In the position we are next going to advance we know everybody will agree with us, and this consideration very[Pg 36] much strengthens our opinion. Nothing is so becoming to a female mouth as a civil and flattering “Yes.” It is impossible, indeed, but that our fellow-citizens should here agree with us, when they reflect that they never can be husbands until their inamorata shall have learnt the art of saying “Yes.” For the most part, indeed, civility and good-nature are the characteristics of our British fair, and this natural inclination to the affirmative renders it unnecessary for us to point out to our fair countrywomen the beauties and advantages of a word which they love as dearly as they do flattery. While we are on the subject of flattery, let us obiter advise all Etonians to say nothing but “Yes” to a lady. But as a thoughtless coquette or a haughty prude does occasionally forget the necessity and the beauty of the word we are discussing, we cannot but recommend to our fair readers to consider attentively the evils which this forgetfulness infallibly entails. Laurelia would never have been cut by her twenty-first adorer; Charlotte, with £4000 a year at fifteen, would never have been an old maid at fifty; Lucy, with a good face and not a farthing,[Pg 37] would never have refused a carriage, white liveries, and a peerage, if these unfortunate victims had studied in early youth the art of saying “Yes.”
Sweet—light—gay—quaint monosyllable! Tender, obliging, inoffensive, affectionate “Yes!” How we delight in thy delicate sound! We love to hear the enamoured swain petitioning for his mistress’s picture, till the lady, or overcome by affection, or wearied by importunity, changes the “No” of coy reluctance for the “Yes” of final approbation. We love to hear the belle of Holborn Hill supplicating for Greenwich and the one-horse shay, till her surly parent alters the shake of unconvinced obduracy for the nod of unwilling consent. We love to see the hen-pecked husband humbly kneeling for his Sunday coat and the “Star and Garter,” till Madam, conscious that the Captain is secreted in the closet, transmutes the “No” of authoritative detention into the “Yes” of immediate dismission. We love—but it is time to bring our treatise to a conclusion, and we will merely observe, that whenever we see Beauty without[Pg 38] a husband or Talent without a place; whenever we hear a lady considered an old maid, or a gentleman voted a bore, we turn from the sight in melancholy mood, and whisper to ourselves: “This comes of not being able to say ‘Yes.[Pg 39]’”
MR. OAKLEY’S TREATISE ON THE ART OF SAYING “NO.”
“My son—learn betimes to say No.”
Miss Edgeworth.
Our opinion is not a jot weakened by the probability that many of our friends will dissent from it, when we assert that no art requires in a greater degree the attention of a young man, on his entrance into life, than that of saying “No.” A man who is afraid to use this little word is a spaniel in society; he studies to please others rather than to benefit himself, and of course fails in both objects: in short, he deserves not to be called a man, and is totally unworthy of the place which he holds in the creation.
Is he a rational being who has not an opinion of his own?—No. Is he in the possession of his five senses who sees with the eyes, who hears with the ears, of other men?—No![Pg 40] Does he act upon principle who sacrifices truth, honour, and independence, on the shrine of servility?—Again and again we reply—No! no! no!
Nothing indeed is to us more gratifying than to behold a man relying boldly on the powers which Nature has bestowed upon him, and spurning, with a proper consciousness of independence, the suggestions of those who would reduce him from the rank he holds as a reasonable creature to the level of a courtier and a time-server. Nothing is to us more gratifying than to hear from the lips of such a man that decided test of a free spirit—that finisher to all dispute—that knock-down blow in all arguments—that strong, forcible, expressive, incontrovertible monosyllable—No!
Yet, alas! how many do we find who are either unable or unwilling to pronounce this most useful, most necessary response! How many do we see around us, who are in the daily habit of professing to know things of which they are altogether ignorant, of making promises which it is impossible for them to perform, of saying (to use for[Pg 41] once α soft expression) the thing which is not, solely because they will not call to their assistance the infallible remedy for all these evils, which is to be found in the two letters upon which we are offering a brief comment.
It is dreadful to reflect upon the evils which this neglect must infallibly produce. It is dreadful to look round upon the friends and relatives whom we see suffering the most appalling calamities from no other misconduct than a blind aversion to negatives. It is disgusting to observe the flexible indecision of some, the cringing servility of others. Forgive us, reader, but we cannot help soliloquizing: “God save the King of Clubs, and may the Princes of the Blood Royal be early instructed in the art of saying ‘No.’”