"'Well, sir, I guess it's worth a dollar a month.'
"'It's settled, then, John; you shall have another dollar a month.'
"So the gentleman retained a good man, while John's hat was always in his hand when he entered the house."
This story, to one who knows New England, is not altogether incredible. Toward the democratization of this country, yet most incomplete, it will perhaps be one day conceded that the South has contributed ideas, and New England sentiment; while the Great West will have made a partial application of both to the conduct of life. The Yankees are the kindest and the acutest of our people, and the most ungraceful. Nowhere in the world is there so much good feeling, combined with so much rudeness of manner, as in New England. The South, colonized by Cavaliers, retains much of the Cavalier improvidence and careless elegance of manner; and Southerners, like the soil they till, are generous. But the Yankees, descended from austere and Puritanic farmers, and accustomed to wring their subsistence from an unwilling soil, possess the sterling virtues of human nature along with a stiff-jointed awkwardness of manner, and a sharp angularity of thought, which renders them unpleasing even to those who respect them most. A Yankee seldom ceases to be provincial.
But John is waiting, hat in hand, to hear what we have to say respecting his case.
We say that John was wrong in not taking off his hat voluntarily, but that the feeling which prevented his doing so was right. He was right in feeling that the accidental circumstance of his being a hired man gave his employer no claim to any special mark of respect from him; and, as he considered that the removal of his hat would have been a special mark of respect, and thus an acknowledgment of social inferiority, he declined to make that acknowledgment. But John was mistaken. The act referred to would not have borne such an interpretation. John ought to have felt that on coming into the presence of a man, a fellow-citizen and co-sovereign, and particularly on entering his abode, one of the innumerable royal residences of the country, some visible sign of respect, some kind of deferential salutation, is due from the person entering. John should have risen superior to the mere accident of his position, and remembered only that he and his employer were men and equals. The positions of the two men might be reversed in a day; their equality as men and citizens, nothing but crime could affect.—James Parton.
III.—A LEARNED MAN AT TABLE.
Some of the many errors which are liable to be committed through ignorance of usage, are pleasantly pointed out in the following story, which is related by a French writer:
The Abbé Cosson, professor in the Collége Mazarin, thoroughly accomplished in the art of teaching, saturated with Greek, Latin, and literature, considered himself a perfect well of science: he had no conception that a man who knew all Persius and Horace by heart could possibly commit an error—above all, an error at table. But it was not long before he discovered his mistake. One day, after dining with the Abbé de Radonvilliers at Versailles, in company with several courtiers and marshals of France; he was boasting of the rare acquaintance with etiquette and custom which he had exhibited at dinner. The Abbé Delille, who heard this eulogy upon his own conduct, interrupted his harangue by offering to wager that he had committed at least a hundred improprieties at the table. "How is it possible?" exclaimed Cosson. "I did exactly like the rest of the company."