It is a good sign of the times that the crusade against the large and
omnipresent family of Hog which the Easy Chair long ago preached has
been vigorously renewed. Public manners are a common interest. The
private conduct of the most famous personages is of small concern beyond
their domestic circle. But the conduct of the person in the next room at
a hotel, or in the next seat in a railroad car, is of great interest to
us. Yet the remedy is not obvious. Even if we should propose a school of
manners, it is not certain that the pupils for whom it would be
especially designed would attend.
If a fellow-guest at the Grand Hotel of the Universe comes in at two in
the morning, and going humming along the corridor to his room, flings
his boot down upon the floor at his door with a resounding blow that
awakens all neighboring sleepers, you may cover him with expletives, and
consign him in imagination to a hundred direful dooms, but nevertheless
he goes unpunished. Or you may suddenly confront him in all the majesty
of nocturnal dishabille, and admonish him severely of the wicked
selfishness of his ways. But the probability is that you will have
either an extremely amused audience, who will "guy" your appearance
without mercy, or receive a surly rejoinder in the form of a boot or a
volley of vituperation. In any event, the school of manners will not be
honored by the exercises.
Yet the Hog family is not American, nor is it by any means peculiar to
this country. The Lady Mavourneen who said with enthusiasm that she
could travel without insult from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and that
every American of the other sex seemed to make himself her protector,
said only what is generally true of the American. He is naturally
courteous and invincibly good-natured. Indeed, it is his good-nature
which has permitted the family Hog to develop to such proportions. A man
enters a hotel "as if it belonged to him." Will he not be forced to pay
for his accommodation--and roundly? Shall he not take his ease in his
inn? Is he not willing to settle for all the food, drink, comfort,
trouble, that he may require or occasion? Shall he put himself out for
others? If number one does not look out for itself, who will look out
for it?
And to all this Jonathan good-naturedly assents. If number one takes
more than his share of the sofa, Jonathan moves up. If number one puts
his feet on a chair, Jonathan does not stare. If number one still more
grossly demonstrates his porcine lineage, Jonathan dislikes to make
trouble--until number one comes to despise those whom he insults, and
plainly expects every circle to bow to the sovereignty of selfishness.
This is a fatal form of good-nature, but it has a not unkindly origin.
It springs from a social condition in which everybody is expected to
help everybody else, because everybody needs help as in a frontier
community. Indeed, in many a rural neighborhood still, this spirit of
lending a hand is supreme. Everybody expects to submit to inconvenience,
because he knows that he will require others to submit.
But these refinements of mutual dependence must not be allowed to
justify the outrages of selfishness. The passenger in the boat or the
train who occupies more than his seat, who sits in one chair, covers
another with his feet, and a third with his bundles, and smokes, and
widely squirts tobacco juice around him until his vicinity is not "a
little heaven," but another kind of "h" below, is a public pest and
general nuisance, for whose punishment there should be a common law of
procedure. But this can be found only where there is a common contempt
and resolution which will deprive him of his ill-gotten seats in the
first place, and make him feel, in the second, the general scorn of his
neighbors.
But as we are told constantly and correctly that we are a reading
people, it is through reading that the members of the family which is
_hostis humani generis_ will learn that they are the most detestable and
detested of the great families of the race. You, sir, whose eyes are
skimming this page, and who never give your seat to a woman in the
elevated car "on principle"--the principle being either that a woman
ought not to get into a crowded car, knowing that she will put gentlemen
to inconvenience; or that the company ought to forbid the entry of more
passengers than there are seats; or that first come should be first
served; or that number one, having paid for a seat, has a right to
occupy it; or whatever other form the "principle" may assume--you are
one of the host against whom the crusade is pushed. Thou art the--well,
for the sake of euphony we will say man, but it is not man that is in
the mind of your censors.
Or you, madam, who enter the railroad car with an air of right, and a
look of reproval at every man who does not spring to his feet, and who
settle yourself into the seat offered you without the least recognition
of the courtesy that offers it--for you it would be well if the urbane
mentor of another day were still here, who, having given his seat to a
dashing young woman who seemed unconscious of his presence, looked at
her until she impatiently demanded if he wanted anything, and he
responding, said, blandly, "Yes, madam; I want to hear you say thank
you."
Both this sir and madam may learn from the daily papers as from this
page that even in a car where they recognize no acquaintance a cloud of
witnesses around hold them in full survey, and whatever the fashion or
richness of their garments, and however supercilious their air, perceive
at once whether they belong to the family of ladies and gentlemen, or to
that of Charles Lamb's "Mr. H." Thackeray's hero could not have been
more aghast to see his divine Ottilia consume with gusto the oysters
which were no longer fresh than Romeo to learn by his Juliet's question
to that urbane mentor of other years that his mistress must be of kin to
the unmentionable family.
The next time those boots are flung down in the reverberating hotel
corridor there will be no harm in remarking to the clerk the next
morning in the crowded office that it is not necessary for you to look
upon the register to know that one of the Hog family arrived during the
night.