A Gentleman

by Maurice Francis Egan

Having studied these four great works, with as much of the literature they suggest as practicable, a distinct advance in cultivation will have been made. The best college in the country can give one no more. But they must be studied, not read. He who does not know these plays misses part of his heritage; for the plays of Shakspere belong more to the Catholic than to the non-Catholic. Shakspere was the fine flower of culture nurtured under Catholic influences.

X. Of Talk, Work, and Amusement.

There are too many etiquette books—too much about the outward look of things, and too little about the inward. Manners make a great difference in this world—we all discover that sooner or later; but later we find out that there are some principles which keep society together more than manners. If manners are the flower, these principles are the roots which intricately bind earth and crumbling rocks together and make a safe footing. To-day the end of preaching seems to be to teach the outward form, without the inward light that gives the form all its value. By preaching I mean the talk and advice that permeate the newspapers and books of social instruction.

Manners are only good, after all, when they represent something. What does it matter whether Mr. Jupiter makes a charming host at his own table or not, if he sit silent a few minutes after some of his guests are gone, and listen to the horrors that one who stays behind tells of them? And if Mrs. Juno, whose manners at her “at home” are perfect, sits down and rips and tears at the characters of the acquaintances she has just fed with coffee and whatever else answers to the fatted calf, shall we believe that she is useful to society?

There is harmless gossip which has its place; in life it is like the details in a novel; it is amusing and interesting, because it belongs to humanity—and what that is human is alien to us? So far as gossip concerns the lights and shades of character, the minor miseries and amusing happenings of life, what honest man or woman has not a taste for it? And who values a friend less because his peculiarities make us smile?

But by and by there comes into the very corner of the fireside a guest who disregards the crown of roses which every man likes to hang above his door. The roses mean silence—or, at least, that all things that pass under them shall be sweetened by the breath of hospitality; and he adds a little to the smile of kindly tolerance, and he paints it as a sneer. “You must forgive me for telling you,” he whispers, when he is safely sheltered beneath your friend’s garland of roses; “but Theseus spoke of you the other night in a way that made my blood boil.”

And then the friendship of years is snapped; and then the harmless jest, in which Theseus’s friend would have delighted even at his own expense if he had been present, becomes a jagged bullet in an ulcerated wound. Sub rosâ was a good phrase with the old Latins, but who minds it now? It went out of fashion when the public began to pay newspaper reporters for looking through keyholes, and for stabbing the hearts of the innocent in trying to prove somebody guilty. It went out of fashion when private letters became public property and a man might, without fear of disgrace, print, or sell to be printed, any scrap of paper belonging to another that had fallen into his hands.

A very wise man—a gentle man and a loyal man—once said, “A man may be judged by what he believes.” If we could learn the truth of this early in life, what harm could be done us by the creature who tears the thorns out of our hospitable roses, and goes about lacerating hearts with them? When we hear that Jason has called us a fool, we should not be so ready to cry out with all our breath that he is a scoundrel—because we should not be so ready to believe that Jason, who was a decent fellow yesterday, should suddenly have become the hater of a good friend to-day. And when, under stress of unrighteous indignation, we have called Jason a scoundrel, the listener can hardly wait until he has informed Jason of the enormity; “and thereby hangs a tale.”

But when we get older and wiser, we do not ask many people to sit under our roses; and those whom we ask we trust implicitly. In time—so happily is our experience—we believe no evil of any man with whom we have ever cordially shaken hands. Then we begin to enjoy life; and we, too, choose our acquaintances by their unwillingness to believe evil of others. And as for the man who has eaten our salt, we become so optimistic about him that we would not even believe that he could write a stupid book; and that is the nirvâna of belief in one’s friends.

Less manners, we pray—less talk about the handling of a fork and the angle of a bow, and more respect for the roses. Of course, one of us may have said yesterday, after dinner, that Jason ought not to talk so much about his brand-new coat-of-arms; or that Ariadne, who was a widow, you know, might cease to chant the praise of number one in the presence of number two. But do we not admire the solid qualities of both Jason and Ariadne? And yet who shall make them believe that when the little serpent wriggles from our hearthstone to theirs?