SOCIAL CULTURE.

BY

ALICE E. IVES.

HE power of manner is incessant-an element as inconcealable as fire," writes Emerson, and who is there that shall gainsay him. One may successfully hide his meanness, envy, hatred and all uncharitableness, but he can not cover from the light of day his manners. These shall always exalt or betray him, and he who runs may read. Let us have truth, sincerity, heroism, but let us also have good manners. The gifted men and women who in the preceding pages have taught us the value of character, moral and intellectual culture, self-reliance, unselfishness, kindness and sympathy, have raised on strong foundations a noble temple; but shall not the temple be swept, and garnished, and adorned, as fits its great proportions? Aye, truly, else it does not invite us to enter in and enjoy. A man of education, strong character, and Christian virtues, having the manners of good society, is a power in the world; his eloquence shall persuade thousands. But, though one have the

virtues of St. Peter, and shall repel by his behavior, his influence will be narrow and his friends few.

True, some great men have been ill-mannered, but not one in ten thousand is great. Much is excused of genius because of its exceeding rarity. Diogenes and Dr. Johnson were notably ill-bred; and very possibly the latter might, in these days, still put his tea spoon into the sugar-bowl and be forgiven for the sake of his great attainments, but it is not at all probable that the illustrious cynic would be allowed to flash his lantern in people's faces many days outside of a lunatic asylum.

"Euripides," writes Aspasia, "has not the fine manners of Sophocles; but the movers and masters of our souls have surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly as they please on the world that belongs to them, and before the creatures they have animated."

It is best first to be sure that you have created a world, before you can afford to take liberties with it. Just so high as you make people reach to overlook your short-comings, must you rise to pay them for their trouble. The thing must be balanced somewhere; no one will put himself in the way of an annoyance unless he is sure of a greater good with it. And even supposing you are entirely forgiven, there is always some one to speak of having seen the score, even after it has been erased for years. It would have been better, even if you are great, not to have done a very uncouth thing, or spoken a rude word.

We hear, every few days, of certain intolerant remarks and surly actions told to the discredit, and, in the eyes of some, even to the dimming of the fame, of one of the most original, profound and celestial lighted minds the world has ever known- Thomas Carlyle; and we who bow before his genius can only sorrow in our hearts that this blot was upon him, and that the world must be ever pointing its finger to that which

was earthly, to the forgetting of that which was heavenly and of God.

It is true that the man of base aims and immoral character can so envelope himself in the mantle of good breeding that you shall receive him into your house, and at your table. But will he become your friend? No, for a revelation is speedily at hand. The garment he wears is thin, and there are always times coming when its poor quality will be unexpectedly tried. Some sudden contact or collision causes it to suffer a bad rent, and behold, there is, underneath, the teeth of a cur, or the leer of a demon.

While the Christian virtues are undoubtedly the best foundation for that fine structure called a gentleman, it is also a well-known fact that people of the best intentions in the world, by ignorance of social usages, or carelessness of certain forms, make themselves decidedly obnoxious to those who are so much accustomed to the atmosphere of good breeding that a blast of boorishness strikes them like being caught in an east wind without an overcoat. Even the strong and sturdy Concord philosopher says: "I could better eat with one who did not respect the truth or the laws, than with a sloven and unpresentable person. Moral qualities rule the world, but at a short distance the senses are despotic." And this is the language of a man who was one of the most thorough respecters of truth and the laws this country has ever known; but it is also that of a refined, sensitive nature, that feels the contact of anything which is unlovely, unfitting or gross, with a sort of pain, of which the coarse-fibred are forever unconscious. Fine perceptions and tastes are a source of much happiness to their possessor, but the law of compensation is severe; if you enjoy, you pay. If you are strung up to this fine pitch, you require others to be in accord, or else harmony is at once destroyed. It is upon this rule that the different strata of

society are formed. Do you say it is wealth and poverty that make the distinctions of society? I answer they are indeed strong, but not so strong as manners. These are the sieves that sift and grade humanity most thoroughly. Is the refined man happy in the society of the coarse, or the vulgar man comfortable in the company of the elegant? But if he be not vulgar or coarse in the inmost fibres of his nature, he will easily shake off the mire with which a long association with boors has covered him, and take on the graces of more considerate men.

The densely ignorant are sure to ridicule or despise that which they do not understand. The man whom a backwoodsman should catch reciting a Greek tragedy, would doubtless be dubbed by the latter a gibbering idiot; and the one who should be seen taking off his hat to a woman would be a proper object of scorn to those who were above such foppish trifling. In fact, in some sections the individual who regards his finger nails or his linen is one whom the entire community consider it their particular duty to chastise and reform. To the ancient Greeks all foreign nations were barbarians; and even to-day, in the great civilization of the nineteenth century, there are still those to whom the man with strange dress or habits is either a barbarian or a fool.

To him who knows no other etiquette than that of the mines or lumber camp, and whose strength of muscle must gain for him those rights which are the every-day currency of the polite man, given and taken as naturally as he eats, the customs and observances of the latter are the natural targets for derision.

Some one tells a story of a backwoodsman who stood look. ing over the shoulder of a stranger, who was reading a letter he had just taken from the country post office. The latter glanced up once or twice in an annoyed manner, and, as the

intruder seemed to take no notice of the gesture, moved away with still stronger marks of disapproval; whereat the rustic exclaimed: "Wal, ye needn't be so stuck up, if ye hev got

a letter."

To such a man the refinements of polite society were a dead language to which he had no key. The reasons and motives for certain usages, he had never thought upon. He would doubtless put his spoon, fork or knife into the dish from which you were to be helped, hand bread to you with his fingers, or come into your private room without the formality of knocking. He would argue that what was good enough for him, was good for you; but there would, after all, come times in his experience, when the aggressions of some one of his fellows would become too much for even his callous temperament; and there must be heroic treatment for a disease allowed to gain such terrible headway. Fisticuffs and knives, and the whole settlement torn up into rival factions, is the result, when a little understanding of the common courtesies of daily intercourse would have prevented it all, and made life easier every hour. It has been most truly said: "Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids travelling by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space." To the uncultivated but sensitive man, fine manners seem either the gift of the gods or an unsurmountable science of which he can never become the master. Let him once see that it is all made up of trifles which he can command by taking care, and caring to know; let him once understand that it is eternal vigilance over the liberties and rights of others, and unceasing abnegation of self; and, if he is willing to put himself under a strict course of silent instruction, and has even an ordinary capacity for remembering, he will, at the end of a