CLEANLINESS of PERSON.
But, as no one can please in company, however graceful in his air, unless he be clean and neat in his person, this qualification comes next to be considered.
Negligence of one’s person not only implies an unsufferable indolence, but an indifference whether we please or not. It betrays an insolence and affectation, arising from a presumption, that we are sure of pleasing, without having recourse to those means which many are obliged to use.
He who is not thoroughly clean in his person, will be offensive to all he converses with. A particular regard to the cleanliness of your mouth, teeth, hands and nails, is but common decency. A foul mouth and unclean hands, are certain marks of vulgarity; the first is the cause of an offensive breath, which nobody can bear, and the last is declarative of dirty work; one may always know a gentleman by the state of his hands and nails. The flesh at the roots should be kept back, so as to shew the semicircles at the bottom of the nails; the edges of the nails should never be cut down below the ends of the fingers, nor should they be suffered to grow longer than the fingers. When the nails are cut down to the quick, it is a shrewd sign that the man is a mechanic, to whom long nails would be troublesome, or that he gets his bread by fiddling; and if they are longer than his fingers’ ends, and encircled with a black rim, it foretells he has been laboriously and meanly employed, and too fatigued to clean himself; a good apology for want of cleanliness in a mechanic, but the greatest disgrace that can attend a gentleman.
These things may appear too insignificant to be mentioned; but when it is considered that a thousand little nameless things, which every one feels, but no one can describe, conspire to form that whole of pleasing, I hope you will not call them trifling. Besides, a clean shirt and a clean person are as necessary to health, as not to offend other people. It is a maxim with me, which I have lived to see verified, that he who is negligent at twenty years of age, will be a sloven at forty, and intolerable at fifty.