In Judging Others.
Stop before gauging a person’s capacity solely by his physiognomy. Lafayette’s forehead suggested idiocy, Keats, the poet, had the jaws of a prize-fighter, and warriors of the Salvation Army have been mistaken (before opening their mouths) for men of intelligence.
Stop, however, before judging people altogether on antithetic grounds. To invariably accept a monkey-jawed, rat-eyed, ear-shadowed countenance as a criterion for mental profundity, for instance, or crime-sodden, sin-exhaling bulldog traits as suggestive of ethical culture or religious zeal, is hardly to be recommended.
Stop before judging others, especially men, wholly by their dress and manners. A millionaire may be “shabby-genteel” and retiring to excess, whereas professional scoundrels are often notorious for a fashionable exterior and distinction of bearing “as to the manner born.”
Stop on the verge of taking dress and ornament as a sure indication of a woman’s character or station. You might regret mistaking a quietly-attired unadorned heiress for a shirt-maker in distress; or a fourth-class pawnbroker’s wife, beringed and bediamonded from bang to belt, for a sorceress of fashion.
Stop before judging people disparagingly by their eccentricities. A poet, for instance, may indulge in long hair, without necessarily being an æsthete or a cowboy; the habit of talking to one’s-self is no proof of a guilty conscience; and absent-mindedness in many forms has accompanied the possession of exceptional capacity.
Stop, however, before accepting such betrayals as positive indications of either genius, talent or brains. To do this would be to libel the ordinarily well-behaved people who have some respect for the amenities of existence.
Stop, for instance, ere ascribing pure benevolence to the absent-mindedness that mistakes your silk umbrella for a mislaid gingham one, shaky in the ribs, feruled with long service, and filtery at the seams.