p. 341 | GOOD BREEDING by Editor

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 9, 1890

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 16, No. 22.

GOOD BREEDING.

By Editor

Because there are great men and great minds who seem to despise good breeding, many imitate their faults and really think that it adds greatness to them. The following from an article in the Home Department of the Christian Union, by Blanche Wilder Bellamy, contains things which it is worthy to ponder. Let us remember also that while practice is needed to perfect manners, there is no foundation so strong and good to build upon as a converted heart, the golden rule, and forgetfulness of selfish wants and desires.

A man speaks a foreign language stiffly, with the shades of grammar and construction always before his eyes. He speaks his own language as he breathes, unconsciously. But, we are told, Do you really take taste, good breeding, and etiquette so seriously? They are only a polish, a veneer. Japanese lacquer is a polish, yet it is said that the splendid imperial specimens of lacquered work displayed with pride in Japan, have been handed down from father to son, from father to son, and the polish has been rubbed in and rubbed in, until now not the most practiced eye can detect where the wood ceases and where the lacquer begins. In this sense, good breeding may be a polish, but it is not superficial and separable; it is hereditary and ingrained. And an essential element in good breeding is a knowledge of conventionality.

Of course it goes without saying that a man may be a very great man without having refinement of taste and with no knowledge of etiquette. The question is, Would he be any less great if he possessed them? We say unhesitatingly that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest American, yet we smile to remember that when a diplomat, in his presence, met with some slight accident, a cut perhaps, and asked the President for the loan of his handkerchief, he replied, "Really, I have not such a thing about me." We glory in Lincoln. Is that any reason why we should not point with pride, as one of the possibilities of a social republic, to the grace, courtesy, and elegance of Charles Sumner? Do we think any the less of Washington at Valley Forge because, when Baron Steuben and his gay cavalcade swept down to visit him, with jewels flashing and plumes waving and gilded sword-hilts shining in the sun, our general could meet him, not only with the dignity and fortitude of a patriot, but with the elegance of a courtier? There is a kind of logic prevalent in this connection which is not without danger, though its fallacy is laughably patent. It takes the form of a syllogism, in this way:—

Many great men have disregarded conventionality; I disregard conventionality; therefore I am a great man.

Geniuses are eccentric; I am eccentric; therefore I am a genius.

And, perhaps oftener than any other: Many brilliant and able women have shown an entire disregard of the conventionalities of custom and costume; I will show such disregard; then I shall be a brilliant and able woman.

I fully believe that this specious reasoning has led a great many young people into what they thought was a courageous rebellion against hampering conventionality, when they were really falling into a snare set by their own vanity. "Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth," is a quotation which has comforted a great many would-be social reformers, who perhaps would have been less warped by a closer study of the living truth as it really exists. Free lances have done very brave deeds, but, on the whole, the effective fighting of the world has been done by the soldiers in the ranks.