Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1898 — Anxious for Enlightenment. [ARTICLE]

Anxious for Enlightenment.

Some odd questions are asked of the editors of the great daily papers. A seeker after light wrote to a metropolitan paper inquiring if a man must put on a clean shirt every day in order to retain the right to be called a gentleman. The editor of the paper is said to have been silent in despair. The Tribune, in commenting on the matter, ventures the opinion that the answer to the unanswered—though not unanswerable—question depends upon tbe definition of what constitutes a clean shirt. “This, however,” continues the Tribune, “Is a definition that every man will insist upon manufacturing for himself. No gentleman, it is safe to say, would admit that he was wearing an unclean shirt.” Another worried questioner writes to the Tribune Inquiring whether a gentleman may wear detachable cuffs without thereby deserving and incurring social ostracism. The comment on this is interesting: “If a man wears detachable cuffs, he does so, manifestly, that he may replace them with fresh ones without at the same time retiring the shirt from tbe active list to the wash-tub. The wearer of detachable cuffs defends himself, of course, by saying that cuffs are soiled with extreme ease and effectiveness* Once again we are repulsed to the original question of what constitutes cleanliness. Yet we dem it proper to say that we have known men who wore detachable cuffs and who were at the same time law-abiding, clever, honest and God-fearing citizens, in addition to being their mothers.” A woman correspondent, writing to the Providence Journal, makes it perfectly clear that the mere donning of a newly laundered shirt each morning does not of itself make a gentleman. This complainant says that her husband has only two shirts, and that he abuses her and the children when she fails to have a clean one for him to put on in the morning—certainly not a gentlemanly proceeding.