An Old Guide to Good Manners.
In the first number of The Catholic World we gave our readers some account of the great Christian school of Alexandria in the time of St. Clement, the philosopher. The article, borrowed from The Dublin Review, sketched the corrupt, luxurious, and effeminate society of the Egyptian metropolis—that gay, bustling, frivolous city which was to the old Eastern world what Paris now is to the continent of Europe—and showed how St. Clement thought it well worth his while to spare an occasional hour from the discussions of philosophy and dogma, and the definition of a code of Christian ethics, to rebuke the scandalous luxury of dandies and gourmands, and the follies of fashionable ladies. It would have been but a meagre code of ethics, indeed, which had overlooked the busy trifles that made up so much of the life of Alexandrian gentlefolks. The teacher who would form a better school of morality could not confine himself to the church and the market-place. He must enter the bath and the banquet-hall, the shops of the silk merchant, the jeweller, and the perfumer. He must touch with sharp hand little things which are only foolishness to us, but, to the pagan society of Egypt, made up a large part of the sum of human existence. All this St. Clement did, and the substance, if not the words, of his directions to the flock has come down to us in the pages of his Instructor.
It is a curious picture which he gives us of Alexandrian manners; but we question, after all, if much of what he says will not apply pretty well to our own day. He begins with the diet. This, he remarks, ought to be "simple, truly plain, suiting precisely simple and artless children." He had no faith in the fattening of men as one fattens hogs and turkeys. If he had lived in the days of prize-fights and rowing-matches, he would have inveighed against the processes of "training," and looked with no favor upon a bruiser or a boatman getting himself into condition with raw beef-steaks and profuse sweating. Growth, and health, and right strength, says the venerable father, come of lightness of body and a good digestion; he will have none of the "strength that is wrong or dangerous, and wretched, as is that of athletes, produced by compulsory feeding." Cookery is an "unhappy art," and that of making pastry is a "useless" one. He points the finger of scorn at the gluttons who "are not ashamed to sing the praises of their delicacies," and in, their greed and solicitude seem absolutely to sweep the world with a drag-net to gratify their luxurious tastes. They give themselves "great trouble to get lampreys in the straits of Sicily, the eels of the Meander, and the kids found in Melos, and the mullets in Sciathus, and the muscles of Pelorus, the oysters of Abydos, not omitting the sprats found in Lipara, and the Mantinican turnip; and, furthermore, the beet-root that grows among the Ascraeans; they seek out the cockles of Methymna, the turbots of Attica, and the thrushes of Daphnis, and the reddish-brown dried figs, on account of which the ill-starred Persian marched into Greece with five hundred thousand men. Besides these they purchase birds from Phasis, the Egyptian snipes, and the Median pea-fowl. Altering these by means of condiments, the gluttons gape for the sauces; and they wear away their whole life at the pestle and mortar, surrounded with the sound of hissing frying-pans." Do we not feel a little ashamed at reading this? Are we so much better than the gluttons of Egypt? They sent to Abydos for their oysters, and we export the shell-fish of Norfolk and Saddle Rock to all parts of the country. If they yearned for snipe, so do we. If they had a hankering after eel pot-pies, pray, is the taste unknown to ourselves? Was the Median pea-fowl, we wonder, a more costly luxury than woodcock, or the Sicilian lamprey worse than Spanish mackerel? Perhaps we do not quite "sweep the world with a drag-net;" but that is only because we should gain nothing by it. We may not ransack the four quarters of the globe for unknown viands; but we lay distant climes and far-off years, under contribution to furnish us with rare and luscious wines. The good saint, had he lived in the nineteenth century, would have delighted in Graham bread; for he blames his countrymen for "emasculating their bread by straining off the nourishing part of the grain." He inveighs against "sweetmeats, and honey-cakes, and sugar-plums," and a multitude of desserts, and suppers where there is naught but "pots and pouring of sauce, and drink, and delicacies, and smoke" The smoke to which he alludes is undoubtedly the fume of the "hissing frying-pans," but it almost seems as if he were describing a modern carouse with punch and tobacco. The properest articles of food are those which are fit for immediate use without fire. The apostle Matthew ate "seeds, and nuts, and vegetables, without flesh;" and St. John the Baptist, "who carried temperance to the extreme, ate locusts and wild honey." St. Clement does not give us his authority for the statement regarding St. Matthew's diet; nor, it may be objected, is there any evidence that the Baptist did not cook his locusts before he fed upon them. In some parts of the East, where locusts are still regarded as a delicacy, they are prepared for the table by pulling off the legs and wings, and frying the bodies in oil. But Clement's object was not so much to prescribe a bill of fare as to teach men of gluttonous proclivities how to emancipate themselves from the thraldom of that "most lickerish demon," whom he calls "the Belly-demon, and the worst and most abandoned of demons." First of all, we must guard against "those articles of food which persuade us to eat when we are not hungry, bewitching the appetite." (How he would have shuddered at a modern grand dinner, with sherry-and-bitters first to whet the palate; then three or four raw oysters, just to give a relish to the soup, the fish, and the entrées; and in the middle of the repast a sherbet, or a Roman punch, to wipe out the taste of all that had gone before, and give strength for a few more courses of meat!) Then, being naturally hungry, he says; let us eat the simplest kind of food; bulbs, (we hope he does not mean onions,) olives, certain herbs, milk, cheese, fruits, all kinds of cooked food without sauces, and, if we must have flesh, let it be roast rather than boiled.
Wine, of course, ought to be taken in moderation, if it is taken at all; and it is well to mix it always with water, and not to drink it during the heat of the day, when the blood is already warm enough, but to wait until the cool of the evening. Even water, however, must be drunk sparingly, "so that the food may not be drowned, but ground down in order to digestion." What a disgusting picture the holy philosopher draws of those "miserable wretches whose life is nothing but revel, debauchery, bath, excess, idleness, drink!" "You may see some of them, half-drunk, staggering, with crowns round their necks like wine-jars, vomiting drink on one another in the name of good-fellowship; and others, full of the effects of their debauch, dirty, pale in the face, and still, above yesterday's bout, pouring another bout to last till next morning." Moreover, he entirely disapproves of importing wines. If one must drink, the product of one's native vines ought to suffice. "There are the fragrant Thasian wine, and the pleasant-breathing Lesbian, and a sweet Cretan wine, and sweet Syracusan wine, and Medusian and Egyptian wine, and the insular Naxian, the highly perfumed and flavored, another wine of the land of Italy. These are many names, but for the temperate drinker one wine suffices."
St. Clement concerns himself not only with what people ought to eat and drink, but with how they ought to eat and drink it. The chief thing necessary at table is temperance; the next is good manners. We remember to have had the pleasure and profit of reading once a modern hand-book of etiquette which abounded in the most amazing instructions for gentlemen and ladies at their meals. When you go to a dinner party, it said, do not pick your teeth much at table. Do not breathe hard over your beef. Don't snort while you are eating. Don't make a disgusting noise with your lips while taking in soup. And don't do twenty other horrible things which no gentleman or lady would any more have thought of doing than of standing up on their chairs or jumping upon the table. But St. Clement's directions for polite behavior show that worse things than these were in vogue in those beastly old days. He pours out words of indignation and contempt upon those 'gluttonous feasters who raise themselves from the couches on which the ancients used to recline at their banquets, stretch out their necks, and all but pitch their faces into the dishes "that they may catch the wandering steam by breathing in it." They grab every minute at the sauce; they besmear their hands with condiments; they cram themselves ravenously—in such a hurry that both jaws are stuffed out at once, the veins about the face are raised, and the perspiration runs all over as they pant and are tightened with their insatiable greed.
Suppose St. Clement had dined on board an American steamboat!
Then about drinking. In this, too, the old Alexandrians must have had some queer ways. "We are to drink without contortions of the face," says the saint, "not greedily grasping the cup, nor, before drinking, making the eyes roll with unseemly motion; nor from intemperance are we to drain the cup at a draught; nor besprinkle the chin, nor splash the garments while gulping down all the liquor at once—our face all but filling the bowl, and drowned in it. For the gurgling occasioned by the drink rushing with violence, and by its being drawn in with a great deal of breath, as if it were being poured into an earthenware vessel, while the throat makes a noise through the rapidity of ingurgitation, is a shameful and unseemly spectacle of intemperance. … Do not haste to mischief, my friend. Your drink is not being taken from you. Be not eager to burst by draining it down with gaping throat." Sad to say, even the women were addicted to "revelling in luxurious riot," and "drawing hiccups like men." It used to be the fashion for ladies to drink out of alabaster vessels with narrow mouths—quite too narrow, Clement complains and, to get at the liquor, they had to throw their heads back so far as to bare their necks in a very unseemly manner to their male boon companions, and so pour the wine down their throats. This custom the saint strenuously condemns. It was adopted because the women were afraid of widening their mouths and so spoiling their beauty, if they rent their lips apart by stretching them on broad drinking-cups.
