399) 'UITE A GENTLE/VLAN' mm Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES -K ^ n "^ Mx4«. (U^ tetu mm\ cJ- QUITE A GENTLEMAN. ^^4d StiiJ A MAN can never be a true gentleman in manner, until he is a true gentleman at heart. — Charles Dickens. II REV. BEUNARD .). SNELL. ' Vahiahlc an a sla'cmetit of the jircscut jiositioH theoloQical Vwuiihl.' —The Dundee Auvertiseu. 'A vcrij valuahlc theological symjwsiiiiii.' QUITE A GENTLEMAN. " Look who is most virtuous alway, Prive and apert ; and most entendeth aye To do the gentil dedes that he can, And take him for the greatest gentleman." Chaucer. LONDON: BICKERS AND SON, I, LEICESTER SQUARE. 1878. ELZEVIR PRESS :— PRINTED BY JOHN C. WILKINS AND VERNON, g, CASTLE STREET, CHANCERY LANE. TR TO OUR BOYS, WITH THE HOPE THAT, WHATEVER MAY BE THE ASPIRATIONS OR THE SHORTCOMINGS OF EACH, NONE MAY FAIL IN THIS TO BE QUITE A GENTLEMAN. September, 1877. 1063434 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. ]\Iy Dear Harry, ^ ^ ^ # * E are glad to hear all that you say of your new master, and that, besides being a good teacher, he is a jolly fellow, and " quite a gentleman." But I wonder what you mean by this last remark? The jolly fellow, I think I understand. No doubt he is bright and cheerful over the les- sons, makes the best of things, helps you out of difficulties, joins in the games, is not over-hard upon trifling faults, in short, is sympathetic and just, two most admirable qualities in anybody. — 2 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. But now as to " quite a gentleman." I should particularly like to know what there is about him to make you say so. — Are his clothes well cut ? Does he speak softly and respect the Queen's English? Has he always clean hands and good boots ? Is he particular about his collars ? Has he a taste for choice books and engravings, and for pretty things in his room ?^or what ? The more I think of it, the greater is my curiosity to learn what, in your estimation, are the distinguishing marks of "a gentleman." — A few evenings ago, when we were dining at the B s, the conversa- tion turned upon the Public Schools, and their various merits and defects. Of course the mamas of the company lamented over the quantity of learning which it is supposed necessary to stuff into the boys of the present day, and we wondered whether you would, in the end, turn out any the wiser for it all. One comfortable-looking lady, with many rings, observed that, for her part, she did not care two pins about the learning, but that she should cer- tainly send Jier boy to Eton, because she was de- QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 3 termined that he should be "a gentleman." The other guests agreed that it was of the first import- ance that their boys should be made gentlerhen ; though some of them resisted the notion that Eton had any pre-eminence in gentility over the schools to which they themselves had belonged. But the lady stuck to her text. She had always understood, she said, that the Eton boys were distinguished for their gentlemanlike manners, and as she particu- larly wished her son to be a gentleman, to Eton he must go. — Then whilst the tea and coffee were handed round, I fell to wondering what might be the precise nature of those gentlemanly attributes which all esteemed so highly, but which, according to this good lady, could only with certainty be obtained by going to school at Eton. I daresay you guess that I have some ideas on the subject. I wonder if you have any? If not, try to get some. Cudgel your brains and make them answer me this question, " What is a gentleman ? " * * * Your affectionate Mother. QUITE A GENTLEMAN. My Dear Mother, f/iOU have set me a dreadfully hard ■J (lucstion to answer, about what a gentleman is like. How can anybody tell that without seeing him ? It is easy to see who is a gentleman and who isn't, but I am sure I don't exactly know w^hat is the difference. — Of course I am not so stupid as to think that clothes have anything to do with it. Mr. Ray does wear awfully funny cut clothes, if it comes to that — and hats too. He does have clean hands as a rule, but I can't say much for his boots, now that I come to look at them ; and he has no swell things in his room, except some which seem to be presents, and I expect that he is rather poor, so it isn't that ; but he is quite a gentleman all the same, I am sure you would say. — May I ask him to come in the holidays, and then you will see? Why, of course, everybody knows a gentleman from a snob. That's what I call Mr. D , with his fine house and all the rest of it ; you know he's not QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 5 a bit of a gentleman. How he struts about, and talks of his 'ouse and his 'orses, and takes up all the fire, and makes such a row, and thinks himself everybody ! — But of course nobody is a gentleman who drops his h's, and I don't know if he knows anything about Latin and Greek and