as a punishment, and that for
innuendo, if justifiable by facts, men should always have the courage to
substitute direct assertion.

Of the minor social vices, one of the commonest is a disregard, in
conversation, of other persons' feelings. Men who lay claim to the
character of gentlemen are specially bound to shew their tact and
delicacy of feeling by avoiding all subjects which have a disagreeable
personal reference or are likely to revive unpleasant associations in
the minds of any of those who are present. And yet these are qualities
which are often strangely conspicuous by their absence even in educated
and cultivated society. One of the most repulsive and least excusable
forms which this indifference to other persons' feelings takes is in
impertinent curiosity. There are some people who, for the sake of
satisfying a purposeless curiosity, will ask questions which they know
it cannot be agreeable to answer. In all cases, curiosity of this kind
is evidence of want of real refinement, and is a breach of the finer
rules of social morality; but, when the questions asked are intended to
extract, directly or indirectly, unwilling information on a man's
private life or circumstances, they assume the character of sheer
vulgarity. A man's private affairs, providing his conduct of them does
not injuriously affect society, are no one's business but his own, and
much pain and vexation of the smaller kind would be saved, if this very
plain fact were duly recognised in social intercourse.

It may be noticed in passing, that there still lingers on in society a
minor form of persecution, a sort of inquisition on a small scale, which
consists in attempting to extract from a man a frank statement of his
religious, social, or political opinions, though it is known or
suspected all the time, that, if he responds to the invitation, it will
be to his social or material disadvantage. In cases of this kind, it
becomes a casuistical question how far a man is called on to disclose
his real sentiments at the bidding of any impertinent questioner. That
the free expression of opinion should be attended with this danger is,
of course, a proof how far removed we still are from perfect
intellectual toleration.

Impertinent curiosity is offensive, not only because it shews an
indifference to the feelings of the person questioned, but because it
savours of gratuitous interference in his affairs. This quality it
shares with another of the minor