The thrifty person who attends, uninvited, a wedding reception and,
retiring early from the festivities, leaves the unhappy couple poorer
by a few unconsidered trifles of jewelry has a just claim to the
gratitude of mankind. The interests of justice demand his immunity from
detection: the officer who shall molest him is _hostis humani generis_.
Neither grave rebuke nor ridicule has sufficed to overcome and stamp
out the vulgar custom of ostentatiously displaying wedding presents,
with names of givers attached; perhaps it will yield to the silent
suasion of the sneak-thief. To healthy and honest understandings—that
is to say, to the understandings of this present writer and those
who have the intelligence to think as he does—it is but faintly
conceivable how self-respecting persons can do this thing. Display of
any kind is necessarily repugnant to those tastes which distinguish
the well-bred from those whose worth is of another sort. Among the
latter we are compelled (reluctantly) to reckon those amiable beings
who display coats-of-arms, crests and the like, whether they are theirs
by inheritance, purchase or invention; those, we mean, who blazon
them about in conspicuous places for the obvious purpose of declaring
with emphasis whatever merits and advantages may inhere in their
possession. In this class, also, we must place the excellent ladies
and gentlemen who “boast” their descent from illustrious, or merely
remote, ancestors. (The remoter the ancestor—that is to say, the less
of his blood his descendant has—the greater that funny person’s pride
in the distinction.) A person of sense would be as likely to direct
attention to his own virtues as to those of his forefathers; a woman of
modesty, to her own beauty or grace as to the high social position of
her grandmother.
Nay, we must carry our condemnation to an even greater extreme. The
man who on public occasions covers his breast with decorations, the
insignia of orders, the badges of high service or of mere distinction
such as results from possession of the badge, is guilty of immodesty.
“Why do you not wear your Victoria Cross?” the only recipient of it
who ever failed to wear it was asked. “When I wish people to know how
valiant I am in battle,” was the reply, “I will tell them.”
But below this lowest deep of vanity there is a lower deep of
cupidity—and something more. The custom of displaying wedding presents
duly labeled with the givers’ names and publishing the list in the
newspapers supplies a very “genteel” method of extortion to those who
have conscientious scruples against highway robbery. That extortion is
very often the conscious intent I am far from affirming; but that such
is the practical effect many a reader inadequately provided with this
world’s goods will pause at this point feelingly to aver. But he is
a lofty soul indeed if at the next silent demand he do not stand and
deliver as meekly as heretofore. Looked at how one may please, it is
a bad business, not greatly superior in point of morality to that of
the sneak-thief who is one of its perils, and with whose intelligent
activity its existence may, one hopes, become in time altogether
incompatible.