all that. I suppose that has something to do with it, as such an awful fuss is made over our learning, whether we like it or not. — I cannot think of anything else about being a gentleman, except the sort of things like wearing gloves and not putting your legs on the chairs and all that, but somehow those are not the sort of things which I mean, because Mr. Ray does not often wear gloves, and he often does put his legs on a chair. — I cannot think of any rules about being a gentleman, so if there are, please to tell me, because I should like to know. * * * Your affectionate Harry. QUITE A GENTLEMAN. Mv Dear Harry, (V%^]|^40UR letter made us laugh very much, ^^^'ox'^'X y^*^' seem so perplexed over your l'viM$'^^ " gentleman ; " but I think that you ■'^^^ are not so far off the mark after all, for if you cannot define what he is, you seem to be pretty clear about what he is not. A man who is boastful, noisy, and self-sufficient, and who takes up all the fire cannot, in your opinion, be a gentleman. A big house and a stud of horses will not make him one, and dress, you think, has nothing to do with it. It is absolutely necessary that he should aspirate his h's, and it njay in some mysterious way be advantageous for him to know something of Latin and Greek. — Now, liaving got so far, do you not think that you could push your inquiries a little farther and find out what is that something which makes a man into a gentleman. Is it a natural gift, or can it be acquired? and if so, how? When you have told me your mind, I will tell you mine. — We have all QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 7 got minds, you know, only we don't always rum- mage them enough to get at the ideas which are in them. — You know what wonderful things come out of those pockets of yours when we turn them inside out ? Some fluff and dust in the corners and plenty of string, all in a tangle, but sometimes forgotten treasures turn up too — even an unexpected sixpence from the very depths. — Well, turn out the pockets of your mind and see if there are not any ideas there, in a fluff and tangle very likely, but I am sure that you will find some — sixpenny-worth at least ! — Perhaps you find that " to think " is no such easy matter as one might suppose. Well, then, to help you to think, I will finish up my letter with some questions, which, if you like, you may answer just as they stand. 1. What objection is there to a man being boast- ful and conceited ? 2. And to his making as much noise as he pleases ? 3. Or to his "taking up the fire if he feels chilly?" 4. Would such things as these be equally objec- tionable in a lady or in anyone else ? 8 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 5. What are the opposites to these qualities of boastfulness, conceitedness, noisiness, and taking- up-the-fireyness ? 6. Would the opposites help to make up your idea of a lady or a gentleman ? Now don't be lazy, but write and answer my riddles on the first wet day. * * Your ever affectionate Mother. QUITE A GENTLEMAN. My Dear Mother, ^:g.^^ SUPPOSE you will laugh quite as Vifjh- ^J^ much at this letter as you did at the liil'^^t last, for I think your questions are ^ quite as hard as before, and I don't quite know what I shall say. — Why, of course, nobody likes a boastful, conceited prig. One is always inclined to say, " Who are you ? " and pitch into him, and they generally do up here ; but I suppose that men can't do that sort of thing, which is a pity. — However, I don't know wJiy a fellow must not be an ass if he likes, only I sup- pose he has no right to make himself disagreeable to other people, or to think himself better than anybody else unless he is, and the cleverest fellows up here never seem so,- — I mean they are not at all cocky ; and as to a gentleman not being a noisy fellow, it is not exactly that : I mean that many nice fellows make a row sometimes, when we get excited in games or on breaking-up day ; so it does not seem to be the row which is ungentle- lo QUITE A GENTLEMAN. manlike, but making the sort of row which is to make people notice you ; it is very vulgar to do that, is it not? — I know you never liked us making a loud talking and laughing on the railway station, or any place like that, because you used to say that it attracted attention, and that it is vulgar to try to attract attention by making a noise, or dressing too fine, or anything else. — As to taking up the fire, of course it is rude to do that, because other people may want it as much as one's self. There, I think I have got on pretty well in answering all those questions. — Next, about a lady being any of those things, noisy or pushing or bumptious, of course she would be a perfect horror, and not at all a " gentlewoman," as you call nice ladies, and if she were selfish into the bargain, she would be more horrid still, because it seems so natural to women to give up, more than it is to men, and, of course, girls ought always to give