The Graduate.
[QUESTIONS FOR YOUNG MEN.]
GOOD MANNERS.
The average young man scoffs a little at a chap who is noticeable for his good manners. Many a healthy boy thinks a certain roughness in speech or manner is a sign of vigor and manliness in contrast to the weak and womanly ways of one who is always bowing and scraping to the people whom he meets. There could not be a greater mistake; because, while an over-display of politeness is a sign of hypocrisy, natural courtesy will never permit boy or man to behave in any way except in the thoughtful, quiet, refined way which belongs to good manners. A rough, honest chap is better than a slippery, well-mannered, dishonest one, to be sure. That perhaps is the reason for so much of this deliberately rough way some of us adopt. But this does not prove that courteous behavior is wrong or to be avoided. It means that courteous behavior is sometimes used as a cloak for other motives.
There is no reason, therefore, why the average young man in school or college or business, in his daily occupation, or when he comes in contact with women or men, girls or boys, should not make it a point to be reserved, self-contained, tolerant, and observant of the little rules which every one knows by heart, and which go to make his company and companionship valuable to others. It is the same in his contact with men as with women. A systematic method of observing ordinary rules in such cases invariably has its effect. For example, you will see many a boy in some discussion among his friends talking all the time, demanding the attention of others, insisting on his views, losing his temper over a game of marbles and declining to play longer, or making himself conspicuous in a hundred other ways. He may be a very good chap, full of push and vigor, and so sure of his own views that in his heart he cannot conceive of any other person really having a different view of the subject. That is an estimable character for a healthy boy to have. Confidence in one's own ideas often carries one over many a bad place. But the fact that the boy has such a character and his disagreeable way of forcing it upon you are two entirely different things; and the difference of being confident and disagreeable and confident and agreeable is the difference between good and bad manners.
Besides, this aggressive confidence never has the weight that quiet belief in one's ideas has. It is a very familiar incident in the course of business men's meetings and of boys' meetings for one to propose something, the others to agree to it, and then for one quiet man to express his contrary views, and bring the assembled company over to the opposite side of the question. This reversal of opinion is caused by the fact that one man, who has been reserved until all the others have finished, has now by the force of his quiet confidence turned the whole tide the other way. Such quiet methods are real portions of good manners, and they act far more strongly than aggressiveness. The old proverb advising you to count ten before doing something on the spur of the moment is meant to prove the same point.
