To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new
ones.--TRUBLET.
To be welcome in the society of persons of the better sort, who
are always persons of culture and refinement, we must ourselves
be persons of culture and refinement, _i.e._, we must know and
practise the usages that obtain in refined society, and have some
acquaintance with letters and art.
In this world it is only like that seeks like. Those that have
nothing in common, whose culture and breeding are unlike, whose
thoughts are on different things, never seek the society of one
another. What points of sympathy are there between the town gallant
and the country spark, between the city belle and the dairymaid? If
one would be received in the better social circles, one’s culture
must be of the kind found there, and, above all, one’s manners must
be marked by the observance of those usages that are to refined
social commerce what the oil is to the engine.
It is often said that wealth is the surest passport to the better
circles of society. Nothing could be further from the truth. The
surest passport to the better circles of society is moral worth,
supplemented with education, a thing that is made up of two
other things--instruction and breeding. True, a little money is
necessary to make one’s self presentable, but this little will
always suffice. Wealth, we know, contributes greatly to men’s
social success, and for good and obvious reasons; but it does
not contribute more to social success than does distinction in
intellectual pursuits. Laudable achievements will ever have quite
as large a following as plethoric purses. Lands and goods are not
the things we set the highest value on, many as there are that seem
to think so.
This little book will be, I trust, of some service to those men
that would better their acquaintance with the usages that govern in
the polite world; and I am sure that he that learns half as much by
reading it as I have learned in making it will feel well repaid for
the time he gives to it.