TEACHING POLITENESS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Sep 26, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 39.

TEACHING POLITENESS.

A MOTHER noticed a remarkable change in the deportment of her six-year-old son. From being rough, noisy, and discourteous, he had suddenly become one of the gentlest and most considerate little fellows in the world. He was attending the kindergarten, and his mother naturally inferred that the change was somehow due to his teacher's instruction.

"Miss Smith teaches you to be polite?" she remarked in a tone of interrogation.

"No," said the boy, "she never says a word about it."

The mother was puzzled, and all the more when further questioning brought out more emphatic denials that the teacher had ever given her pupils lessons in good breeding.

"Well, then," the mother asked finally, "if Miss Smith doesn't say anything, what does she do?"

"She doesn't do anything," persisted the boy. "She just walks around, and we feel polite. We feel just as polite as anything."

That was all he could tell about it, and his mother began to see through the mystery. —Educational News.