How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits Part 16

It is a wonderful thing that so many persons, putting in claims to good breeding, should think of carrying their spleen into company, and entertaining those with whom they converse with a history of their pains, head-aches, and ill-treatment. This is, of all others, the meanest help to social happiness; and a man must have a very mean opinion of himself, who, on having detailed his grievances, is accosted by asking the news. Mutual good-humor is a dress in which we ought to appear, whenever we meet; and we ought to make no mention of ourselves, unless it be in matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice. There is no real life but cheerful life; therefore valetudinarians should be sworn before they enter into company not to say a word of themselves until the meeting breaks up.

2. _The Art of Pleasing._

The art of pleasing is a very necessary one to possess, but a very difficult one to acquire. It can hardly be reduced to rules; and your own good sense and observation will teach you more of it than I can.

Do as you would be done by, is the surest method that I know of pleasing. Observe carefully what pleases you in others, and probably the same things in you will please others. If you are pleased with the complaisance and attention of others to you, depend upon it the same complaisance and attention, on your part, will equally please them. Take the tone of the company you are in, and do not pretend to give it; be serious or gay, as you find the present humor of the company. This is an attention due from every individual to the majority.

3. _Adaptation of Manners._

Ceremony resembles that base coin which circulates through a country by the royal mandate. It serves every purpose of real money at home, but is entirely useless if carried abroad. A person who should attempt to circulate his native trash in another country would be thought either ridiculous or culpable. He is truly well-bred who knows when to value and when to despise those national peculiarities which are regarded by some with so much observance. A traveler of taste at once perceives that the wise are polite all the world over, but that fools are polite only at home.

4. _Bad Habits._

Keep yourself free from strange tricks or habits, such as thrusting on your tongue, continually snapping your fingers, rubbing your hands, sighing aloud, gaping with a noise like a country fellow that has been sleeping in a hay-loft, or indeed with any noise; and many others that I have noticed before. These are imitations of the manners of the mob, and are degrading to a gentleman. It is rude and vulgar to lean your head back and destroy the appearance of fine papered walls.

5. _Do what You are About._

_Hoc age_ was a maxim among the Romans, which means, "Do what you are about, and do that only." A little mind is hurried by twenty things at once; but a man of sense does but one thing at a time, and resolves to excel in it; for whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well. Therefore, remember to give yourself up entirely to the thing you are doing, be it what it may, whether your book or your play; for if you have a right ambition, you will desire to excel all boys of your age, at cricket, at trap-ball, as well as in learning.

6. _People who never Learn._

There have been people who have frequented the first companies all their lifetime, and yet have never divested themselves of their natural stiffness and awkwardness; but have continued as vulgar as if they were never out of a servants' hall. This has been owing to carelessness, and a want of attention to the manners and behavior of others.

7. _Conformity to Local Manners._

Civility, which is a disposition to accommodate and oblige others, is essentially the same in every country; but good-breeding, as it is called, which is the manner of exerting that disposition, is different in almost every country, and merely local; and every man of sense imitates and conforms to that local good-breeding or the place which he is at.

8. _How to Confer Favors._

The greatest favors may be done so awkwardly and bunglingly as to offend; and disagreeable things may be done so agreeably as almost to oblige. Endeavor to acquire this great secret. It exists, it is to be found, and is worth a great deal more than the grand secret of the alchymists would be, if it were, as it is not, to be found.

9. _Fitness._

One of the most important points of life is decency, which means doing what is proper, and where it is proper; for many things are proper at one time, and in one place, that are extremely improper in another.

Read men, therefore, yourself, not in books, but in nature. Adopt no systems, but study them yourself.

10. _How to Refuse._

A polite manner of refusing to comply with the solicitations of a company is also very necessary to be learned; for a young man who seems to have no will of his own, but does everything that is asked of him, may be a very good-natured, but he is a very silly, fellow.

11. _Civility to Women._

Civility is particularly due to all women; and remember that no provocation whatsoever can justify any man in not being civil to every woman; and the greatest man in the world would be justly reckoned a brute, if he were not civil to the meanest woman.

12. _Spirit._

Spirit is now a very fas.h.i.+onable word. To act with spirit, to speak with spirit, means only to act rashly, and to talk indiscreetly. An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions; he is neither hot nor timid.

XIII.

ILl.u.s.tRATIVE ANECDOTES.

It is well to combine amus.e.m.e.nt with instruction, whether you write for young or old.--_Anonymous._

I.--ELDER BLUNT AND SISTER SCRUB.

The house of the excellent Squire Scrub was the itinerant's home; and a right sweet, pleasant home it would have been but for a certain unfortunate weakness of the every other way _excellent_ Sister Scrub.

