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“Our Officious Friend”

 
      The world is full of people who take too warm an interest in other people’s affairs, so full to overflowing that sometimes one is quite willing to wish there was another planet ready to receive the overflow.
      As a rule, everybody is capable of managing his own business, and the officious — that is to say, the unasked assistant in the management, be it of greater or less moment — is always a meddler, and usually a fool.
      The officious body is generally of an idle turn, with nothing to do and small ability to do it, or else a sycophant seeking to curry favor by becoming useful and necessary. Having nothing to do, your business offers itself; having no ability for the business at home, yours is something that can be coped with, while curiosity adds an unfailing zest to the warmth of the endeavor to be of aid.
      Sooth to say, there are apt to be more women among these officious people than pride of sex allows us to find pleasant. They are omnipresent, too; they come to console you in your sorrows when you long to be left alone with your troubles, and they carry flowers to your graves for you — not always the actual material graves either, where the dead lie buried, but the graves of your happinesses and joys; they pry into your religious views, and bring you good books that you have not requested of them; they waylay your children, and proffer them advice and instruction that it is to be supposed you fail to give; they offer to stay at home for you that you may go to church, and you know, should you accept, to what extent drawers and wardrobes would be rummaged in your absence; they run in, thimble on, to do a little darning of napkins and tablecloths for you, and discover the condition of your linen closet, or to help you in a morning’s extra cooking, and let all the rest of the world know the accidents of your cupboard afterward; they run in to entertain your husband in your illness, when, to tell the truth, selfish or unselfish be it in you, you vastly prefer he should be unentertained, and learn your value the more for the brief missing of companionship.
      It is the officious woman who is always telling you that your hair, or your collar, or your skirts, or your shoe-strings, are out of order, who is hunting for an unattainable pin to give you with which to correct the mischief, drawing everybody’s attention to it as she does so, usually never finding the pin, and her officiousness only serving to let you go away with an uncomfortable sensation of disorder that you did not have before. It is one of these overofficious ladies, too often a dweller in the boarding-house where misfortune has obliged you to pitch your tent, who hates to tell you, but thinks you ought to know, what such and such a one has said about you, who would not grieve you for the world, but is sure you should have the chance to refute such a statement, and who, in refuting it herself, if it chance to be scandalous, gives the scandal a thousandfold wider circulation than if she had attended to her own affairs and let the thing die of silence and inanition. It is another of the clan who goes in to nurse the sick gentleman who seems to have no one to attend to him, without waiting to discover whether there are older and better-fitted women at hand to do it, gentlemen friends, or money to command male nurses, and quite oblivious of the estimation in which such behavior will cause her to be held among all his female relationship, who, however believing in the calling of the good Samaritan and of the sisterhoods of charity, believe in such work being undertaken by suitable people and under suitable circumstances, and think her only forth-putting and immodest, because unnecessary. It is still another of these busy idlers who makes it her especial affair to reconcile differences and to prevent misunderstandings between friends, till she contrives to set a whole boardinghouse by the ears, or a whole neighborhood; it is she who consoles you, when you want a new dress, by telling you just how many you have now, till you wonder how much more of yourself than your wardrobe she may happen to know, and who sympathizes with you by dwelling on some pet extravagance of your husband’s that would give you a dozen new dresses, and leaves you, when she and her sympathy are gone, just as happy as you can be; it is she who, when at home, can say at precisely what hour of the night the good man of the next neighbor’s house came in, having been up to look at shooting-stars or northern lights, the neighbors’ lights, and the rest; it is she who, in church, picks off the old warden’s wig in endeavoring to scare away a fly with the point of her parasol; who makes Dorcas visits, and turns them to account by spying out the poverty of the land; who, chiding your own delay, sets out to mend your old china for you, and leaves it broken more hopelessly than she found it; who tries to save your children from punishment, and teaches them deceit that has to be worse punished; who flatteringly complains to your husband that you owe her a dozen calls, and gets you a fine reproof for your negligence in allowing a dozen calls to rise in judgment against you; who begs and borrows of the comfortable heathen at home in order to send parasols to the naked heathen abroad, till people with purses turn down the next corner when they see her coming; who makes herself the terror of a neighborhood by her untiring intrusion upon the personality of all about her; who is, in short, to be characterized by one one word — officiousness.
      But this often kindly meant and always ill-requited quality is by no means confined to one sex. Men, in general, have so much to occupy them that they have not great opportunity or inclination for too much officiousness; yet there are not wanting shining examples in the stronger and busier sex. These examples are to be found on every wharf when your boat comes in, and your ropes get in a tangle through their extra-handed readiness; at every street corner when your horse runs away, and some good stentorian shouts will make him run all the faster; they are present at every fire, with the best mirror or the best painting or the best vase becoming a ruin in their hands; they warn you concerning the too-frequent visitor at your house; they tell you your brother’s worst faults in confidence, because you ought to know them, and don’t, as you have not mentioned them; they see your gardener setting out your bulbs, and stay to give him directions precisely contrary to those he has; they see your carpenters going on all right in your absence, and they instruct them how to go on all wrong; they tell you how you were cheated in that horse, in that cow, and how So-and-so boasts that he had the best of the bargain in that piece of land, till with what you were content you find yourself altogether dissatisfied; they tell you with eagerness of the early crops they raise, that you may see what could be done if your farmer had tried, and so make his life a burden to him. When you paint your premises, the dear souls come puttering round, and try dabs of different color on stray shingles till your own eye for color becomes totally confused; when you build your fence, they tell you of wondrous fences that never were on sea or shore, till you pause, hopeless of attainment, or else go along desperately, convinced of your own vulgar mediocrity.
      In fine, the officious person, whether offering to pick up your stitches and dropping more, or offering to get your paper negotiated for you and letting all the city into the secret of its worthlessness, only adds to the trouble of the world; if it is not a criminal, neither is the mosquito criminal, but, all the same, it is a nuisance; and contemplating the individual, we consider anew the possibility of a patent brick moon like that which Mr. Hale once launched into space, whose hollow arches these officious friends of ours would be the first to explore while the mass waited for its impulsion, which impulsion, coming suddenly and taking them unawares, would give them a pleasant journey in the heavens, and rid the earth of a goodly portion of its surplus population.

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“Our Officious Friend,” Harper’s Bazar. (“A Repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction.”) 17:43 (Saturday, October 25, 1884) : 674
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24 December 2025