THE KEEPING OF SECRETS.
ALEADING article in the Daily News of last Tuesday, commenting upon a text furnished by an American writer, deplored with much humour and good sense the human failing of blabbing. "Never tell things to your wife," was the moral drawn by the American author; but the Daily News went one better in advising its readers never to make any confidences at all—neither to their wives, nor their husbands, nor the friends of their bosoms. "There are scenes and hours," said the writer, "which prompt a man to blab. In certain effects of sunset and moonlight, in a long nocturnal smoke and palaver, after dinner especially, the skeletons in our cupboards begin to stir, to rattle within us, • to desire to show themselves." Everybody knows the feeling which the writer BO graphically describes,—wise is the man who resists it and sternly checks the impulse that prompts him to open the cupboard and reveal its contents. The relief that he coveted is but shortlived, and next morning he will only remember that he has admitted a witness, and perhaps a scornful witness, to a sight which he would fain have kept from the world. There is a prudent warning contained in the poet's doggrel :— "Nature hath made man's breast no windows To publish what he does within doors ; Nor what dark secrets there inhabit, Unless his own rash folly blab it."
It is unfortunate that the tendency to blab is, as a rule, too strong for the provision of Nature. Not even the wisest of men are free from it. When Bacon, most prudent of philo- sophers, declares that the chief use of a friend is as a receptacle of the confessions whereby a man may cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff that oppresses it, a nearer-sighted mortal may well be excused for following the implied advice and yielding to an impulse which is almost as irresistible as it is natural. We are speaking, of course, of a man's own secrets. The man who divulges other people's secrets is some- what of a traitor as well as a fool. But though there is no treachery in divulging one's own, there is, as a rule, a con- siderable amount of folly. Open confession may be good for the soul ; but private confession to a single friend fails to bring much relief,—even adds, sometimes, to the burden of what is confessed. For this constitutes the discomfort, of a man's own secret,—the consciousness that he dare not take the whole world into his whole confidence, that he has that within him which be must hide. And if he show that hidden part to one other, then is his consciousness of it doubled. If a priest only received confessions as a man and a friend, few penitents would resort to the confessional twice. But the priest in the confessional is not a man—or, at least, is not to be regarded as such—and therefore, as a recipient of secrets, stands outside the field of our remarks.
The confessional certainly affords a marvellous example of how secrets may be kept; but its reticence is not owing to a simple sense of honour and good faith. When restraint is only exercised by purely human sentiment, the natural ten- dency to blab is, more often than not, too strong for the ordinary mortal. A secret is a very heavy thing for one man to carry :— " Men no pZise tant qu'un secret ; Le porter loin est difficile aux dames," says La Fontaine in one of his fables ; adding, with more fair- ness than he usually shows to the weaker sex,— " Et je sais memo sur ce fait Bon nombre d'hommes qui sont femmes."
Why is it that woman should be looked upon as a less trustworthy confidante than man? The old proverb which says that a woman only conceals that which she does not know, forms a text for innumerable tales and legends,—not all of them of Eastern origin. There is some truth in La Bruybre's remark that a man can keep another's secret better than his own ; a woman, her own better than another's. But seeing, as a rule, how well a woman keeps her own secrets and how ill a man keeps hie, it is quite possible that a woman may be the best custodian in either case. A woman is "exceedingly good to keep a secret," says a character in one of Congreve's plays, "for, though she should tell, yet she is not to be believed ;" and that cynical judgment fairly reflects the distrust with which she has always been regarded. As far as history is concerned, the sneer at her expense seems to be quite unjustified : there are far more instances of traitorous blabbing on the part of men than of women. We are glad to see that the writer in the Daily News at least does her justice in this particular, opining that it is safer to confide in a married woman than in a married man ; though for the latter it finds a delightful excuse, likening him to a male bird that ranges the wet lawns and brings home a nice worm for his mate in the shape of a bit of scandal. But man is not thus to be excused ; it is not only a generous desire to share all things with his wife, that opens his mouth, nor is it only to his wife that he is communicative. Of the two, we cannot but think that he is by nature the leakier vessel, the more inclined to babble. Everybody must have met at some time or other with the confiding stranger who insists upon making full confession of his most intimate affairs to a chance acquaint- ance or travelling-companion. Nine times out of ten this distressing person is a man and not a woman. And another thing must be remembered in a woman's favour. Her ready sympathy invites more confidences than fall to the lot of the