IN CONCLUSION
Since censoriousness is a quality utterly antagonistic to good manners, it is well to reflect that, while etiquette lays down many laws, it also indulgently grants generous absolution. While we decide that certain forms and methods of action are correct and good form, we must remember that all people, ourselves included, are liable to be occasionally remiss in little things, and that we must not too hastily decide a man's status on the score of breeding by his punctilious observance of conventional laws. There are some requirements of etiquette that have their foundation in the idea of convenience or feasibility; others that are essentially requisite as the exponent of decency. A man may easily be far from perfect in details of the former class, and yet be a refined gentleman; but he cannot offend in the latter class of instances without being a boor. Something worse than eating with his knife must ostracize a man, and something no greater than spitting on the sidewalk should accomplish the feat at one fell stroke.
There is an infallible constancy in good breeding. Like charity, of which it is so largely an exponent, it "never faileth." One's manner to two different people, respectively, may not be the same, but it should be equally courteous, whether it expresses the cordial friendliness of social equals or the just esteem of one either higher or lower than one's self in the social scale. "No man is a hero to his valet," because the heroic is confined to great and rare occasions. But every gentleman is a gentleman to his valet, for the qualities that distinguish the gentleman are every day and every hour manifested.