How much happier—and happiness is the mainspring of etiquette—they would be, this same pair, if (with a possible “allow me” to calm her fears) the escort should push boldly the door to its widest openness and holding it thus with one hand behind his back, with the other press his already removed hat against his heart as the lady grateful and unruffled sweeps majestically by.
BOLSHEVISM FOR BABIES
“That babies don’t commit such crimes as forgery is true,
But little sins develop, if you leave them to accrue;
For anything you know, they’ll represent, if you’re alive,
A burglary or murder at the age of thirty-five.”
When W. S. Gilbert wrote these lines, he stated in an amusing way a great truth, for the doctrine of infant depravity and original sin thus lightly touched upon is, when stripped of its Calvinistic mummery, a recognized scientific verity.