p. 87 | A Few Vulgarisms

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Feb 23, 1882

A Few Vulgarisms.

ASKING questions, private and personal, is one vulgar habit, and telling your own business, which no one wants to hear, is another. Asking the cost of a present that has been made to you; "pumping" a servant to hear what has been given by way of parting vail; loud talking in public; hard staring at table, insolent disrespect to husband, wife, sister or brother; showing temper in trifles and making scenes in public; showing an embarrassing amount of fondness and making love in public; covert sneers, of which people can see the animus if they do not always understand the drift; persistent egotism, which talks, itself, itself, itself, only itself, and cannot even feign the most passing interest in another; detraction of friends and it may be of relations—a husband telling of his wife's unpleasantness, a wife complaining of her husband's faults; the bold assumption of superiority, and the servile confession of infinite unworthiness; all these are signs and evidences of vulgarity—vulgarity of a far worse type than that which eats its fish with a steel knife, and says "you was" and "each of the men were." In fact, true vulgarity resolves into that central point of evil—selfishness. The unselfish can never be really vulgar. They may be uncouth, but they cannot be more; while the best top-dressing of manner to be found in the whole world cannot make the substance refined, where that one foul canker of egotism and indifference to others lies at the heart of things.—Ex.