These drinking-cups themselves, and much other furniture of the table, were causes of offence in the good father's eyes, and he thunders against them with indignant eloquence, as marks of the shameless luxury and extravagance which pervaded the daily life of the richer classes. The use of cups made of silver and gold, and of others inlaid with precious stones, is out of place, he declares, being only a deception of the vision. For, if you pour any warm liquid into them, they become so hot that you cannot touch them, and, if you pour in anything cold, the material changes its quality, injuring the mixture. St. Clement was right. Of jewelled drinking-vessels we freely confess that we have no personal knowledge; but we have a very distinct and painful recollection of certain silver mugs and silver-gilt goblets which used always to be given to children by their god-parents, and from which the unfortunate youngsters were forced to drink until, say, they were old enough to leave boarding-school. How many a time have we not longed in our boyhood to exchange the uneasy gentility of a chased silver cup for the plain comfort of a good, honest tumbler of greenish pressed glass! How hot those dreadful cups used to be when filled with a vile, weak compound known in the nursery as tea! How they used to hide the refreshing sparkle of the clear, cold water in summer, and the beautiful color of the harmless decoctions, flavored with currant jelly or other delicacies, which were allowed us on rare occasions of festivity! St. Clement was right; they were out of place and a deception of the vision. But there was many a vessel on the Alexandrian tables, besides the drinking-cups of silver, and gold, and alabaster, which shocked this fearless censor of manners and morals. Away, he cries, with Theracleian cups and Antigonides, and Canthari, and goblets, and limpet-shaped cups, and the endless forms of drinking-vessels, and wine-coolers and wine-pourers also. Away with the elaborate vanity of chased glass vessels, more liable to break on account of the art, and teaching us to fear while we drink. Ah! had he seen a Christian dinner-party in the nineteenth century, with the delicately cut wine-glasses, slim of stem, fragile as an eggshell, scarcely safe to touch; the claret-jugs of Bohemian ware, elaborately ornamented and hardly less costly than gold; the curiously contrived pitchers for icing champagne; the decanters, the water-flagons, the decorated goblets, and all the other glass and china ware, what would good St. Clement have said? Many other things are there which he reprehends among the apparatus of the banquet, and of these some we have assuredly copied or retained, while of others we can only conjecture the nature and uses. There were silver couches, and pans and vinegar saucers, and trenchers and bowls, and vessels of silver, and gold, and easily cleft cedar, and thyme-wood, and ebony, and tripods fashioned of ivory, and couches with silver feet and inlaid with ivory, and folding-doors of beds studded with gold and variegated with tortoise-shell, and bedclothes of purple and other colors difficult to produce. And let no one wonder that he should enumerate bedclothes among the objectionable furniture of a dining-room. It must be remembered that in those gluttonous old times people took their meals not sitting on chairs, but reclining on couches, so that it would hardly be out of the way to say that they breakfasted, and dined, and supped in bed. They used to eat and drink so much that this attitude was perhaps, on the whole, the most convenient for them. Among the other blamable luxuries which he enumerates are ivory-handled knives. The basins in which it was customary to wash the feet and hands before meals ought to be of no better material than common potter's ware. You can get off the dirt just as well in a cheap earthen washbowl, says the saint, as in one of price; the Lord did not bring down a silver foot-bath from heaven.
