will help us to help them, to be just to them, to avoid them, if need be; in short, all which we need to know for their or our reasonable and fair advantage. It is right, also, that we should know about men who are or have been great all which can enable us to understand their greatness; to profit, to imitate, to revere; all that will help us to remember whatever is worth remembering. There is education in this; it is experience, it is history.

But how much of what is written, printed, and read to-day about the men and women of to-day comes under these heads? It is unnecessary to do more than ask the question. It is still more unnecessary to do more than ask how many of the men and women of to-day, whose names have become almost as stereotyped a part of public journals as the very titles of the journals themselves, have any claim to such prominence. But all these considerations seem insignificant by side of the intrinsic one of the vulgarity of the thing, and its impudent ignoring of the most sacred rights of individuals. That there are here and there weak fools who like to see their names and most trivial movements chronicled in newspapers cannot be denied. But they are few. And their silly pleasure is very small in the aggregate compared with the annoyance and pain suffered by sensitive and refined people from these merciless invasions of their privacy. No precautions can forestall them, no reticence prevent; nothing, apparently, short of dying outright, can set one free. And even then it is merely leaving the torture behind, a harrowing legacy to one's friends; for tombs are even less sacred than houses. Memory, friendship, obligation,--all are lost sight of in the greed of desire to make an effective sketch, a surprising revelation, a neat analysis, or perhaps an adroit implication of honor to one's self by reason of an old association with greatness. Private letters and private conversations, which may touch living hearts in a thousand sore spots, are hawked about as coolly as if they had been old clothes, left too long unredeemed in the hands of the pawn-broker! "Dead men tell no tales," says the proverb. One wishes they could! We should miss some spicy contributions to magazine and newspaper literature; and a sudden silence would fall upon some loud-mouthed living.

But we despair of any cure for this evil. No ridicule, no indignation seems to touch it. People must make the best they can of their glass houses; and, if the stones come too fast, take refuge in the cellars.