p. 60 | Good Breeding

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jan 28, 1886

Good Breeding.

THE importance of good breeding cannot well be overestimated. But what is good breeding? This is hardly to be understood as synonymous with good manners, though certainly involving them. Nor is it quite the same thing as exemplary or agreeable behavior, though likely to insure it. Good manners, polished behavior, is always the product of practice, discipline, perfection herein being reached only when these manners become habitual, natural, and instructive.

True courtesy, meanwhile, involves something deeper than mere motions or manners. It has its seat in the heart, its root in the moral nature. Fundamentally, it consists in an inward, kindly, neighborly, and tender feeling towards every one; an interest in, and a desire to promote, everybody's welfare. Genuine courtesy, in a word, is born of love, springs from a benevolent disposition, a brotherly, chivalric impulse.

But what is good breeding? It consists in this inward principle of will, and the outward habit of graceful demeanor combined; it consists of the aforesaid inward gracious impulse, rooted in the heart, and finding natural outward expression, or interpretation, through that disciplined elegance of deportment of which I have spoken. To the inward impulse, or sentiment, duly awakened, the outward, educated habit naturally and instinctively responds; and we have the deportment or carriage of the truly polished, or accomplished gentleman or lady.

These twin principles, the inward nurture and the outward culture or training, working together, underlie what, in the highest sense, is to be understood as good breeding.—Northern Christian Advocate.