| PAGE | ||
|---|---|---|
| I. | The Need of Good Manners, | [9] |
| II. | Rules of Etiquette, | [29] |
| III. | What makes a Gentleman, | [47] |
| IV. | What does not make a Gentleman, | [64] |
| V. | How to Express One’s Thoughts, | [84] |
| IV. | Letter-writing, | [106] |
| VII. | What to Read, | [126] |
| VIII. | The Home Book-shelf, | [144] |
| IX. | Shakspere, | [168] |
| X. | Talk, Work, and Amusement, | [181] |
| XI. | The Little Joys of Life, | [194] |
A GENTLEMAN.
I. The Need of Good Manners.
I have been asked to refresh your memory and to recall to your mind the necessity of certain little rules which are often forgotten in the recurrent interest of daily life, but which, nevertheless, are extremely important parts of education. There are rules made by society to avoid friction, to preserve harmony, and perhaps to accentuate the immense gulf that lies between the savage and the civilized man. But, trifling as they seem, you will be handicapped in your career in life if you do not know them. Good manners are good manners everywhere in civilization; etiquette is not the same everywhere. The best manners come from the heart; the best etiquette comes from the head. But the practice of one and the knowledge of the other help to form that combination which the world names a gentleman, and which is described by the adjective well-bred.
For instance, if a man laughs at a mistake made by another in the hearing of that other, he commits a solecism in good manners—he is thoughtless and he appears heartless; but if he wears gloves at the dinner-table and persists in keeping them on his hands while he eats, he merely commits a breach of etiquette. Society, which makes the rules that govern it, will visit the latter offence with more severity than the former.
Some young people fancy that when they leave school they will be free,—free to break or keep little rules. But it is a mistake: if one expects to climb in this world, one will find it a severe task; one can never be independent of social restrictions unless one become a tramp or flee to the wilds of Africa. But even there they have etiquette, for one of Stanley’s officers tells us that some Africans must learn to spit gracefully in their neighbor’s face when they meet.
I do not advise the stringent keeping of the English etiquette of introductions. At Oxford, they say, no man ever notices the existence of another until he is introduced; and they tell of one Oxford man who saw a student of his own college drowning. “Why did you not save him?” “How could I?” demanded this monster of etiquette; “I had never been introduced to him.”
Boys at school become selfish in the little things, and they seem to be more selfish than they really are. Every young man is occupied with his own interest. If a man upsets your coffee in his haste to get at his own, you probably forgive him until you get a chance to upset his. There is no time to quarrel about it,—no code among you which in the outside world would make such a reprisal a reason for exile from good society.
When you get into this outside world you will perhaps be inclined to overrate the small observances which you now look on with indifference as unnecessary to be practised. But either extreme is bad. To be boorish, rough, uncouth, is a sin against yourself and against society; to be too exquisite, too foppish, too “dudish,”—if I may use a slang word,—is only the lesser of two evils. Society may tolerate a “dude;” but it first ignores and then evicts a boor.
A famous Queen of Spain once said that a man with good manners needs no other letter of introduction. And it is true that good manners often open doors to young men which would otherwise be closed, and make all the difference between success and failure. This recalls to my mind an instance which, if it be not true, has been cleverly invented. It is an extreme case of self-sacrifice, and one which will hardly be imitated.