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And withal they learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not.

Idle rumors were also added to well-founded apprehensions.

Some report elsewhere whatever is told them; the measure of fiction always increases, and each fresh narrator adds something to what he has heard.

Enemies carry a report in form different from the original.

The flying rumours gather'd as the roll'd, Scarce any tale was sooner heard than told; And all who told it added something new. And all who heard it made enlargements too.

I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as 'twas said to me.

I will be gone, That pitiful rumor may report my flight To consolate thine ear.

Rumor doth double, like the voice and echo, The numbers of the feared.

Rumor is a pipe Blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures, And of so easy and so plain a stop That the blunt monster with uncounted heads, The still-discordant wavering multitude, Can play upon it.

What some invent the rest enlarge.

The rolling fictions grow in strength and size, Each author adding to the former lies.

Every rumor is believed against the unfortunate.

Rumor does not always err; it sometimes even elects a man.

There is nothing which cannot be perverted by being told badly.

Straightway throughout the Libyan cities flies rumor;--the report of evil things than which nothing is swifter; it flourishes by its very activity and gains new strength by its movements; small at first through fear, it soon raises itself aloft and sweeps onward along the earth. Yet its head reaches the clouds. . . . A huge and horrid monster covered with many feathers: and for every plume a sharp eye, for every pinion a biting tongue. Everywhere its voices sound, to everything its ears are open.

The rumor forthwith flies abroad, dispersed throughout the small town.

It has a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, a voice of iron.