Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1885 — GOOD MANNERS. [ARTICLE]

GOOD MANNERS.

Acquaintanceship. Acquaintances are, in a general way, quite as desirable as friends. They are at their best and you are at your best when you meet, and there are no undress rehearsals. Far better the ceremonious caller, who sits decorously in the drawing-room and sends up his card to await your pleasure, than the friend who comes flying through the keyhole, eatching you in a mental dishabille, or preoccupied at the moment with other matters. Nothing is so sure a safeguard for friendship as the observance of some of the ceremonies of mere acquaintanceship. The agreeable people who are responsive when you chance to meet, and who give yoi|. narmonv that surrounds you like an atmosphere, and who can serenely drift away and forget your very existence till the next meeting, are very important factors in social life. They go their way and you go yours, and there is no ;ar or friction. A too intense and devoted affection is quite as apt to be a clog and weight as it is to be rest and inspiration. —Lilian Whiting.

Turning u Happy Phrase. The art of turning a “happy phrase - ’ and of using words with more regard to picturesqueness than to mere tho a glitexpression, has been forced to such a degree of nicety that it may well be doubted whether the fiber of literature is as good to-day as it was fifty or a hundred years ago. The right word and the well-wrought phrase have a value that we all prize; but the “yarn is worth more than the knitting,” as our grandmothers used to say. after humor is one serious hindrance to the development of good style. Genuine humor is so precious, and, therefore, so desirable an ingredient for seasoning literary dishes, that we are willing to overlook some evidence of nervousness in the style of those writers who feel the need of extra exertion on their part to show at least a modicum of this saving salt; but humor refuses to exhale from mere drollery of phrasing. One is safe in saying that wherever there is a show of struggling for expression on the surface of style, there is a very shallow spot of thought; the surf is noisie t where it feathers out on the sand. —Maurice Thompson.

Affectation. Affectation is an artificial garb assumed by those who make pretensions to qualities which they do not possess. This evil propensity, for such we unhesitatingly designate it, has, alas! a deep and wide-spreading influence. From the sublime subject of religion down to the slightest punctilio of deportment, what is there in any way noble, “lovely, or of good report,” that affectation is not impudent enough to counterfeit? But happily for the interests of simplicity and truth, the counterfeit is as different from the reality as the paltry tinsel from pure and solid gold, and though the one may glitter and dazzle for awhile, yet the other only will stand the test of time and trial. The triumph of hypocrisy is short, and even when at its highest glory the flimsy disguise reveals more than it conceals. But this is a fact of which those who wear the mask are probably not cognizant; for had they the power “to see themselves as others see them,” they would cast the disguise aside. This idea is eminently suggestive of the source from which affectation springs, namely, a heart that has never been subjected to the scrutinizing process of self-examination. Hence we shall find that an affected person is invariably a self-ignorant person, and one who possesses a mean mind.