p. 125 | Good Manners

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 21, 1884

Good Manners.

YOUNG folks should be mannerly. How to be so is the question? Many a good girl and boy feel that they can't behave themselves in the presence of company. They feel timid, bashful and self-distrustful the moment they are addressed by a stranger or appear in company. There is but one way to get over this feeling, and acquire easy and graceful manners; that is, to do the best they can all the time at home, as well as abroad. Good manners are not learned by arbitrary teaching so much as acquired by habit. They grow upon us by use. We must be courteous, agreeable, civil, kind, gentlemanly and womanly at home, and then it will become a kind of second nature to be so everywhere. A coarse, rough manner at home begets a habit of roughness, which we cannot lay off if we try when we go among strangers. The most agreeable people we have ever known in company are those who are perfectly agreeable at home. Home is the school for all good things, especially for good manners.