up. — Now it has left off raining, and as No. 5 is an awfully sticky question, I am going out to football, and perhaps some more ideas will come into my head by-and-by. * * * * — I am going to finish my letter if I can, for it is a QUITE A GENTLEMAN. ii thorough wet day again, and I have got some more ideas, thanks to Maxwell. — Maxwell is my chum this term. He is an awfully nice fellow, older than me, in the next form above me, so if I want any help about anything I always get him, and he does it. — So I asked him what was the opposite to " boastfulness," and he asked. Why ? and then I read him your letter, and he was awfully pleased, and he took me into his room, and showed me an awfully stunning book, which I should like to have, called " Roget's Thesaurus." Do you know it? — If you can't think of a word, you think of some- thing at all like it or just the contrary to it, and then you are sure to find it, and no end besides. — So we looked out "boasting," and found "vaunt- ing," "brag," "pretentious," and several more, but there did not seem to be any exactly opposite, but soon after that we found " vanity," which we thought came to the same thing — at least. Maxwell said that he had read somewhere that boasting was "spoken vanity" — and we found "self-conceit," " self-complacency," " self-esteem," " self-suffi- ciency," and a lot more, under the head of " sel- 12 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. fishness." — Then opposite to "vanity" is put "modesty," "humility," "diffidence," "timidity," and some more of the shy sort, but nothing about "sclf-anything." — Maxwell doesn't think much of these sort of things for making a gentleman. He says, of course it's all right for ladies and girls to be modest, and all that, but he hates shy men, they look fools ; and your horridly humble people are humbugs, like Uriah Hecp, and gentlemen are not humbugs. However, among the adjectives which come after the " modesty " nouns are found some which are more gentlemanlike, " unpretending," " un- obtrusive," " unassuming," and so on, till it comes to " poor in spirit," which sounds like the Sermon on the Mount, and just then amongst the " vanity " adjectives Maxwell spied out "puffed up," which sounded like the Bible too, and that made me remember having to learn all that cha])ter about charity suffereth long, and is kind, and is not puffed up, and your telling us that the kind of love which charity is is quite unselfish, and that to be quite unselfish really means to be always ready to QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 13 do what other people like rather than what we like best, for the love of God, and Maxwell said he did not see much difference in being " poor in spirit " and in being " not puffed up," and they are both the contrary to being bumptious and con- ceited, so at first we thought perhaps being a gentleman was something to do with being a re- ligious sort of man, but Maxwell knows a gentle- man who lives near him at home, and who hardly ever goes to church, and is awfully mean and bad- tempered, and then, you know, our old Benjamin — why he's the best old fellow that ever was, and goes to church, and always reads his Bible of an evening, when he doesn't go to sleep, but nobody could say lie was a gentleman, so we can't settle about it, and you must write and tell us, because you can't say I've been lazy now. — I've inked my finger all up, and I never could have written half this only Maxwell has helped me so. * * * Your affectionate Harry. 14 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. Mv Dear Harry, E are all very much pleased with your long letter, which we think must have cost you a great deal of time and trouble. Pray give our best thanks to Maxwell for his kindly promptings. — I should be sorry to stop the flow of your ideas, but would humbly suggest that your " style " would be greatly improved if you could limit the number of " awfuls " to one or two per letter. Imagine the feelings of Dr. Roget, if he had heard his valuable dictionary described as " awfully stunning." — Don't you think that you could find amongst the 150, or more, adverbs which are placed under the headings of " extremely " or " very " some whicli would relieve poor " awfully " from his undue labours ? But this is by the way, and now — to answer your letter. May and I have had a long talk about it, toasting our toes over the fire, and she finished with this remark : "Well, it seems to me, Mamma, QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 15 that after all, a gentleman is a man who is gentle and considerate on picrpose, because he thinks it right to consider other people before himself So Harry was right to think that the charity which suffereth long and is kind, will also help to make you a gentleman." — I have begun at the end so that you may be able to see which way our talk drifted, for I cannot write it all without making my letter as long as a sermon, which, if