Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 February 1884 — Good Manners. [ARTICLE]

Good Manners.

Perhaps good manners are not good morals, though the ' tune wus when tue words morals and manners amounted to pretty much the same thing. When the New Testament was translated into English, in 1611, it taught its readers, and still teaches us, that “evil communications corrupt good manners. ” And the revisers of 1880 have left the good manners to stand, changing only communications into company. So I have very high authority for saying that what l am driving at in this fetter has something to do with the basis of character. A bad man may have the handsomest manners, the manners of a gentleman, and thereby the more thoroughly fitted to work ail manner of misohief with greediness. He is a hypoorite in the world, as one who merely pretends to be a saint is a hypocrite in the church. But the beginning, middle, and end of good manners may be condensed into the divinely given principle of preferring others to ourselves; denying self for the happiness of another ; rendering to everyone his due, as superior, inferior, or equal. If mothers form the manners of the children, they should feel the burden of responsibility. They may permit the inborn waywardness of the child to go unchecked, while he grows to be a pert, saucy, forward, disagreeable, dreadful boy, a terror to the neighborhood, and a nuisance to everybody but his doting mamma. She gives him a stick of candy when a stick of something not so sweet would do him more good. She coddles him into a curse that by and by will come upon her own head. Just as the twig, etc. Blood is great, and blessed are they who are well born. But more than blood, better than pedigree, is culture. Train up a child in the way he should go. He will go in it then. Teaoh him to respect those who are older than him, self; to rise up before the aged, JF.nftim was pious, because he honored his father. It is a loittg way toward godliness to obey one’s parents. And happy is the parent and happy the child when love is returned witA love.