The weakness I allude to was, or at least it was suspected to be, _the love of praise_. Now the good sister was really worthy of high praise, and she often received it; but she had a way of disparaging herself and her performances which some people thought was intended to invite praise. No housewife kept her floors looking so clean and her walls so well whitewashed as she. Every board was scrubbed and scoured till further scrubbing and scouring would have been labor wasted. No one could look on her white ash floor and not admire the polish her industry gave it. The "Squire" was a good provider, and Sister Scrub was an excellent cook; and so their table groaned under a burden of good things on all occasions when good cheer was demanded. And yet you could never enter the house and sit half an hour without being reminded that "Husband held Court yesterday, and she couldn't keep the house decent." If you sat down to eat with them, she was sorry she "hadn't anything fit to eat." She had been scrubbing, or was.h.i.+ng, or ironing, or she had been half sick, and she hadn't got such and such things that she ought to have. Nor did it matter how bountiful or how well prepared the repast really was, there was always _something_ deficient, the want of which furnished a text for a disparaging discourse on the occasion. I remember once that we sat down to a table that a king might have been happy to enjoy. There was the light snow-white bread; there were the potatoes reeking in b.u.t.ter; there were chickens swimming in gravy; there were the onions and the turnips, and I was sure Sister Scrub had gratified her ambition for once. We sat down, and a blessing was asked; instantly the good sister began; she was afraid her coffee was too much burned, or that the water had been smoked, or that she hadn't roasted the chicken enough.

There ought to have been some salad, and it was too bad that there was nothing nice to offer us.

We, of course, endured those unjustifiable apologies as well as the could, simply remarking that everything was really nice, and proving by our acts that the repast was tempting to our appet.i.tes.

I will now introduce another actor to the reader--Elder Blunt, the circuit preacher. Elder Blunt was a good man. His religion was of the most genuine, experimental kind. He was a _very_ plain man. He, like Mr. Wesley, would no more dare to preach a _fine_ sermon than wear a fine coat. He was celebrated for his common-sense way of exhibiting the principles of religion. He _would_ speak just what he thought, and as he felt. He somehow got the name of being an eccentric preacher, as every man, I believe, does who _never_ prevaricates, and always acts and speaks as he thinks. Somehow or other, Elder Blunt had heard of Sister Scrub, and that infirmity of hers, and he resolved to cure her. On his first round he stopped at "Squire Scrub's," as all other itinerants had done before him. John, the young man, took the elder's horse and put him in the stable, and the preacher entered the house.

He was shown into the best room, and soon felt very much at home. He expected to hear something in due time disparaging the domestic arrangements, but he heard it sooner than he expected. This time, if Sister Scrub could be credited, her house was all upside down; it wasn't fit to stay in, and she was sadly mortified to be caught in such a plight. The elder looked all around the room, as if to observe the terrible disorder, but he said not a word. By-and-by the dinner was ready, and the elder sat down with the family to a well spread table. Here, again, Sister Scrub found everything faulty; the coffee wasn't fit to drink, and she hadn't anything fit to eat. The elder lifted his dark eye to her face; for a moment he seemed to penetrate her very soul with his austere gaze; then slowly rising from the table, he said, "Brother Scrub, I want my horse immediately; I must leave!"

"Why, Brother Blunt, what is the matter?"

"Matter? Why, sir, your house isn't fit to stay in, and you haven't anything fit to eat or drink, and I won't stay."

Both the "Squire" and his lady were confounded. This was a piece of eccentricity entirely unlooked for. They were stupefied. But the elder was gone. He wouldn't stay in a house not fit to stay in, and where there wasn't anything fit to eat and drink.

Poor Sister Scrub! She wept like a child at her folly. She "knew it would be all over town," she said, "and everybody would be laughing at her." And then, how should she meet the blunt, honest elder again?

"She hadn't meant anything by what she had said." Ah! she never thought how wicked it was to say _so much_ that didn't mean anything.

The upshot of the whole matter was, that Sister Scrub "saw herself as others saw her." She ceased making apologies, and became a wiser and better Christian. Elder Blunt always puts up there, always finds everything as it should be, and, with all his eccentricities, is thought by the family the most agreeable, as he is acknowledged by everybody to be the most consistent, of men.--_Rev. J. V. Watson._

II.--THE PRESENCE.

Mr. Johnson, an English traveler, relates, in his notes on North America, the following story:

"At Boston," he says, "I was told of a gentleman in the neighborhood who, having a farm servant, found him very satisfactory in every respect, except that he invariably came into his employer's room with his hat on.

"'John,' said he to the man one day, 'you always keep your hat on when you come into the room.'