Gentility—Perfect veracity, frank urbanity, total unwillingness to give offense; the gentleness of right-hearted, level-headed good nature; kindliness tactfully exercised through clear sense that duly appreciates current circumstances involving the personal rights, privileges and susceptibilities of others; and, while justly regarding these, acting on what they generally suggest so considerately and so gracefully that a pleasurable, heartfelt recognition of finest decency is inspired in others.
An old wag once said, "I never refuse to drink with a gentleman, and a gentleman is a man who invites me to take a drink." That is the Kentucky idea. But this is not:
Gentleman—One who has courage without bravado, pride without vanity, and who is innately—not studiously, but innately—considerate of the feelings of others.
And so the definitions vary inversely as the square of the desirability of the kind of gentleman we try to be. In brief, a gentleman is indefinable as it is unmistakable. You can always tell him when you meet him, but you cannot tell how or why.
Gentlemen, be seated. This is final. Just think over what you have heard, and see if there is not now a clear idea of what a gentleman is and is not. If you have read between the lines, you have seen the true lights on the subject. Wit and mirth and humorous allusions—such as they are—should not obscure the real issue. Do we not all know now what a gentleman is? Quite true that we cannot define it, without a very large vocabulary and thousands of words, yet we feel that we know. And, knowing what a gentleman is, surely we shall all try to be one. And then what more can the gods require?
Beards
And so the beard is coming in fashion again. Consoling thought to you of the fertile facial soil and with ugly contour or ungainly blemishes to conceal, but distressing to those chubby-faced, masculine beauties whose tender skins will not yield a plentiful crop. But, you have had your day, oh, ye of the germ-proof, Napoleonic countenance; so, discard your Gillettes, and make way for his majesty—The Beard. The halcyon days of the razor are no more, if we are to believe fickle Dame Fashion, and we are now to welcome the day of the shears. If nature has been stingy, and that glorious excrescence, the beard, is impossible to you, mon cher, pray accept our sympathy; but, please be generous enough to take the inevitable with good grace, and not worry us with foolish arguments about bearded barbarians and unsanitary savages. We know that you can make a strong case against the beard, but we imagine we can make one equally strong in its favor. All of your progenitors had them, including Adam—if we are to believe the ancient monuments, all of which show those gentlemen with a bushy beard of no mean dimensions. You say the ancient Egyptians wore no beards? Yes, but please observe that on occasions of high festivity, they wore false beards as assertions of their dignity and virility, and always represented their male deities with splendid hirsute adornments tip-tilted at the ends. It is true that they called the Greeks and Romans "barbarians" (bearded, unshaven, savages), and that about 300 B. C., the latter began to shave and in turn to call other peoples "barbarians"; but these incidents were only passing fancies, freaks and fashions soon to make way for the approaching, persistent reign of the beard. You say that Julian argued arduously against the beard? Yes, but would you take for a model a man whose whole body was bearded, and who prided himself on his long finger-nails and on the inky blackness of his hands? And don't forget that the reason Alexander abolished beards in his army was one that hardly fits your case, for was it not because the enemy had a habit of using the beard as a handle, much to the inconvenience—to say nothing of the discomfort—of the victim?
The beard has had an eventful career, and has always been the bone of contention between nations, churches, politicians, kings, gods, and barbers. As to the last, suffice it to say that beards existed before barbers, and that barbers are now as favorable to beards as they are unfavorable to safety razors. As for the churches, they have been alternately pro and con: Israel brought the beard safely out of Egyptian bondage; the Orientals cherished it as a sacred thing; the Scriptures abound with examples of how it was used to interpret pride, joy, sorrow, despondency, etc., the Greek church was for beards, and the Roman church against; the Popes of Naples wore beards at various periods; and now, most of our popes, priests and preachers keep their "chins new reaped." In Asia, wars have been declared on alleged grievances concerning shaving, and Nero offered some of the hairs of his beard to Jupiter Capitolinus who could well have bearded a dozen emperors from his own. Herodotus has more to say of beards than of belles, bibles and Belzebub, and the other poets and historians have found inspiration in like theme. In some times, beards denoted noble birth and in others they were tokens of depravity or of ostracism. The Roskolniki, a sect of schismatics, maintained that the divine image resided in the beard, and for ages the beard was the outward sign of a true man. In brief, the beard has had a Titanic struggle for existence, first up, then down, first on and then off. Just as it would attain the zenith of its glory, some beardless king would come along and dethrone it, as was the case in Spain, for example, when Philip V's tender chin refused to bear fruit, which calamity soon changed the fashion among the Spanish nobility. And, no sooner would the bald chin be established in favor, than some ugly-faced prince would come forward with an edict that the elect must again display the manly beard, as in France, when the young king's face was so disfigured with scars that he found a beard necessary to give him an appearance of respectability, whereupon all his faithful subjects found that they also had scars to conceal, much to the dismay of the barbers.