Music at feasts is an abomination to be carefully shunned, and a comic song is unworthy of a Christian gentleman, for "burlesque singing is the boon companion of drunkenness." If people occupy their time with "pipes and psalteries, and Egyptian clapping of hands," they become, by degrees, quite intractable, and even descend so low as to "beat on cymbals and drums, and make a noise on the instruments of delusion." We must be on our guard against whatever pleasure effeminates the soul by tickling the eye or the ear, and so must shun "the licentious and mischievous art of music," which disturbs the mind and corrupts the morals. Grave, temperate, and modest music may, indeed, be permitted, but "liquid" strains and "chromatic harmonies" are only for immodest revels. All which shows that in Clement's time there must have been a wickedness associated with music which that glorious art has now happily lost. The psalmist, it is true, exhorts us to praise the Lord in the sound of the trumpet, with the psaltery, the lyre, the timbrel and dance, the chords, and the organ, and the clashing cymbals; but the Alexandrian philosopher interprets all this passage symbolically. The trumpet to which King David refers is the blast which shall wake the dead on the last day. The lyre is the mouth struck by the spirit. The timbrel and dance are the church "meditating on the resurrection of the dead in the resounding skin." Our body is the organ; its nerves are the strings by which it has received harmonious tension; and the clashing cymbal is the tongue, resounding with the pulsations of the mouth. Reading St. Clement's instructions, with no light by which to interpret them, except the bare words of the text itself, it would seem to be but a solemn and joyless life which he inculcated a perpetual Puritan Sunday—than, which, probably, nothing more doleful was ever imagined of man. But we must remember that he lived in an age of ineffable vileness. Amusements, the most innocent in themselves, were the recognized cloaks or accompaniments of horrible deeds of licentiousness. The employment of certain kinds of music at banquets naturally suggested the criminal excesses with which such music was ordinarily associated. It was like meats offered to idols. Christians were bound to shun it, not because it was bad, but because it had been dedicated to bad uses. So was it also with burlesque singing. The songs were not only comical, but wicked. And it is in pretty much the same sense that we must understand the saint's curious chapter on laughing, in which he rebukes ludicrous remarks, buffoonery, and "waggery," and declares that "imitators of ludicrous sensations" (mimics) ought to be driven out of good society. It is disgraceful to travesty speech, which is the most precious of human endowments, though pleasantry is allowable, provided laughter be kept within bounds. But we ought not to laugh in the presence of elderly persons or others to whom we owe respect, unless they indulge in pleasantries for our amusement; and women and children ought to be especially careful not to laugh too much, lest they slip into scandal. It is best to confine ourselves to a gentle smile, which our author describes as the seemly relaxation of the countenance in a harmonious manner, like the relaxation of a musical instrument. "But the discordant relaxation of the countenance in the case of women is called a giggle, and is meretricious laughter; in the case of men a guffaw, and is savage and insulting laughter." Of all such as this, it is needless to say, St. Clement disapproves.
Young men and young women ought never to be seen at banquets, and it is especially disgraceful for an unmarried woman to sit at a feast of men. When you go to a banquet, you ought to keep your eyes downcast, and recline upon your elbow without moving; or, if you sit, don't cross your legs or rest your chin upon your hand. It is vulgar not to bear one's self without support, and a sign of frivolousness to be perpetually shifting the position. Then, when the food is placed upon the table, don't grab at it. What if you are hungry? Curb your appetite: hold back your hand for a moment; take but little at a time; and leave off early, so as to appear, indifferent to what is set before you. If you are an old man, you may now and then, but very rarely, joke and play with the young; but let your jokes have some useful end in view. For instance, suppose you had a very bashful and silent son with you; it would be a most proper and notable good joke to say, "This son of mine is perpetually talking." That would not only be very funny, but it would be an indirect encomium upon the young man's modesty. Old men may talk at table, provided they talk sense. The young should speak briefly and with hesitation when they are called upon; but they ought to wait until they are called at least twice. Don't whistle at table. Don't chirrup. Don't call the waiter by blowing through your fingers. Don't spit often, or clear your throat, or blow your nose. If you have to sneeze or hiccup, don't startle your neighbors with a loud explosion, but do it gently. Don't scrape your teeth till the gums bleed, and don't scratch your ear!
They had a very silly and preposterous custom, those disgusting old pagans, of crowning themselves with flowers, and anointing their head and feet with perfumed ointments, especially on occasion of grand banquets and drinking bouts. St. Clement had no patience with this. Oils may be good, he says, for medicinal and certain other purposes. Flowers are not only pretty, but useful in their proper place. But what is the sense of sticking a chaplet of roses on the top of your head where you can neither see it nor smell it? It is pleasant in spring-time to while away the hours in the blooming meads, surrounded by the perfume of roses and violets and lilies; but no crowns of flowers for my head, if you please! They are too cold; they are too moist. The brain is naturally cold: to add coolness to it is plainly against nature. Then he enumerates the various kinds of ointments made from plants and flowers and other substances. Leave these, he says, to the physicians. To smear the body with them out of pure wanton luxury is disgraceful.
