Democratic Sentinel, Volume 6, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1882 — American Manners. [ARTICLE]

American Manners.

While American manners are doubtless susceptible of much improvement, they are not nearly so black as they are frequently painted by foreign fools and native snobs. If by good manners are meant the “ small, sweet courtesies of life,” then ours will bear comparison with the foreign article. Am American may not bow as gracefully os a Frenchman, but he will sacrifice quite as much personal convenience and comfort for a stranger as the Frenchman—perhaps more. An American may not bo so elegant at a dinner party as an Englishman, but he will not ride half a day in a railway car without speaking to the fellow passenger at his elbow, as the Englishman, will. A lady—whether young or old, pretty or plain—may travel from Boston to San Francisco without an escort, and receive all tho needed attention from men whom she never saw before and will never see again. Would the same lady be equally fortunate in a trip from London to Paris or Paris to Rome ? In our street cars a laboring man, wearied out with his day’s toil, will give his seat to any woman who eateis. How many European gentlemen would do as much ? There is more chivalric respect shown to women in America than anywhere else on earth, and such respect is ‘inconsistent with “ vulgarity of manners.” In drawing-room accomplishments and the graces of the dancing-master, and in those indescribable products of high breeding found in the circles of hereditary aristocracy, America must now —and always, perhaps—yield tho palm to Europe; but in genuine courtesy, unaffected and unselfish politeness, disjiosition to accommodate, readiness to go out of one’s way to help others—Europe has much to learn from America. Our manners are “in the rough” and need polishing; but the material of which they-are made is gold, not pinchbeck. Vulgar manners are bad, but artificial worse. Let us hope and believe that, by diligent minding of our own business and making the best of ourselves without servile copying of European models, we shall some day reach a point in education, manners and morals which will meet the demands of the most fastidious taste, foreign or domestic. — St. Louis Republican.