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) 📗
- Author: Samuel Roberts Wells
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"Each person in a dwelling should, if possible, have a room as sacred from intrusion as the house is to the family. No child, grown to years of discretion, should be outraged by intrusion. No relation, however intimate, can justify it. So the trunks, boxes, packets, papers, and letters of every individual, locked or unlocked, sealed or unsealed, are sacred. It is ill manners even to open a book-case, or to read a written paper lying open, without permission expressed or implied. Books in an open case or on a center-table, cards in a card-case, and newspapers, are presumed to be open for examination. Be careful where you go, what you read, and what you handle, particularly in private apartments."
This right to privacy extends to one's business, his personal relations, his thoughts, and his feelings. Don't intrude; and always "mind your own business," which means, by implication, that you must let other people's business alone.
5. Conformity.You must conform, to such an extent as not to annoy and give offense, to the customs, whether in dress or other matters, of the circle in which you move. This conformity is an implied condition in the social compact. It is a practical recognition of the right of others, and shows merely a proper regard for their opinions and feelings. If you can not sing in tune with the rest, or on the same key, remain silent. You may be right and the others wrong but that does not alter the case. Convince them, if you can, and bring them to your pitch, but never mar even a low accord. So if you can not adapt your dress and manners to the company in which you find yourself, the sooner you take your leave the better. You may and should endeavor, in a proper way, to change such customs and fashions as you may deem wrong, or injurious in their tendency, but, in the mean time, you have no right to violate them. You may choose your company, but, having chosen it, you must conform to its rules til you can change them. You are not compelled to reside in Rome; but if you choose to live there, you must "do as the Romans do."
The rules which should govern your conduct, as an isolated individual, were such a thing as isolation possible in the midst of society, are modified by your relations to those around you. This life of ours is a complex affair, and our greatest errors arise from our one-side views of it. We are sovereign individuals, and are born with certain "inalienable rights;" but we are also members of that larger individual society, and our rights can not conflict with the duties which grow out of that relation. If by means of our non-conformity we cause ourselves to be cut off, like an offending hand, or plucked out, like an offending eye, our usefulness is at once destroyed.
It is related of a certain king that on a particular occasion he turned his tea into his saucer, contrary to his custom and to the etiquette of society, because two country ladies, whose hospitalities he was enjoying, did so. That king was a gentleman; and this anecdote serves to illustrate an important principle; namely, that true politeness and genuine good manners often not only permit, but absolutely demand, a violation of some of the arbitrary rules of etiquette.
The highest law demands complete HARMONY in all spheres and in all relations.
IV.—EQUALITY.In the qualified sense which no doubt Mr. Jefferson affixed to the term in his own mind, "all men are created free and equal." The "noble Oracle" himself had long before as explicitly asserted the natural equality of man. In 1739, thirty-seven years before the Declaration of Independence was penned, Lord Chesterfield wrote: "We are of the same species, and no distinction whatever is between us, except that which arises from fortune. For example, your footman and Lizette would be your equals were they as rich as you. Being poor, they are obliged to serve you. Therefore you must not add to their misfortune by insulting or ill-treating them. A good heart never reminds people of their misfortune, but endeavors to alleviate, or, if possible, to make them forget it."
The writer in Life Illustrated, quoted in a previous chapter, states the case very clearly as follows:
"It is in the sacredness of their rights that men are equal. The smallest injustice done to the smallest man on earth is an offense against all men; an offense which all men have a personal and equal interest in avenging. If John Smith picks my pocket, the cause in court is correctly entitled, 'The People versus John Smith.' The whole State of New York has taken up my quarrel with John, and arrays itself against John in awful majesty; because the pockets, the interests, the rights of a man are infinitely, and therefore equally, sacred.
"The conviction of this truth is the beginning and basis of the science of republican etiquette, which acknowledges no artificial distinctions. Its leading principle is, that courtesy is due to all men from all men; from the servant to the served; from the served to the servant; and from both for precisely the same reason, namely, because both are human beings and fellow-citizens!"