I had time to write, you would not have patience enough to read. You see, however, that we ended very nearly where you did, by saying that, in order to be a perfect gentleman, one must be thoroughly unselfish, or considerate for others. — But please to notice that we are not supposed to be speaking of a man who is a gentleman, only because his father was a gentle- man before him, and because, being brought up in a genteel atmosphere, he has learnt the manners and customs of so-called gentlefolks. — I have no faith in any kind of gentility which is to be applied externally, like gold leaf or varnish ; it may be better than none, but it is not the real thing, and without something more ingrain than that, depend i6 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. upon it a man will never be more than a half-and- half sort of gentleman after all. A little scrubbing in a rough world, a little rubbing the wrorig way, and the polish soon comes off, so that sometimes we have the sorrow and disgust of seeing our elegant acquaintance turn out to be a very shabby fellow indeed.- — We have come to the conclusion that our true gendeman is unselfish and considerate for others. Let us see about this. Let us think of any we know and whom we mark with this honour- able stamp of "gentleman." How does he behave himself? First, we must notice that a gentleman is, as a rule, self-controlled. He does not bounce into a room with dirty boots and loud tones, slam the doors, laugh uproariously, cough and clear his throat unconstrainedly, yawn, stretch, or fidget, nor eat and drink disagreeably, i)ut his arms on the table, monopolize the newspapers and the easiest chairs, smoke about the house, bawl upon the stairs, nor make any unnecessary fuss. All such things are heinous offences in "good society," which simply means to say, that they are disagree- able to other people. QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 17 Our gentleman is as unobtrusive and unas- suming (to use some of your list of epithets) in his appearance as in his manner. His dress is so much that of other men in his own class of life, that it seems part of himself, and one would hardly notice it, except perhaps to think how gentlemanlike he looks. — A very fashionable or priggish man never looks like that, does he ? You see, I cannot even speak of a priggish gentleman, or a fashionable gentleman, for such people make us feel that their first object is to be noticed, and a true gentleman does not wish to be conspicuous. — That wish (the wish I mean of being noticed) seems to be the sort of selfishness which is at the bottom of everything " snobbish," and of all the forms of vulgarity that flesh is heir to. I cannot go into that now, but I do think that unassuming, quiet people are never viilga?-. — Now you will easily see that if a certain sort of selfishness pro- duces vulgarity, we must keep ourselves down, control ourselves, in order to be well-bred people — gentlefolks. One of the first marks of a gentleman, then, is this, he is self-controlled — he can "keep c 1 8 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. himself under." — x^nd the same self-control which can prevent a man from being noisy and vulgar, will also prevent him from being violent, irritable, or over-excited. Of course he may by nature be all these, but whatever he may feel inside him, he manages to regulate his external behaviour so that at any rate other people shall not suffer from his weakness. Do you remember how in the life of Faraday, which we were reading last holidays, the biographer, after describing the kindliness and habitual sweet- ness of manner which were characteristic of that most loveable man, goes on to say that, " Yet by nature he was far from being one of those pas- sionless men who resemble a cold statue rather than throbbing flesh and blood. His inner life was a battle, with its wounds as well as its victory. Proud by nature and quick-tempered, he must have found the curb often necessary; but notwith- standing the rapidity of his actions and thoughts he knew how to keep a tight rein on that fiery spirit." — And another writer says that, "Through high self-discipline he had converted his fire into QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 19 a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion." — It was, then, because of his perfect conquest over him- self, and his consequent respect for others, that the blacksmith's son, the little errand boy, became a perfect gentleman.