After supper, first thank God: then go to bed. No magnificent bedclothes, no gold-embroidered carpets, no rich purple sleeping-robes, or cloaks of fleece, or thick mantles, or couches softer than sleep itself; no silver-footed couches, savoring of ostentation; none of those lazy contrivances for producing sleep. Neither, on the other hand, is it necessary to imitate Ulysses, who rectified the unevenness of his couch with a stone; or Diomede, who reposed stretched on a wild bull's hide; or Jacob, who slept on the ground with a stone for his pillow. St. Clement was not too severe in his instructions. He taught moderation to all men, leaving the difficulties of asceticism to the few who were called to encounter them. He never forbade comfort, but only rebuked luxury. Our beds, he says, ought to be simple and frugal, but they ought to keep us cool in summer and warm in winter. Those abominable inventions called feather-beds, which let the body "fall down as into a yawning hollow," he stigmatizes with deserved contempt. "For they are not convenient for sleepers turning in them, on account of the bed rising into a hill on either side of the body. Nor are they suitable for the digestion of the food, but rather for burning it up, and so destroying the nutriment." Who that has groaned through a restless night on one of those vile things—we were going to say, tossed through the night, but one can't toss in a feather-bed—has been half-suffocated by the stuffy smell of the feathers, and oppressed in his dreams by the surging hills of bedding which threaten to engulf him on either hand like the billows of some horrible sea, will not thank good, sensible St. Clement for setting his face against them, and wonder how they have survived to the present time? The Alexandrian philosopher knew how to make a good bed as well as the most fashionable of modern upholsterers. It ought to be moderately soft, yet not receive too readily the impress of the body. It ought to be smooth and level, so that one can turn over easily. But the reason he gives for this direction is rather comical: the bed is a sort of nocturnal gymnasium, on which the sleeper may digest his food by frequent rollings and tumblings in his dreams.
The couch ought not to be elaborately carved, and the feet of it ought to be smooth and plain. The reason for this is not only the avoidance of luxury; but "elaborate turnings form occasionally paths for creeping things, which twine themselves about the mouldings and do not slip off."
In speaking of dress, St. Clement gives free rein to his indignation at the folly and extravagance of both men and women, and points his remarks with many a shaft of keen wit and sallies of dry humor. Of course, he says, we must have clothes, but we require them as a protection for the body, not as mere ornaments to attract notice and inflame greedy eyes. Nor is there any good reason why the garments of women should differ from those of men. At the utmost, women may be permitted the use of softer textures, provided they wear them not too thin and curiously woven. A silk dress is the mark of a weak mind. Dyed garments are silly and extravagant; and are they not, after all, offences against truth? Sardian, olive, rose-colored, green, scarlet, and ten thousand other dyes—pray, of what use are they? Does the color make any difference in the warmth of the robe? And, besides, the dye rots the stuff, and makes it wear out sooner. A good Christian who is pure within ought to be clad in spotless white. Flowered and embroidered clothing, cunningly wrought with gold, and figures of beasts, and elaborate tracery, "and that saffron-colored robe dipped in ointment, and these costly and many-colored garments of flaring membranes," are not for the children of the church. Let us weave for ourselves the fleece of the sheep which God created for us, but let us not be as silly as sheep. Beauty of character shows itself best when it is not enveloped in ostentatious fooleries. When St. Clement comes to particulars, especially in speaking of the dress of women, it almost seems as if he were pointing at the fashions of the nineteenth century. The modern fondness for mauve, and the various other shades of purple, is nothing new. The same colors seem to have been "the style" in the year 200. "Would it were possible," exclaims the saint, "to abolish purple in dress! The women will wear nothing else; and in truth, so crazy have they gone over these stupid and luxurious purples, that, in the language of the poet, purple death has seized them!" So we see that the good father was not above making a pun. He enumerates some of the articles of apparel—tunics, cloaks, and garments, with long and obscure names, about which the fine ladies of Alexandria were perpetually "in a flutter;" and it is rather startling to encounter in the list—what think you? Why, nothing less than the peplum, so dear to the hearts of women in 1867. Female extravagance in coverings for the feet also seems to have been as rife in ancient Egypt as it is in modern Paris or New-York. He condemns the use of sandals decorated with gold, and curiously studded on the soles with "winding rows" of nails, or ornamented with amorous carvings and jewelled devices. Attic and Sicyonian half-boots, and Persian and Tyrrhenian buskins, are also to be avoided. Men had better go barefoot unless necessity prevents, but it is not suitable for a woman to show her naked foot; "besides, woman is a tender thing, easily hurt." She ought to wear simple white shoes, except on a journey, and then her shoes should be greased.
