Your hired man, Patrick, may be your inferior, but it is not because he is your hired man. Another man, who is your superior in every way, may stand in the same business relation to you. He may sell you certain stipulated services for a stipulated amount of money; but you bargain for no deference that your real social position and character do not call for from him. He, and not you, may be entitled to the "wall side," and to precedence everywhere.
II.—CITY AND COUNTRY.
The words civil and civilized are derived from the Latin civitas (Ital., città), a city, and polite, from the Greek πολις (polis), a city; because cities are the first to become civilized, or civil, and polite, or polished (Latin, polire). They are still, as a general rule, the home of the most highly cultivated people, as well as of the rudest and most degraded, and unquestioned arbiters of fashion and social observances. For this reason the rules of etiquette laid down in this and all other works on the subject of manners, are calculated, as the astronomers say, for the meridian of the city. The observances of the country are borrowed from the city, and modified to suit the social condition and wants of the different localities. This must always be borne in mind, and your behavior regulated accordingly. The white or pale yellow gloves, which you must wear during the whole evening at a fashionable evening party in the city, under pain of being set down as unbearably vulgar, would be very absurd appendages at a social gathering at a farm-house in the country. None but a snob would wear them at such a place. So with other things.
III.—IMPORTED MANNERS.
N. P. Willis says, "We should be glad to see a distinctly American school of good manners, in which all useless etiquette were thrown aside, but every politeness adopted or invented which could promote sensible and easy exchanges of good-will and sociability. Good sense and consideration for others should be the basis of every usage of polite life that is worth regarding. Indeed, we have long thought that our country was old enough to adopt measures and etiquettes of its own, based, like all other politeness, upon benevolence and common sense. To get rid of imported etiquette is the first thing to do for American politeness."
This is an important truth well stated. We have had enough of mere imported conventionalism in manners. Our usages should not be English or French usages, further than English and French usages are founded on universal principles. Politeness is the same everywhere and always, but the forms of etiquette must change with times and places; for an observance which may be proper and useful in London or Paris, may be abundantly absurd in New York.
IV.—FICTITIOUS TITLES.
In answer to a correspondent who inquires whether an American citizen should address a European nobleman by his title, Life Illustrated says:
"We answer, unhesitatingly, No. Most of the European titles are purely fictitious, as well as ridiculous. The Duke of Northumberland, for example, has nothing in particular to do with Northumberland, nor does he exercise dukeship (or leadership) over anything except his private estate. The title is a perfect absurdity; it means nothing whatever; it is a mere nickname; and Mr. Percy is a fool for permitting himself to be addressed as 'My Lord Duke,' and 'Your Grace.' Indeed, even in England, gentlemen use those titles very sparingly, and servants alone habitually employ then. American citizens who are thrown, in their travels, or in their intercourse with society, into communication with persons bearing titles, may treat them with all due respect without Gracing or My-Lording them. In our opinion, they should do so. And we have faith enough in the good sense of the English people to believe that the next generation, or the next but one, will see a general abandonment of fictitious titles by the voluntary action of the very people who hold them. At the same time, we are inclined to think that the bestowment of real titles—titles which mean something, titles given in recognition of distinguished worth and eminent services, titles not hereditary—will be one of the most cherished prerogatives of the enlightened states of the good time coming. The first step, however, must be the total abolition of all titles which are fictitious and hereditary."