So like a jockey out of place?
What makes the waiter—tell who can—
The very flower of gentleman?
“Perhaps their mothers!—God is great!
It can’t be accident or fate.
The waiter’s heart is true,—and then,
Good manners make our gentlemen.”
IV. What Does Not Make a Gentleman.
We have touched on the etiquette of dress and of entertainments; and now I beg leave to repeat some things already said, and to add a few others that need to be said.
A young man cannot afford to be slovenly in his dress. Carelessness in dress will prejudice people against him as completely as a badly written letter. He will find himself mysteriously left out in invitations. If he applies for a position in an office or a bank, or anywhere else, where neatness of dress is expected, he will get the cold shoulder. A young man who wears grease spots habitually on the front of his coat, whose trousers are decorated with dark shadows and the mud of last week, whose shoes are red and rusty, and who hangs a soiled handkerchief, like a flag of truce, more than half out of his pocket, will find himself barred from every place which his ambition would spur him to enter. You may say that dress does not make the man. You may call to mind Burns’ lines to the effect that “a man’s a man for a’ that;” a piece of silver is only a piece of silver, worth more or less, until the United States mint stamps it a dollar. The stamp of your character and the manner of your bringing up give you the value at which the world appraises you.