Our saintly censor devotes an indignant chapter to "the stones which silly women wear fastened to chains and set in necklaces;" and he compares the eagerness with which they rush after glittering jewelry to the senseless attraction which draws children to a blazing fire. He quotes from Aristophanes a whole catalogue of female ornaments:
"Snoods, fillets, natron, and steel;
Pumice-stone, band, back-band,
Back-veil, paint, necklaces,
Paints for the eyes, soft garment, hair-net, [Footnote 22]
Girdle, shawl, fine purple border,
Long robe, tunic, Barathrum, round tunic,
Ear-pendants, jewelry, ear-rings,
Mallow-colored cluster-shaped anklets,
Buckles, clasps, necklets,
Fetters, seals, chains, rings, powders,
Bosses, bands, Sardian stones,
Fans, helicters."
[Footnote 22: Is it possible that waterfalls were worn in those days?]
And he cries out, wearied with the enumeration: "I wonder how those who bear such a burden are not worried to death. O foolish trouble! O silly craze for display!" And of what use is it all? It is nothing but art contending against nature, falsehood struggling against truth. If a woman is ugly, she only makes her ugliness more conspicuous by decking herself out with meretricious ornaments. Besides, the custom of "applying things unsuitable to the body as if they were suitable, begets a practice of lying and a habit of falsehood." The sight of an over-dressed woman seems to have affected St. Clement very much as a worthless picture in an elegant frame. "The body of one of these ladies," he exclaims, "would never fetch more than one hundred and fifty dollars; but you may see her wearing a dress that cost two hundred and fifty thousand." We complain of the extravagance of modern belles; but, do they ever spend such enormous sums as that on a single dress? Alexandria, we imagine, must bear away the palm from Newport and Saratoga.
There were particular fashions in jewelry and ornament toward which the saint had a special dislike. Bracelets in the form of a serpent, he calls the manifest badges of the evil one. Golden chains and necklaces are nothing better than fetters. Earrings and ear-drops he forbids as contrary to nature, and he beseeches his female hearers not to have their ears pierced. If you pierce your ears, he says, why not have rings in your noses also? A signet-ring may be worn on the finger, because it is useful for sealing; but no good Christian ought to wear rings for mere ornament. Yet he makes one curious exception to this rule. If a woman have, unfortunately, a dissipated husband, she may adorn herself as much as she can, for the purpose of keeping him at home.
How bitter is the contempt which the philosopher pours out upon the fashionable ladies of the time, who spend their days in the mysterious rites of the toilet, curling their locks, anointing their cheeks, painting their eyes, "mangling, racking, and plastering themselves over with certain compositions, chilling the skin and furrowing the flesh with poisonous cosmetics;" and then in the evening "creeping out to candle-light as out of a hole." Love of display is not the characteristic of a true lady. The woman who gives herself up to finery is worse than one who is addicted to the pleasures of the table and the bottle! She is a lazy housekeeper, sitting like a painted thing to be looked at, not as if made for domestic economy, and she cares a great deal more about getting at her husband's purse-strings than about staying at home with him. And how preposterous is her behavior when she goes abroad. Is she short? she wears cork-soles. Is she tall? she carries her head down on her shoulder. Has she fine teeth? she is always laughing. Has she no flanks? she has something sewed on to her, so that the spectators may exclaim on her fine shape. A little while ago, a mania for yellow hair broke out in Paris, and fashionable ladies had their locks dyed of the popular hue. Well, it appears from St. Clement's discourses that this folly is over sixteen hundred years old. He upbraids the Alexandrian ladies for following the same absurd custom, and asks, in the words of Aristophanes, "What can women do wise or brilliant who sit with hair dyed yellow?" Nor is this the only modern fashion about the hair which was known and condemned in his time. Read this, young ladies: "Additions of other people's hair are entirely to be rejected, and it is a most sacrilegious thing for spurious hair to shade the head, covering the skull with dead locks. For on whom does the priest lay his hand? Whom does he bless? Not the woman decked out, but another's hairs, and through them another head." Chignons, braids, tresses, and all the other wonderful paraphernalia of the hair-dresser's art are condemned as no better than lies, and a shameful defamation of the human head, which, says St. Clement, is truly beautiful. Neither is it allowable to dye gray hairs, or in any other way to conceal the approach of old age. "It is enough for women to protect their locks and bind up their hair simply along the neck with a plain hair-pin, nourishing chaste locks with simple care to true beauty." And then he draws a comical picture of a lady with her hair so elaborately "done up," that she is afraid to touch her head, and dares not go to sleep for fear of pulling down the whole structure.