ordinary man, who generally does not scruple to show how irksome all confidences are to him. Wherefore, being the recipient of a far greater number, she might the more easily be excused for those few which shd divulges,—she carries too many secrets to keep them all. But admitting that the advice, never to make confidences at all, is a counsel of perfection, and that weak and erring mortals must find some outlet for their craving for sympathy, to whom is it best that they should apply for the relief which they desire P. If a man must find a confessor, let him be satisfied with one alone. Never, on any account, let him take more than one person at a time into his confidence. Between two people a secret may be kept ; three can only keep it,— when two of them are dead. And in choosing his confessor, let his choice be made only after due deliberation, and when he is satisfied of the trustworthiness of the friend upon whom it falls ; never let him yield to the emotional impulse of an hour, and deliver his most secret soul to an untried com- panion, Of all men, the dumb are the best to confide in ; and next to them the deaf, for should they divulge our confidences,. it is always possible to protest that they have not rightly heard them. And after these, we should choose the friend to whom one's honour and one's credit is even as his own,—the man who admits no saving clause in the obligations of his friendship, who allows no other trustee—not even his wife—in the trust that is confided to him. "What is mine, even to my life, is her's I love ; but the secret of my friend is not mine," said Sir Philip Sidney. Unfortunately, the better the husband, the less honest is he in this nice distinction of property. Turn- ing to the wider world of our acquaintances, there are two classes of people who seem to invite our confidence. The first is, as a rule, fairly trustworthy ; one feels drawn towards them by some occult influence ; they do not openly invite confession, but they impress one with the idea that it is safe in their hands. The second class do invite confession; they make open parade of their sympathy and frequent protest of their fidelity ; they are not to be trusted. No faith can be put in a man who shows a liking for secrets. He coveta secrets, not as a miser covets coins, in order to hoard them, but as a speculator, in order that he may put them into circulation again as soon as possible, and reap the interest that they may breed. Curiosity is a powerful factor in human life ; and the man who is adroit in his manipulation of other people's secrets may exercise no small influence.
It is due to human nature to admit that of the two chief kinds of secrets, the material and the immaterial, the former are the best kept. They do very often leak out; but, as a rule, their disclosure is a matter of genuine sorrow and regret to the unfaithful friend who has blabbed. The immaterial secret, that is to say, the one which is of little or no importance 'to the person whom it chiefly concerns, is hardly ever kept. Such secrets as these simply make up the small change of ordinary confidential conversation. Under the bond of secrecy they pass rapidly from one new confidant to another, until their circulation bas taken so wide a course It is difficult to conceive that a coat of quills can impart that they are secrets no longer. Conversations in club smoking- much warmth to its wearer ; but towards Christmas the rooms or over ladies' tea-tables, are largely made up of this quaint black-and-white garment of the porcupine has almost kind of secret. Sometimes nobody knows to whom these the appearance of a mantle of stiff feathers ; and the crest on originally belonged, or through how many hands they have the head and shoulders, sloping backwards along the spine, already passed; as long as one or two people are present who combines, with the black face and Roman nose, to suggest a have not yet handled them, they still pas as current coin. It comical resemblance between the fully fledged porcupine and is a mystery how any 'one who knows how secrets circulate, one of Buffalo Bill's Sioux warriors in full costume of eagles' who has even helped to pass them on himself, can ever confide plumes. During the first cold of winter the plumage of the his own in the hope of their being kept. Every one knows birds and the coats of the fur-bearing animals in the Zoo are the story of Midas' servant who whispered the secret of his hardly inferior to those of their wild kindred. Both the master's ears into a deep hole in the ground and heard, to eagles and the American bison are in condition to excite the his dismay, how the very reeds took up the wondrous tale and cupidity of an Indian brave. The bull bison, which in summer whispered it far and wide ; but few people seem to recognise has a strangely ragged and " moth-eaten" appearance, with its application. Some, of course, cannot help themselves, for big patches of bare skin showing on its flanks, is now it is not always that a man is the sole master of his own covered with a " buffalo robe of magnificent propor- secret. But when be is the only gaoler, when his prisoner is tions and the richest colour and texture. From shoulders safely looked in his own breast, he is really a fool to give to tail, the body is wrapped in a mass of brown felted another man the key. Surely his own frailty in blabbing fur. The mane hangs down below the knees, and a
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