[75] Monrad, Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 9.
[76] d’Arvieux, Travels in Arabia the Desart, p. 141.
[77] Smith, Chinese Characteristics, p. 35.
[78] Ordre of Chyualry, fol. 46. Robertson, History of the Reign of Charles V. i. 84. Milman, History of Latin Christianity, iv. 211. Turner, History of England, iii. 473. Mills, History of Chivalry, i. 161 sq. Scott, ‘Essay on Chivalry,’ in Miscellaneous Prose Works, vi. 58.
The rules of politeness and good manners refer to all sorts of social intercourse and vary indefinitely in detail. They tell people how to sit or stand in each other’s presence, or how to pass through a door; a Zulu would be fined for going out of a hut back first.[79] They prescribe how to behave at a meal; the Indians of British Columbia consider it improper to talk on such an occasion,[80] and it appears that in England also, in the fifteenth century, “people did not hold conversation while eating, but that the talk and mirth began with the liquor.”[81] Politeness demands that a person should never interrupt another while speaking;[82] or that he should avoid contradicting a statement;[83] or, not infrequently, that he should rather tell a pleasant untruth than an unpleasant truth.[84] At times it requires the use of certain phrases, words of thanks, flattery, or expressions of self-humiliation. In Chinese there is “a whole vocabulary of words which are indispensable to one who wishes to pose as a ‘polite’ person, words in which whatever belongs to the speaker is treated with scorn and contempt, and whatever relates to the person addressed is honourable. The ‘polite’ Chinese will refer to his wife, if driven to the extremity of referring to her at all, as his ‘dull thorn,’ or in some similar elegant figure of speech.”[85]
[79] Tyler, Forty Years among the Zulus, p. 190 sq.
[80] Woldt, Kaptein Jacobsens Reiser til Nordamerikas Nordvestkyst, p. 99.
[81] Wright, Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages, p. 396.
[82] Domenech, Seven Years Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, ii. 72. Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, i. 385 (Kutchin). Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 157. Dobrizhoffer, Account of the Abipones, ii. 136 sq. d’Arvieux, op. cit. p. 139 sq.; Wallin, Reseanteckningar från Orienten, iii. 259 (Bedouins).
[83] Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, ii. 334 sq.; Cranz, op. cit. i. 157 (Greenlanders). Dobrizhofifer, op. cit. ii. 137 (Abipones). d’Arvieux, op. cit. p. 141 (Bedouins).