Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 86, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1910 — POLITENESS IN RAINSTORM. [ARTICLE]

POLITENESS IN RAINSTORM.

Ci t Isen with Umbrella Shows How Courteous New Yorkers Cu Be. The politest man in New York was paying gallant attention to the ladies for two hours at sth avenue and 35th street yesterday afternoon, according to the New York World. F. Hopkins Smith, author, artist and engineer, lamented at the Southern society's dinner the other night that “we live in the most insolent city in the world.” Mr. Smith would have been delighted to study this very polite man. A drizzling, penetrating rain was falling. The polite man carried a very large umbrella. In the most deferential manner he urged women who had been shopping and who waited buses going uptown to find shelter from the naln In the doorways of the shops on the northeast corner and near It. Then, raising his silk hat, he asked each woman courteously if she wanted a sth avenue bus or a Riverside drive bus. As a bus approached he halted it and asked the conductor how many places were vacant Learning this, he told the women waiting In the doorway®, and, In turn, escorted to the bus as many women as there were places for. He protected the women so carefully under his big umbrella that his high hat and seal-lined overcoat soon were soaking wet. Plainly some women were grateful for his attention; some giggled; some resented his addressing them as if they feared his motives. But his decorous, deferential manner never changed. About 6 o’clock, after escorting scores of women to the buses, he started up sth avenue. “Why have you been doing this?” a reporter asked him. “I just wanted to show people that New York men are polite,” he answered. “Will you tell me your name?" "Pardon me. but what has my nam< got to do with the purpose I had in view?”