— Learning and perseverance might have made him a philosopher and companion of learned and educated people, but they would not have sufficed to make him what Mr. Dumas describes him : ** The illustrious man, whose youth endured poverty with dignity, whose mature age bore honours with moderation, and whose last years passed gently away surrounded by marks of respect and tender affection." — There is another great philosopher of whom, I think, that we all have formed a very pleasant idea without perhaps know- ing much about him. — Possibly we have endowed him with more personal charms than he really possessed, for he is described as being short and rather fat, with nothing remarkably attractive either in his appearance or conversation. Yet I, for one, never can resist the idea that Sir Isaac Newton must have been a refined, unselfish man, and 20 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. "quite a gentleman ;" and all because of that little anecdote which every child knows, about how when his little dog upset a candle amongst his papers and destroyed what had given him months of labour, he only exclaimed, " Oh ! Diamond, Diamond, thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done." Sometimes we hear people say that they like a violent-tempered person better than a smooth, imperturbable creature who is not easily upset by anything that happens, I think that it is not the violence, but the power of feeling, which we like. — Violence must be disagreeable, but if we see that a man by the warmth of his nature feels a thing very strongly, we sympathize with him and excuse the violence, and we actually respect him if we see that though he is naturally passionate he controls himself so as not to annoy other people. — There is dignity in calmness of manner which is the result of such an effort, as there is an appear- ance of under breeding and commonness in un- controlled anger, flighty excitability, or uncalled-for show of one's personal feelings. QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 21 Next, our gentleman is courteous. What a plea- sant sound that old-fashioned word has. It makes us think of all sorts of delightful and genial people — the Sir Roger de Coverleys and Mr, Pickwicks of our acquaintance, who from sheer large-hearted- ness are polite and cordial to everj'body, inferiors as well as superiors, and, what is still more difficult, to equals and almost equals. — I daresay that you know some boys who are pleasant enough to other boys much older than themselves, or higher in the school, who are good-natured and patronizing to small, weak boys, decidedly below themselves, but who do not get on well with those who run them close in school or play. — Well, I see children of a larger growth who are just the same towards their companions, who cannot get on well with anyone who either is not willing to play second fiddle to them or else who is not so decidedly superior that it is honour and glory to be associated with them. — Sometimes people take credit to themselves for this sort of selfishness ; they call it being exclusive, or select, or having proper pride. — I must say that I never can see anything proper in pride ; it always 2 2 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. seems to me to be vanity in its most ugly form, though this is not everybody's opinion. — I do not find that they are the highly-bred, the wisest, the most accomplished, who are the most ready to give themselves airs and to think other people not " equal " to themselves. — It is not the gentleman, but the not-quite gentleman, who is so nervously afraid of endangering his rickety position in society by being courteous and friendly to everybody. — It is the not-quite gentleman who is huffy, touchy, and suspicious of slights. — For, you see, such things mark a person who thinks overmuch of him- self and of what other people think about him. — Now if he could forget all that and take to think- ing about anything and anybody except himself, he would be all right, and might come out a gentle- man after all. The great poet Goethe said, that there is one quality which no child ever brought into the world with him, although on this quality everything de- pends for making him in every respect a man. — What do you guess it to be? If I gave you six guesses, I am sure that you would not hit upon it. QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 23 Truthfulness ? Courage ? Perseverance ? Good Temper ? Generosity ? Justice ? No ! and if you tried six more I don't believe that you would think of this all-important quality, for it is not fashionable in the present day; so I will tell you. It is Re- verence. — Perhaps you don't agree with Goethe ; but after all that we have said, I think you will be able to see how true it is, that without Reverence the best part of a manly, or gentlemanly, character will be wanting. — Reverence implies a low opinion of ourselves, absence of pride, respect for the opinions and feelings of others, and consequently all those most Christian virtues of kindness, gentleness, and self-repression which help us to fulfil the sacred duty of being pleasant. Perhaps Reverence would come more into fashion if young men and maidens could be led to see what a lovely and peace-producing element in social life it is, and the ugliness and vulgarity of the irreverent, disrespectful, independent style which now-a-days