In General Deportment.
Stop at the assumption of a supercilious, ducal air, especially if small of stature, monkey-brained and impecunious. This is solely the privilege of floor-walkers, brained midgets and actresses’ husbands.
Stop, on the other hand, if tall and commanding, before cultivating a creeping, crushed demeanor, unless you are a colporteur or dog-stealer.
Stop on the brink of wholly disregarding the prevailing fashions. Knee-breeches, shoe-buckles, a powdered wig, and a swallow-tailed coat, with the waist-buttons between the shoulder-blades, would stamp you as an eccentric at the present day.
Stop before despising the requirements of the seasons. A straw-hat in a snow-storm, for instance, would excite remark.
Stop when vanity counsels an excess of ornament. To exhibit a jewel or two with judgment is one thing, to groan under a clanking avoirdupois of gauds and trinkets another.
Stop at the claims of both a cadaverous gravity and a causeless facetiousness of demeanor. Neither the belfry owl nor the proverbial basket of chips should be your model in this regard.
Stop on the verge of unnecessary violence in word and deed. Resent, if you must, without preliminary roaring. The deadly submarine torpedo is terrible in its explosion, but less noisy than the harmless bursting of an inflated paper-bag.
Stop before criticising what you do not understand. The bore indulging in this species of idiocy is deserving of an enforced association with numerous mothers-in-law in a whisper-gallery.
Stop, indeed, snap your jaws to like a spring-trap, at the very suggestion of an oath or low expression. “Profanity,” says Lacon, “never yet dignified wrath nor emphasized a great purpose.”
Stop before indulging in covert sneers. Indeed, “a good, mouth-filling oath” is preferable, because less hypocritical, but an ungarnished assertion is better than either.
Stop before meanly insinuating what should be plainly spoken. Even if a man owes you money, which you think he ought to pay, tell him so, or ask for an explanation, instead of conveying your meaning through an allusion to his current expense or new clothes. This is the course of a sneak and a coward.
Stop, rather, and bewail the abolition of imprisonment for debt, or tell him that he ought to live cheaply and go in rags until he liquidates.
Stop before assuming a rasping, file-edged, whip-in-hand demeanor toward your dependents or inferiors. Apart from its villainously bad taste, the whirligig of time may bring about a transposition of relations, and then where are you?
Stop, on the other hand, ere adopting a groveling, sycophantic, ultra-ingratiating manner with your superiors. “The flavor that can only be won by fawning servility is seldom of great worth.”
Stop before persisting in a style of laugh that can betray your motives to your disadvantage. The “He, he, he!” of hypocrisy is as patent as the “Haw, haw, haw!” of the windbag.
Stop at an unwarranted ostentation of speech and bearing. The dung-hill bird is distinguished quite as much by his strut as by his vociferousness.
Stop, in addressing a woman, and consider the privilege of her sex, even if she may have aggrieved you.
Stop, on the other hand, before over-whelming her with an excess of courtesy. Over-attentiveness to women always inspires a suspicion as to its motive.
Stop before retailing a scandal, even if convinced of its truth. This is the province of the incorrigible gossip and the newspaper reporter, with neither of whom you can hope to cope.
Stop on the threshold of a temptation to distort the truth. Plausibility in lying is an art in which but few can earn distinction.
Stop before disputing a fact, however distasteful, that can be proved by statistical evidence. Figures are not apt to lie, save on gas-metres.
Stop before adhering to an error through a mistaken sense of shame. “Who acknowledgeth his error showeth an increase of wisdom; who stubbornly adhereth to what hath been disproved confesseth himself a fool.”
Stop short of the conceit that irresistibility with the fair sex depends on good-looks alone. The manners make the man.
Stop before aping the characteristics of another, however exalted. The gesticulations of the Frenchman would be unseemly in the staid Hidalgo, and that which would be a pleasing originality in one might be a preposterous parody in the imitator.
Stop short of the notion that wiseacre looks and frigidity of manner will always be indicative of reserved force and intellectual acumen. The owl is the solemnest and likewise the stupidest of birds.
Stop, whenever in moral doubt or distress, and consult the masterly advice and sage promptings of this jewel of a book. It shall be unto you “as rivers of water in a dry place, or the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”
