I cannot too often impress upon you the advisability of being conciliatory and kind in your manner to everybody with whom you may come in contact. No matter how exalted your rank may be, you can all the better afford to be courteous to those beneath you. Kind words cost nothing, and are as balm to the hearer. Many of the lower orders are quite as much gentry at heart, and far more so, than those who hide their unworthiness beneath the convenient shadow of a "family tree." I have been more than once pained upon hunting days by the extreme contempt and rudeness with which ladies have treated the poor, who have asked nothing from them save the innocent and inexpensive privilege of seeing them mount and canter away with the field. It is all very well to say, "I do not like to be stared at," but even to those who most dislike it, surely it is worth a little self-sacrifice to see the undisguised enjoyment and listen to the original observations of the Irish peasantry, to whom a sight of the hounds—especially when followed by ladies—is a treat they never care to miss.
I was riding last winter in company with a lady, very noble, very handsome, very proud. We came up to a branch of a river, upon the brink of which some country folk had gathered, with the innocent desire of seeing it jumped. A poor man, very quiet-looking and harmless, was actually knocked down and immersed in the water by a reckless young officer, who galloped over him, and went on without even glancing back at the spot where the poor half-drowned creature stood wringing his dripping clothing, yet not uttering a syllable of reproach. My companion roared with laughter, first at the catastrophe, and then at me for sympathising with the sufferer. "Apologise!" she cried, in a high key. "How could Captain Dash apologise to a man like that? It would be different had he been a gentleman." I thought so too, if the meaning of the word "he" had only been reversed; but I said nothing, and we went on.
A few fields further we came to a terrible obstacle—a high post and rails, with a deep and yawning ditch upon the landing side. Three or four of us went at it: the rest turned away and sought the road. I got over safely, my noble Pleader proving himself, as usual, worthy of my confidence. Captain Dash came next, safely also; and then my ill-starred lady friend, whose horse (an inferior timber-jumper) bungled, and left her completely prostrate upon the wet earth. Never a pause did Captain Dash make in his onward career, although he glanced back when he heard her shriek, and, incredible as it may appear, I thought I saw him smile, for it was ever his saying that ladies had no business hunting, and always deserved mischance; but the poor man, at whose immersion she had laughed a few moments before, came running to her relief, rendered her every assistance in his power, replaced her in the saddle, expressed regret for her accident, and positively declined to accept of any remuneration for his services.
Which of these men, think you, was the gentleman? I know what I thought respecting the question; and I judged that my friend's opinion was formed as mine, for she now loves and cares the poor, and suffers the rich to care themselves, as every true-hearted and Christian woman should; and, moreover, on glancing over a book of my poems which I lent her some time later, I found a leaf turned down, as though to mark these lines—
"What is a gentleman? Is it a thing
Decked with a scarf-pin, a chain, and a ring,
Dressed in a suit of immaculate style,
Sporting an eye-glass, a lisp, and a smile?
Talking of operas, concerts, and balls,
Evening assemblies, and afternoon calls,