When my friends are blind of one eye, I look at them in profile.
--Joubert.
There is no outward sign of courtesy that does not rest
on a deep moral foundation. If you are always courteous without
difficulty, you are endowed with a nature naturally moral. You are
naturally a gentleman. Anyhow, you are behind the counter, and you
desire to sell goods. You wish to have customers brighten up when they
see you. Very well, brighten up yourself. You ought to be glad to see
them. If they are not glad, they, perhaps, have less reason for joy.
They are about to part with their money in order to get something they
cannot part with so easily. You went to work in the morning hoping a
good many people would come in. Now here they are. You can smile on the
young lady, but can you smile on the old woman? You can if you are a
man. It is nothing but good-breeding to do it. What is this boasted word
"good-breeding?" It is "the result of much good sense, some good nature,
and a little self-denial for the sake of others, and with a view to
obtain the same indulgence from them." Chesterfield, a man who was as
prominent in England as Daniel Webster in America, expressed his
astonishment that anybody who had good sense and good nature could
essentially fail in good-breeding.