How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of Republican Etiquette, and Guide to Correct Personal Habits - Samuel Roberts Wells (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📗

e have defined equality in another place. We fully accept the doctrine as there set forth. We have no respect for mere conventional and arbitrary distinctions. Hereditary titles command no deference from us. Lords and dukes are entitled to no respect simply because they are lords and dukes. If they are really noble men, we honor them accordingly. Their titles are mere social fictions.

True republicanism requires that every man shall have an equal chance—that every man shall be free to become as unequal as he can. No man should be valued the less or the more on account of his grandfather, his position, his possessions, or his occupation. The MAN should be superior to the accidents of his birth, and should take that rank which is due to his merit.[R]

The error committed by our professedly republican communities consists, not in the recognition of classes and grades of rank, but in placing them, as they too often do, on artificial and not on natural grounds. We have had frequent occasion, in the preceding pages, to speak of superiors and inferiors. We fully recognize the relation which these words indicate. It is useless to quarrel with Nature, who has nowhere in the universe given us an example of the absolute, unqualified, dead-level equality which some pseudo-reformers have vainly endeavored to institute among men. Such leveling is neither possible nor desirable. Harmony is born of difference, and not of sameness.

We have in our country a class of toad-eaters who delight in paying the most obsequious homage to fictitious rank of every kind. A vulgar millionaire of the Fifth Avenue, and a foreign adventurer with a meaningless title, are equally objects of their misplaced deference. Losing sight of their own manhood and self-respect, they descend to the most degrading sycophancy. We have little hope of benefiting them. They are "joined to their idols; let them alone."

But a much larger class of our people are inclined to go to the opposite extreme, and ignore veneration, in its human aspect, altogether. They have no reverence for anybody or anything. This class of people will read our book, and, we trust, profit by its well-meant hints. We respect them, though we can not always commend their manners. They have independence and manliness, but fail to accord due respect to the manhood of others. It is for their special benefit that we leave touched with considerable emphasis on the deference due to age and genuine rank, from whatever source derived.

Your townsman, Mr. Dollarmark, has no claim on you for any special token of respect, simply because he inherited half a million, which has grown in his hands to a million and a half, while you can not count half a thousand, or because he lives in his own palatial mansion, and you in a hired cottage; but your neighbor, Mr. Anvil, who, setting out in life, like yourself, without a penny, has amassed a little fortune by his own unaided exertions, and secured a high social position by his manliness, integrity, and good breeding, is entitled to a certain deference on your part—a recognition of his merits and his superiority. Mr. Savant, who has gained distinction for himself and conferred honor on his country by his scientific discoveries, and your aged friend Mr. Goodman, who, though a stranger to both wealth and fame, is drawing toward the close of a long and useful life, during which he has helped to build up and give character to the place in which he lives, have, each in his own way, earned the right to some token of deference from those who have not yet reached an equally elevated position.

It is not for birth, or wealth, or occupation, or any other accidental circumstance, that we ask reverence, but for inherent nobility wrought out in life. This is what should give men rank and titles in a republic.

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.

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.

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.

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."

The following rather broad hints to certain bipeds who ought to be gentlemen, were clipped from some newspaper. We are sorry we do not know to whom to credit the article:

"Who can tell why women are expected, on pain of