A man ought to shave his crown, (unless he has curly hair,) but not his chin, because the beard gives "dignity and paternal terror" to the face. The mustache, however, "which is dirtied in eating, is to be cut round, not by the razor, for that were ungenteel, but by a pair of cropping scissors." The practice of shaving was a mark of effeminacy in those days, and it was thought disgraceful for a man to rob himself of the "hairiness" which distinguishes his sex, even as the lion is known by his shaggy mane. So St. Clement is unsparing in his denunciations of the unmanly creatures who "comb themselves and shave themselves with a razor for the sake of fine effect, and arrange their hair at the looking-glass." Manly sports, provided they be pursued for health's sake and not for vainglory, he warmly approves. A sparing use of the gymnasium and an occasional bout at wrestling will do no harm, but rather good; yet, when you wrestle, says the saint, be sure you stand squarely up to your adversary, and try to throw him by main strength, not by trickery and finesse. A game of ball he especially recommends, (who knows but there may have been base-ball clubs in Egypt?) and he mildly suggests that, if a man were to handle the hoe now and then, the labor would not be "ungentlemanly." Pittacus, King of Miletus, set a good example to mankind by grinding at the mill with his own hand; and, if St. Clement were alive now, he might add that Charles V. employed himself in constructing time-pieces, and that notorious savage, Theodoras, Emperor of Abyssinia, passes most of his days making umbrellas. Fishing is a commendable pastime, for it has the example of the apostles in its favor. Another capital exercise for a gentleman is chopping wood. This, we may remark, is said to be the favorite athletic pursuit of the Honorable Horace Greeley.
The daily occupations of women must not be too sedentary, yet neither, on the other hand, ought the gentler sex to be "encouraged in wrestling or running!" Instead of dawdling about the shops of the silk merchant, the goldsmith, and the perfumer, or riding aimlessly about town in litters, just to be admired, the true lady will employ herself in spinning and weaving, and, if necessary, will superintend the cooking. She must not be above turning the mill, or getting her husband a good dinner. She must shake up the beds, reach drink to her husband when he is thirsty, set the table as neatly as possible, and when anything is wanted from the store, let her go for it and fetch it home herself. We fear it is not the fashion, even yet, to follow St. Clement's advice. She ought to keep her face clean, and her glances cast down, and to beware of languishing looks, and "ogling, which is to wink with the eyes," and of a mincing gait.
A gentleman in the street should never walk furiously, nor swagger, nor try to stare people out of countenance; neither when going up-hill ought he to be shoved up by his domestics! He ought not to waste his time in barbers' shops and taverns, babbling nonsense; nor to watch the women who pass by; nor to gamble. He must not kiss his wife in the presence of his servants. If he is a merchant, he must not have two prices for his goods. He must be his own valet. He must wash his own feet, and put on his own shoes.
And so the holy man goes on with much more sage counsel and Christian direction, teaching his flock not only how to be faithful children of the church, but how to be true gentlemen and gentlewomen. The etiquette which he lays down is not based upon the arbitrary and changeable rules of fashion, but upon the fixed principles of morality and good fellowship. We have thought it not amiss to give our readers a specimen of them, partly, indeed, because they show us in such an interesting manner what kind of lives people used to lead in his day, but also because they are full of good lessons and wholesome rebukes for ourselves, and because many of the follies which St. Clement condemned are still flourishing, just as they flourished then, or are newly springing into life after they have been for so many centuries forgotten. Of course, there are many of his rules which are not applicable to us. Many things which he forbade because they were indications or accompaniments of certain sinful practices are no longer wrong, because they have been completely dissevered from their evil associations. But upon the whole, we doubt not that a new edition of St. Clement's Paedagogus, or as we might translate it, "Complete Guide to Politeness," would be vastly more beneficial to the public than any of the hand-books of etiquette which are multiplied by the modern press.