GOOD manners are a plant of slow growth, and one that should be cultivated in the home circle.
"Give a boy address, and it opens palaces to him," says Emerson, and nowhere is this address, "this habit of encounter," so easily gained as within the walls of home. There his character is formed for life.
Good breeding, in reality, is but the outcome of "much good sense, some good nature, and a little self-denial exercised for the sake of others, with a view to obtain the same indulgence from them."
These words of the scholar, Chesterfield, learned as he was in worldly lore, and satisfied of the expediency of such observances from a selfish standpoint, are but another, and more selfish, rendering of the Golden Rule, whose value as a rule of action in life is apparent.
Courtesy, it must be conceded, is not only pleasant, but profitable in all places, and at all times, but more especially in the home circle are its virtues most brilliantly set forth.
Courtesies of Married Life.
"Marriage very rarely mends a man's manners," is a sadly true statement of the playwright Congreve, and one whose truth touches women also as concerning the marriage state.