V.—A REMARK OR TWO TO BE REMEMBERED.We purpose, in succeeding chapters, to set forth briefly but clearly, what the actual requirements of good society are in reference to behavior. You must look at these in the light of the general principles we have already laid down. It is not for us to say how far you ought or can conform to any particular custom, usage, or rule of etiquette. We believe that even the most arbitrary and capricious of them either have or have had a reason and a meaning. In many cases, however, the reason may no longer exist, and the form be meaningless; or while it embodies what is a living truth to others, you may have outgrown it or advanced beyond it. You have an undoubted right, politely but firmly, to decline to do what seems to you, looking upon the matter from your highest stand-point, to be clearly wrong, and it is no breach of good manners to do so; but at the same time you should avoid, as far as possible, putting yourself in positions which call for the exercise of this right. If you can not conscientiously wear a dress coat, or a stove-pipe hat, or cut your hair, or eat flesh-meat, or drink wine, you will naturally avoid, under ordinary circumstances, the circles in which non-conformity in these matters would be deemed a breach of good manners. When it is necessary that you should mingle with people whose customs you can not follow in all points without a violation of principle, you will courteously, and with proper respect for what they probably think entirely right, fall back upon the "higher law;" but if it is a mere matter of gloved or ungloved hands, cup or saucer, fork or knife, you will certainly have the courtesy and good sense to conform to usage.
V. DOMESTIC MANNERS.Home is a little world of itself, and furnishes a sphere for the exercise of every virtue and for the experience of every pleasure or pain. If one profit not by its opportunities, he will be likely to pay dearly for less agreeable lessons in another school.—Harrison.
I.—A TEST OF GOOD MANNERS.ood manners are not to be put on and off with one's best clothes. Politeness is an article for every-day wear. If you don it only on special and rare occasions, it will be sure to sit awkwardly upon you. If you are not well behaved in your own family circle, you will hardly be truly so anywhere, however strictly you may conform to the observances of good breeding, when in society. The true gentleman or lady is a gentleman or lady at all times and in all places-at home as well as abroad—in the field, or workshop, or in the kitchen, as well as in the parlor. A snob is—a snob always and everywhere.
If you see a man behave in a rude and uncivil manner to his father or mother, his brothers or sisters, his wife or children; or fail to exercise the common courtesies of life at his own table and around his own fireside, you may at once set him down as a boor, whatever pretensions he may make to gentility.
Dc not fall into the absurd error of supposing that you may do as you please at home—that is, unless you please to behave in a perfectly gentlemanly or ladylike manner. The same rights exist there as elsewhere, and the same duties grow out of them, while the natural respect and affection which should be felt by each member of the family for all the other members, add infinitely to their sacredness. Let your good manners, then, begin at home.
II.—PARENTS AND CHILDREN.American children (we are sorry to be obliged to say it) are not, as a general rule, well behaved. They are rude and disrespectful, if not disobedient. They inspire terror rather than love in the breasts of strangers and all persons who seek quiet and like order. In our drawing-rooms, on board our steamers, in our railway cars and stage coaches, they usually contrive to make themselves generally and particularly disagreeable by their familiarity, forwardness, and pertness. "Young America" can not brook restraint, has no conception of superiority, and reverences nothing. His ideas of equality admit neither limitation nor qualification. He is born with a full comprehension of his own individual rights, but is slow in learning his social duties. Through whose fault comes this state of things? American boys and girls have naturally as much good sense and good-nature as those of any other nation, and, when well trained, no children are more courteous and agreeable. The fault lies in their education. In the days of our grandfathers, children were taught manners at school—a rather rude, backwoods sort of manners, it is true, but better than the no manners at all of the present day. We must blame parents in this matter rather than their children. If you would have your children grow up beloved and respected by their elders as well as their contemporaries, teach them good manners in their childhood. The young sovereign should first learn to obey, that he may be the better fitted to command in his turn.
Those who are old enough to study this book, are old enough to take the matter in to their own hands, and remedy the defects and supply the deficiencies of their early education. We beg them to commence at once, and at home.
Allow no false ideas of "liberty and equality" to cause you to forget for a moment the deference due to your father and your mother. The fifth commandment has not been and can not be abrogated. We commend to you the example of the Father of his Country. Look into the life of Washington, and mark what tender and respectful attentions characterized his intercourse with his only surviving parent. He never, we venture to say, spoke of his mother as "the old woman," or addressed her with incivility. "Never," an old friend of yours adjures you, "let youthful levity or the example of others betray you into forgetfulness of the claims of your parents or elders to a certain deference." Nature, a counselor still more sage, we doubt not, has written the same injunction upon your heart. Let your manners do justice to your feelings!
"Toward your father," that polished and courtly "gentleman of the old school," the author of the "American Gentleman's Guide to Politeness and Fashion," says, "preserve always a deferential manner, mingled with a
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