Affability
Affability is a real ornament, the most beautiful dress that man or woman can wear, and worth far more as a means of winning favor than the finest clothes and jewels ever were. The exercise of affability creates an instantaneous impression in your behalf, while the opposite quality excites as quick a prejudice against you. So true is this that were we asked to name any one quality which, aside from mere mental powers, contributed largely to success, we would mention affability.
Apart from its worth as an agreeable trait of character, affability is a valuable commodity. Every one who has business to transact should add this to his stock in trade. It costs nothing, while it vastly facilitates trade and profit. There are business men and women who make fortunes simply by their affable and polite manners. Their wares or their services are no better, perhaps, than the stock in trade of their crusty neighbors; but having undertaken a business or adopted a profession, they are wise enough to know that whatever is to be done successfully must be done in a pleasing manner and with a good will.
Their acts appear to be based on the conviction that every body may be made a friend, which is every way preferable to acting as if every body were an intruder. They do not treat people as though they were in a hurry to be done with them, but as though they might be cultivated into an acquaintance and grow into a friend. To neglect the small courtesies of life is to insure neglect for yourself. And the reason that some persons are successful where others fail is that they invite strangers to become friends by civility, while the others repel even friends by the want of courtesy.
The world at best is extremely selfish. We are too much taken up with our own personal aims to notice how others are thriving. We little think how others may be wishing for some friendly recognition, how far with them the friendly shake of the hand may go. The world is full of suffering and sorrow, and it is at these seasons that kindly words come with far more than their usual force. The human heart was formed for sympathy as naturally as the flower for sunshine. Hence it is no wonder that the man of affable and kind manners should be the one who would make friends wherever he goes.
It is good to meet in friendly intercourse, and pour out that social cheer which so vivifies the weary and desponding heart. Give to all the hearty grasp and the sunny smile. They send sunshine to the soul, and make the heart leap as with new life and joy. Thus may we become brothers in every good word and deed, and peace and good-will spread in the world. We long for friendly intercourse, and when deprived of the society of others we pine and grow sick at heart, we become misanthropic and gloomy. The Summer of the heart changes to dreary Winter, and our lives seem overcast and gloomy.
We are not well enough acquainted each with each, and all with all. We are not social enough. We are not found often enough at one another's houses. We are especially delinquent in the duty of calling upon such as come among us and connect themselves with us. We do not welcome them, and seek to make their stay as pleasant as possible. We do not take the kindly notice we should of such as come to our places of public and social gatherings. This is wrong. It is incumbent on us as members of society to cultivate a spirit of affability, to strive to make all within our influence happy by our kind solicitude for their welfare. Says Daniel Webster: "We should make it a principle to extend the hand of fellowship to every man who discharges faithfully his duties and maintains good order, who manifests a deep interest in the general welfare of society, whose deportment is upright, and whose mind is intelligent, without stopping to ascertain whether he swings a hammer or draws a thread."