Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 March 1885 — GOOD MANNERS. [ARTICLE]

GOOD MANNERS.

The Parvenu. Social culture is never, in any respect, complete in one generation. The parvenu is too much impressed with his own advancement to take it quietly. He is so much flattered by good company around his board that he must keep a list of it and tell it over to to-morrow’s visitors. In short, it is clear that he is not at home in hw new house. It is only when the ways and means and manners of high life have been habitual from the first that they are revealed without ostentation. Taste and Etiquette. Different persons have entirely different opinions in regard to taste and etiquette, says a contemporary. Borne are sticklers for certain manifestations ®f good breeding, while others lay stress upon other and quite dissimilar rules of behavior. For instance: There are men who would be ashamed to eat with their knives even in private, but who will talk at the top of their voices in the public reading room. And men who, though they wonld scorn to remain seated in a horse car while a pretty girl is standing, will throw a banana skin on the sidewalk, regardless of the inevitable consequence. And women who are scrupulously neat as to their hands and fingers, but who will, nevertheless, persist in wearing the biggest hat in the theater that they can get hold of. And women who sing like seraphs, and yet will they keep the car window wide open, though they know that it means pneumonia to one-half of their fellow passengers, and catarrh and sore throat to the other half. And women whose conversation is a liberal education and perennial delight to the listener, and yet their hair presents first-class presumptive evidence that it has had no acquaintance with comb and brush for a month, at least. And men who never forget to lift their hats to a lady, but who cannot be ti usted with impunity for a dollar. And men who would die rather than eat their soup from the <nd of t eir spoon, but who will lie like Ananias upon the slightest provocation. And men who are scrupulously careful to give a lady the inside of the walk, and yet think nothing of calling upon you at your busiest hour and boring you until you wish they were dead. And women who would never presume to help themselvt s at table until everybody else is supplied, who wdl nevertheless say the spitefulest things imaginable about their dear friend behind her back. And boys who never forget to say “Yes, sir," and “Yes, ’m," but who are taken with sudden sickness the moment they are asked to do an errand for t eir mothers. And girls who do not have to be coaxi d to play the piano before company, but who will turn around and giggle when a strange man makes remarks about them in the streets. And men who would not clean their nails in public, but who would shove a pewter quarter on to a blind man. And men who always “beg pardon” before telling you you lie, and who, nevertheless, will inevitably fail to remember to pay the r butcher bills. And men who would never interrupt another while he is speaking, but will advise their best friend to invest in a worthless stock simply because they hgve some of that stock which they wish' io dispose of. And men who are too polite to look over your shoulder when ydu are writing, who think nothing of registering false oaths at the custom house almost daily. Many more instance* might be adduced, but the above will suffice to show that we do not all think alike upon these little matters of etiquette. •