"Politeness and good breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any or all
other good qualities or talents."--Chesterfield.
Though what we call society is largely vested in women, and women's
customs regulate etiquette, men are by no means exempt from the necessity
of knowing and practising what we call good manners. A man can have no
greater charm than that easy, unstudied, unconscious compliance with
social forms which marks what we call "a man of the world"--the man who
knows what a good manner requires of him in any situation, and does it
quietly and with the grace of habit.
There has been no time in the history of the world when good manners
counted for more than at the present. This is true of both men and women.
It is so true that in certain fields it is practically impossible to
succeed without their aid. The value of a pleasing manner can hardly be
overestimated. Such a manner is as far from the self-assurance and
presumptuous familiarity which some men assume under the idea that these
are impressive, as night is from day.
Value of Courtesy.--Courtesy has a commercial value, and exerts no little
influence upon a man's success in business. Polite attention and readiness
to oblige bring customers again and again, where their lack would send
people to rival houses.
We can forgive, in the intellectually great, or in the man of affairs who
has done things worth doing, a lack of social training that would not be
endured in a man with no such claim. Yet this is not saying that the great
man would not command more unqualified admiration were he to practise the
social graces instead of ignoring them. The truth is, the fact that we
have to overlook the absence of these graces induces a more critical
attitude toward his achievements. Great though he be in spite of his lack
of courtesy, we feel he would have been greater had he known and practised
the art of gentle manners.
[MANNERS AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS 761]
The Manners of the Gentleman.--These "gentle-manners," that make the
"gentle man" are an indispensable requisite to success in society. They
testify to a man's good breeding, to his social affiliations; they "place
him." They often bring a man many things that wealth could not.
The rich boor is despised in spite of his money. The poor man may be
popular because of his pleasing personality and his fine manner.
Men sometimes profess to despise those refinements that are associated
with good manners, saying they detest affectations. But these things are
not to be affectations. They should be the outward expression of inward
kindness and good-will and unselfishness. The cultivation of good manners
is a duty; somebody has said that "the true spirit of good manners is so
nearly allied to that of good morals that they seem almost inseparable."
John G. Holland says somewhere: "Young men would be thoroughly astonished
if they could comprehend at a glance how greatly their personal happiness,
popularity, prosperity, and usefulness depend on their manners." Emerson
remarked that,--"Manners should bespeak the man, independent of fine
clothes. The general does not need a fine coat."
A Matter of Training.--It may be that politeness is instinctive with some,
but with most men (women also), it is a matter of training and habit, and
careful discipline. In process of time courtesy becomes perfectly natural,
so gracefully spontaneous it seems to be.
Here is where the mother's work in the early training of her sons comes
in. Taught from childhood, by example and precept, the observances that
make for good manners, the young man wears them as easily and as
unconsciously as he does his clothes.
Politeness an Armor.--There is no better armor against rudeness and
discourtesy than politeness. The individual is impervious to slights and
snubs who can meet them with the courtesy which at once puts the common
person in his proper place as the inferior.
A woman is shocked and repelled by disagreeable manners in a man,
manifested in discourtesy toward her, by an awkward manner, coarse speech,
incivility, neglect of the little attentions she expects of a man and
which men of breeding render as a matter of course. A woman is more likely
to fall in love with a homely man of pleasing address than with an Adonis
so clad in self-complacency that he thinks politeness unnecessary, or one
who does not know its forms.