A Gentleman

by Maurice Francis Egan

A young man should neither talk too much nor too little, and he should never talk about himself unless he is forced to. Madame Roland, a famous Frenchwoman, who perished during the Reign of Terror under the guillotine, said that by listening attentively to others she made more friends than by any remarks of her own. “Judicious silence,” the author of “In a Club Corner” says, “is one of the great social virtues.” A man who tries to be funny at all times is a social nuisance. Two famous men suffered very much for their tendency to be always humorous. These were Sydney Smith and our own lamented S. S. Cox. Sydney Smith could not speak without exciting laughter. Once, when he had said grace, a young lady next to him exclaimed, “You are always so amusing!” And S. S. Cox, one of the most serious of men at heart and the cleverest in head, never attained the place in politics he ought to have gained because he was supposed to be always in fun. Jokes are charming things in a limited circle, but no gentleman nowadays indulges in those practical jokes which we have heard of. It is not considered a delicate compliment to pull a chair away just as anybody is about to sit down; and the young person who jabs acquaintances in the ribs, to make them laugh at his delightful sayings, is not rapturously welcomed in quiet families.

A young man should not make a practice of using slang, and he should never use it in the presence of ladies. To advise a friend to “shut his face” or to “come off the perch” may sound “smart,” but it is vulgar, and is fatal to those ambitious young men who feel that their success in life depends on the good opinion of cultivated people. Moreover, this habitual slang is likely to crop out at the most inopportune times. Mr. Sankey, of the evangelizing firm of Moody and Sankey, at a camp-meeting once asked a devout young man if he loved the Lord. There was profound silence until the young man, who thought in slang, answered in a loud voice, “You bet!”

Slang is in bad taste; and the slang we borrow from the English is the worst of all—the repetition of “don’t you know?” for instance. “I’m going to town, don’t you know, and if I see your friends, don’t you know, I’ll tell them you were asking for them, don’t you know,—oh, yes, I shall, don’t you know.” Imagine an American so idiotic as not only to imitate the vulgarest Cockney slang, but to do it in the vulgarest Cockney accent! There was a woman who at a dinner said, “Have some soup, don’t you know; it’s not half nawsty, don’t you know.”

I must remind you again not to use, in letter-writing, tinted or ornamented paper. Let it be white and, by all means, unruled; your envelope may be either oblong or square, but the square form is preferable. If you have time and want to follow the present fashion, and also to pay a compliment of extreme carefulness to the person to whom you are writing, close your letters with red sealing-wax. Some old-fashioned people look on postal cards as vulgar. However, it is not well to write family secrets on these cheap forms. And if any man owes you money, do not ask him for it on a postal card: it is against a more forcible law than those that make etiquette. Postal cards are not to be used except on business. Be sure to write the name of the person to whom the letter is addressed on the last page of the letter. But if you begin a letter with “Dear Mr. Smith,” you need not write Mr. Smith’s name again at the end of the letter. Buy good paper and envelopes. And do not write on old scraps of paper when you write home. Nothing is too good for your father and mother; they may not say much about it, but every little attention from you brightens their lives and helps towards paying that debt of gratitude to them which you can never fully discharge.

A young man has asked me to say something about the etiquette of cards and calls. A man, under the American code of politeness, need not make many calls. If he is invited to an entertainment of any kind, he should go to the house of his host to call or leave his card. If it be his first call, he must leave a card for each grown-up member of the family. After that he need leave only one card. The old fashion of turning down the corners of cards is gone out. A man’s card should be very small, not gilt-edged; it should never be printed, but always engraved or written, with the address in the left-hand lower corner. A man may write his own cards. In that case he must not put “Mr.” before his name. But if he has them engraved, the present usage demands that “Mr.” must appear before his name. If he has been at a party of any kind, he must call within a week after it, or he can send his card with his mother or sister, if they should happen to be calling at his host’s within that time. A man’s card, like his note-paper, ought to be as simple as possible. Secretary Bayard’s cards always bore the plain inscription, “Mr. Bayard.” Sciolists and pretenders of all kinds put a great number of titles on their cards. Corn-cutters and spiritists and quacks of all sorts are always sure to print “Professor” before their names, but men who have a right to the title never do it. Be sure, then, to have a neat, plain card, well engraved. It costs very little to have a plate made by a good stationery firm; and a neat, elegant card, like a well-written letter, is a good introduction. It symbolizes the man. Daniel Webster’s card was simply “Mr. Webster,” and it expressed the man’s hatred for all pretence. A gentleman should never call on a young lady without asking for her mother or her chaperon. And he should never leave a card for her without leaving one for her mother. It will not do to send a card by mail after one has been asked to dinner. A personal visit must be made and a card left. In calling on the sons or daughters of a family, cards should be left for the father and mother.

It may surprise some young men to find that in the great world fathers and mothers are so much considered. I know that there are some boys at school who write home on any odd, soiled paper they can find, and who write only when they want something or feel like grumbling. Their letters run something like this:

“Dear Father: The weather is bad. I am not well this evening, hoping to find you the same. Grub as usual. Please send me five dollars.

“Yours,” etc.

And, of course, their fathers and mothers go down on their knees at once and thank Heaven for such dutiful and clever boys—that is, if you boys have brought them up properly. But so many of our parents have been so badly brought up. They really do not see how superior their children are to them. They actually fancy that they know more of the world than a boy of sixteen or seventeen; and they occasionally insist on being obeyed. It would be a pleasant thing to form a new society among you—a society for the proper bringing up of fathers and mothers. At present there are some parents who really refuse to be the slaves of their children, or to take their advice. This is unreasonable, I know, but it is true. Think how frightful it is for a young man of spirit to be kept at college during the best years of his life, when he might be learning new clog-dance steps on street-corners or reading detective stories all day long!

It would be hard to change things now; and the fact remains that in good society fathers and mothers are considered before their children. The man who lacks reverence for his parents, who shows irritation to them, who pains them by his grumbling and fault-finding, is no gentleman. He is what the English call a cad. He is the most contemptible of God’s creatures. Let me sum up in the famous lines which you all ought to know by heart; they are the words that Shakspere puts into the mouth of Polonius when his son Laertes is about to depart into the great world: