No, he didn’t have much style, I admit, to his dented, dusty derby, poor old Westrose, but, God bless him, his heart was certainly up to date. He may have got a lady’s coat upside down occasionally when he helped her on with it—but he understood the Fourth Dimension of Kindness, all right. Never a friend of his wife’s did he ever puffingly put aboard a street car, but he’d tuck, apologetically, into her hand the nickel to save her rummaging in her bag.
Real elegance, the gesture of inherent nobility, I call that. It’s like the flourish to the signature of Charles Dickens. It’s kindness with a kick to it. In short, it’s the manner and custom of the Educated Heart, that makes you turn over at night and decide to add a codicil to your will—why should brother Fred have it all?
Well knows the Educated Heart that the doctor’s clients usually pay slowly, and itself therefore pays without delay. Which lover has the Educated Heart—he who orders the florist to send, every day, five dollars’ worth of flowers, or he who himself selects and presents a single rose? Ask the sweetheart—she knows that
“’Tis not so much the gallant who woos,
As the gallant’s way of wooing!”
* * * * *
“I’m so sorry I couldn’t send you anything this Christmas,” said Millicent, “but I’ve been awfully hard up!”
Too hard up, in fact, to afford two cents to stamp a letter, sending her love!
* * * * *
AND now, I beseech you, consider the usual Christmas present. No one but a boor would present a diamond wrapped in a scrap of newspaper, would he? No; and so the most trivial of gifts, when sent by a civilized donor on Christmas, is, by universal practice, carefully wrapped in a pretty paper, red or gold, is tied with a fancy ribbon and decorated, mayhap, with a sprig of holly.
Now, that’s what I mean by the Educated Heart. That package is symbolical of what all friendly acts should be—kindness performed with style.