Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1877 — The Charm of Perfect Manners. [ARTICLE]

The Charm of Perfect Manners.

This is a grace of which I think American women are becoming very careless. They are so beautiful as a race, so accustomed to conquest, that perhaps they are getting to believe that Pope’s line, “Look in her face and you forget them all,” applies to manners; but a beautiful woman without good manners is a flower without fragrance. She is worse—she becomes a positive nuisance, j presuming on her beautv and abusing one of God’s great gifts. You must look at her, but you look to regret, to disapprove; instead of being chained for life to “ sweet looks married to graceful action,” you grow to despise and hate her. When womeft reach a larger grasp on the subject, and observe this great rule that “ the possession of power is better than the show of it ” —they will have advanced far beyond their present status. The end and aim of the weak and uncertain is to appear strong and well posed, at whatever cost. It has apparently struck some women in the society of our new country, which must ever be on a shifting scale, that they appear to stand well by being disagreeable—that an air of hauteur and rudeness is becoming and aristocratic. It is the mistake of ignorance, and would soon be cured by a careful study of the best models in Europe. Such women are like those inexperienced skaters who start on their slippery journey with heads in air and backs preternaturally stiff: they are apt to see stars before they have gone far. It would soften many of the jealousies and asperities of American society had we some of' the sere’nity on the subject of our worldly means which obtains in Europe. Did we dare to say, “ I cannot afford it,” how many heart-burnings would cease! It is a very charming thing to be rich; it is nice to have comfortable carriages, broad acres, large dining-rooms and troops of gay friends to whom you can offer an unending hospitality. It is an inconvenient thing to be poor, but it is not the worst of evils. Cannot we all remember many a choice little dinner where the talk made us oblivious of the claret, and many a delightful evening in a small house innocent ot upholstery? Do we really love our friends in proportion to their wealth ? Clearly no. Then let our society move on irrespective of the great question of money. Some money is necessary, a great deal is not, to a perfect society. Agrowing evil would thus be driven away. It is bad for a Nation when women dress better than they can afford to dress. The growing excess in this particular has within a few years become a source of severe temptation to weak women. Women cannot be blind to the influence of dress. One class dress for men; another entirely for women, for what do men care for the superior fineness of camel’s hair, of the difference between Point d’Alencon, Point d’Aiguille and Venetian Point? Yet good dressing need not be expensive; expensive dressing is often very bad. As Worth, the man-milliner of Paris, said, rather sententiously, "You must express yourself in dress,'not let dress express you.” The introduction of art schools for women has been, and w ill continue to be, of immense advantage. There will be an end ©f these horrible head-dresses, when women have acquired more correct, notions of what is truly artistic. Art, too, is essentially refining, and often lifts a woman out of the arena of petty maneuvers and petty contests. Her peaceful triumphs with the pen, the pencil, the harp and piano, or. far better, with her voice, give her a world of her own wherein she happily lives. Still, a taste for society is as pronounced a taste as that for music or for literature, and it can be made a very noble taste. The best and must unselfish heroines I have ever known have been women of society. They mingled in it without losing truth, honor or generosity. If the society of our equals be our prevailing taste and amusement, by all means let us cherish it, but let us seek not merely to gratify this taste, but to cultivate and improve it.—Lippincott's.