Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1894 — WHAT “GENTLEMEN" MAY DO. [ARTICLE]

WHAT “GENTLEMEN" MAY DO.

They Need Not Pay Tradesmen'* Bills, bat They Most Flay Cards Fairly. There are many things which it appears a gentleman may do nowadays in Europe without incurring the loss of his right to that designation by society or forfeiting what the latter regards as his “honor,” says a writer in the New York Tribune. Thus he may avoid paying his creditors, provided they are tradespeople or friends, who, instead of being content with his plighted word, have accepted the additional security of a promissory note. Indeed, the passing of any paper between creditor and debtor is held to remove the obligation from the list of debts of honor and places it among the so-called “tradesmen’s debts,” the nonpayment of which involves no loss of “gentilhommerie” or of “honor.” Debts of honor, that is to say, loans based merely upon verbal obligations and bels, must be paid at all cost, according to the ethics governing the ‘‘code of honor,” even if the debtor has to obtain the money by means of methods which verge not only upon the dishonorable, but even on the criminal. It is for this reason that we sometimes hea/ of young men going to the length of stealing their mother's jewels or of forging the name of their nearest and dearest relatives, as did the eldest son of an English peer the other day, for the sake of paying their debts of honor, failing which, they can no longer hope to retain the social status of a gentleman. One has heard of men committing suicide, like young Count Aloys Hardegg a few weeks since at Vienna, and the last Marquis of Hastings, years ago in London, because they were unable to pay their “debte of honor,” but one has never heard of a gentleman taking his own life because he could not pay his tailor. Connection with a divorce suit, far from detracting from the “status of i gentleman,” is, on the contrary, rather a feather in his cap, excepting in cases where the co-respondent prefers to speak the truth and acknowledge his guilt rather than perjure himself in the witness box “like a gentleman.” The most mortal of all sins in the eyes of society, the one that entails above everything else the forfeiture of the title of gentleman and of all honor, is unfair play at cards; and it is no secret that the majority of the great families in Europe would infinitely prefer to have a murderer among their relatives than a man convicted of the offense which resulted in the social ostracism of Sir William Gordon Cumming, of the Duke of Roxeburghe’s son-in-law, George Russell, and of Major, the Hon. Walter Harbord, brother of Lord Suffleld. These perhaps are the principal things which a “gentleman” and “a man of honor” may and may not do according to the tenets of old-world society. The latter may be summed up in brief as the payment of debts of honor, reticence with regard to all “affairs de cceur” and playing fairly at cards. Provided a man does not break these three commandments, he may commit every other sin with impunity, and, if only he be of gentle birth, his shortcomings will be regarded merely in the light of venial eccentricities.