A young man’s fate in life may be decided by a badly-written letter or a well-written one, by a rough gesture, by an oath or an unclean phrase uttered when he thinks no one is listening. But let us remember that there is always some one looking or hearing; for, and this is an axiom, there are no secrets in life.
Emerson says, writing of “Behavior:” “Nature tells every secret over. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by form, attitude, gesture, mien, face and parts of the face, and by the whole action of the machine. The visible carriage or action of the individual, as resulting from his organization and his will combined, we call manners. What are they but thought entering the hands and feet, controlling the movements of the body, the speech and behavior?”
Of the power of manners Emerson further says: “Give a boy address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes wherever he goes. He has not the trouble of earning them.”
And in another place: “There are certain manners which are learned in good society of such force that, if a person have them, he or she must be considered and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty or wealth or genius.”
Cardinal Newman, in his definition of a gentleman, does not forget manners, though he lays less stress on their power for worldly advancement than Emerson does. Good manners are, in the opinion of the great cardinal, the outward signs of true Christianity. Etiquette is the extreme of good manners. A man may be a good Christian and expectorate, spit, sprinkle, spray, diffuse tobacco-juice right and left. But the man who will do that, though he have a good heart and an unimpeachable character, is not a gentleman in the world’s meaning of the term, for with the world it is not the heart that counts, but the manners. You may keep your hat on your head if you choose when you meet a clergyman or a lady. You need not examine your conscience about it, and you will find nothing against it in the Constitution of the United States; you may be on your way to give your last five dollars to the poor or to visit a sick neighbor; but, by that omission you stamp yourself at once as being outside the sacred circle in which society includes gentlemen. You can quote a great many fine sentiments against me, if you like; you may say, with Tennyson,
“Kind hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.”
God keep us from thinking otherwise; but, if one get into a habit of disregarding the small rules of etiquette, if one use one’s fork for a toothpick, drink out of one’s finger-bowl, reach over somebody’s head for a piece of bread, all the kind hearts and simple faith in the world will not keep you in the company of well-bred people. You may answer that some very good persons blow their soup with their breath, stick their own forks into general dishes, and—the thing has been done once perhaps in some savage land—wipe their noses with their napkins. But if these good people paid more attention to the little things of life, their goodness would have more power over others. As it is, virtue loses half its charm when it ignores good manners. It is only old people and men of great genius who can afford to disregard manners. Old people are privileged. If they choose to eat with their knives or with their napkins around their necks,—a thing which is no longer tolerated,—the man who remarks on it, who shows that he notices it, who criticises it, is not only a boor, but a fool. Young people have no such privileges: they must acquire the little habits of good society or they will find every avenue of cultivation closed to them.
The only time they are privileged to violate etiquette is when some older person does it: then they had better follow a bad form than rebuke him by showing superiority in manners.
It is foolish to appear to despise the little rules that govern the conduct of life. This appearance of contempt for observances which have become part of the every-day existence of well-regulated people, arises either from selfishness or ignorance. The selfish man does not care to consider his neighbors; but his selfishness is very shortsighted, because his neighbors, whose feelings and rights he treats as non-existent, will soon force the consideration of them on him.