[A] "Hints toward Physical Perfection; or, How to Acquire and Retain Beauty, Grace, and Strength, and Secure Long Life and Perpetual Youth."
III.
SELF-CULTURE
There is no man who can so easily and so naturally become in all points a Gentleman Knight, without fear and without reproach, as a true American Republican.—James Parton.
I.—MORAL AND SOCIAL TRAINING.
aving given due attention to your personal habits and dress, consider what special errors still remain to be corrected, or what deficiencies to be supplied, and carefully and perseveringly apply yourself to the required self-training.
If you are sensible of an inadequate development of any of those faculties or feelings on which good manners are based, set yourself at once about the work of cultivation, remembering that the legitimate exercise of any organ or function necessarily tends to its development. Look first to conscientiousness. It is hardly possible for you to acquire genuine good manners without an acute sense of equity. Accustom yourself to a sacred regard for the rights of others, even in the minutest matters, and in the most familiar intercourse of the family or social circle. In a similar manner cultivate Benevolence, Veneration, Adhesiveness, Agreeableness, Ideality, and the moral, social, and esthetic faculties in general. Go out of your way, if necessary, to perform acts of kindness and friendship; never omit the "thank you" which is due for the slightest possible favor, whether rendered by the highest or the lowest; be always bland and genial; respect times, places, observances, and especially persons; and put yourself in the way of all possible elevating and refining influences. Manners have their origin in the mind and the heart. Manners do not make the man, as is sometimes asserted; but the man makes the manners. It is true, however, that the manners react upon mind and heart, continually developing and improving the qualities out of which they spring.