A meaning-node that abstracts the lesson of this Baharestan anecdote. A learned man writing a private letter notices a stranger reading it from the corner of his eye, and pointedly writes that were there no hired snoop beside him, he would set down all his secrets. When the man protests that he never read the letter, the writer retorts: then how do you know what I just wrote? The eavesdropper condemns himself, because he could only object to written, not spoken, words. Jami's closing verses brand anyone who secretly pries into another's affairs a thief, and, if he does so for gain, something baser still. The concept generalizes the story into a teaching on the impropriety of intruding on others' secrets and on how a busybody's own reaction exposes his guilt.