Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1877 — The Unfashionable Bonnet. [ARTICLE]

The Unfashionable Bonnet.

The grace of “good manners” includes both self-respect and social respect; and it is a duty as well as an accomplishment. Fun-making at & fellow-being’? expense is a violation of the Golden Rule, which many even well-meaning and well taught people thoughtlessly commit, apparently forgetting that it is really a part of Christian character to be generously considerate of others’feeiings. One day, about fifty years ago, when John Quincy Adams was President of the United States, an excellent and cultivated lady, journeying in her carriage, stopped at a hotel in Batavia, Western Npw York. She was plainly dressed, and one not knowing her, or unacquainted with her and rare social graces, might have judged her to be quite an ordinary sort of person. In those times, as now, the kind of critics who estimate people entirely according to the clothes they have on, were sufficiently numerous, and it appears that several of them were stopping that day at the same hotel. It was noon, and the guest* were already dining, and having little time to make an elegant toilet, even if she had been so disposed, the lady placed her bonnet on the parlor table and went in to dinner. When she returned she found the parlor occupied by a merry wedding party, who had seized upon her bonnet, and, in all the abandon of frolicsome mirth, were making game of it. One young beau of the party poised it on the point of his cane, and played mock auctioneer. “What do I hear, ladies —bow much; how much for this rare and beautiful calotte ala prineette, only a month from *4rie, and positively the newest mode; fifty francs; give me seventy-five, seventyfive; going, and who takes it at seventyfive; going, going,”—and of course the bidaiflg on the part of the rest was quite lively enough to carry out the farce. The lady stood a minute, waiting, with a good-natured smile. Presently, she said quietly to the young man: “ I’ll take the bonnet off your hands if you cannot get a satisfactory offer for it.” The auctioneer thereupon tossed the article to her with a .lofty state and a stiff bow, and coolly put'ting Hbn her head, the lady" entered her carriage and rode away. The young people had their fan, and thought no more of it, though some of them, noticing a certain superior dignity in the owner of the unfashionable bonnet, went so far as to wonder who “that woman” was. Next day the same wedding party, on their way to Niagara Falls, stopped at Black Rock to pay their respects to Gen. Porter, United States Secretary of War, and were invited to dine with him at his house. When Mrs. Porter, the lady of the mansion, came forward to welcome them they .stood aghast. “Tliat woman” whose bonnet they had made game of whs

the wife of one of President Adams’ Cabinet Ministers. Fancy how Mrs. Porter’s splendid hospitality heaped coals of fire on their heads —and especially on the head of the young man who played auctioneer at the Batavia hotel. , Il ij;; I But their rudeness would have been none the less Inexcusable if they had shown it to an inferior Instead of a superior, and mortified another worse than they did themselves. — Watchman.