prevails. — To this spirit of Reverence it is due that our gentleman is as pleasant at home as he is abroad. With him the 24 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. fomiliarity of home life does not breed the con- tempt for which the i)roverb gives it credit. You never hear him speak disparagingly of his own rela- tions. If they have faults, at least he does not hold them up to public inspection and derision. He is not ashamed to honour his father and mother, even though his own education and position may be superior to theirs, and he is able to allow that there actually do exist people whose opinion is as good as his own, and authorities to whom he must bow. — And so we never hear our gentleman pass those stupid, sweeping criticisms, which are so common in the mouths of the young or the half-educated, who know little or nothing about the people or things of which they speak so lightly. — Here, you see, we come upon something which shows the advantage oi knowing. — The more we know the less conceited and disrespectful we shall be, because each new thing that we learn gives us a peep into fresh regions of knowledge, and makes us feel how dread- fully ignorant we arc after all. Besides, we soon begin to find out that there is nobody who docs not know something, or who cannot do something QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 25 better than \vc can, and so we learn to respect. — And with respect comes sympathy, which is a loving in- terest in the things and people about which we have learnt to know something, for love and know- ledge are like twin sisters, who go hand in hand and are never apart. Perhaps you will laugh and wonder why, when I tell you next that I find )iiy gentleman to be the best possible hand at " taking a joke " — mind I do not say at making a joke, nor that he is a funny man, which is almost as bad as being a bore. But if he is not naturally funny or witty lumself, he can enter into the fun and humour of others, which is not possible to anyone who cannot for an instant imagine himself in anybody's shoes but his own. Even this small matter of joke-taking involves the much bigger matter of unselfishness and sympathy. — To be a thoroughly cheery companion there must be the power of throwing one' self out of one' self into the humour of another person. That is the secret of all good-fellowship, depend upon it. — Anyone can make a joke if he does not mind what it is about, but to be pleasant as well as 26 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. amusing one must be sympathetic and feeling. — For to be good, a joke must be suitable — fit to give pleasure to the hearers ; don't you think so ? — But many jokes are quite unsuitable, and their makers utterly wanting in that genial sympathy. — They do not mind giving annoyance, even pain, if only they can say their say and have their bit of fun. Such people are usually the worst hands at " taking a joke " which is turned upon themselves, for then their selfishness acts the other way. — Long ago I found out that it was only the quite lady and gentleman with whom I could trust myself to crack a little joke, or to say whatever came into my head. With the not-quite sort of i)eople I must mind my p's and (['s, and weigh my words, lest they should be misconstrued and give offence. This reminds me that our gentleman seldom makes personal remarks, or if he does they are of a pleasant kind, and to intimate friends. — Unless we know a person well, how can we be sure that our comments upon his dress, or other such matters, may not be resented as impertinent and ill-bred, as indeed remarks of QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 27 that kind usually are.— "Tact," you know, has been defined as "benevolence in trifles" — a fine sense of touch or feeling of what will be pleasing or uncomfortable to other people, and it is easy to see that the awkwardnesses and "gaucheries" of impolite society come from want of this tact, or delicacy of feeling ; a sort of sixth sense which is natural to few of us, but which we all can and ought to cultivate. — There are two ways of doing most things, are there not ? and so we find people who can pay us a compliment in such a way that we \\Tithe under it, and others who can tell us even unpleasant truths so as to prevent our being pained by them. — But sometimes we meet with people who seem so to have hardened or deadened this sixth sense, by continually indulging in a habit of making personal remarks and home-thrusts, from a desire, we must suppose, of being thought witty or original, that they do it when no wit is in the case, and nothing original but the rudeness. One dreads to meet these terrible people if we have put on any- thing new, or grown thinner or fatter, or had our hair cut, lest they should find something to say 2 8 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. about it which will make us feel creepy all over, or send the blood to our faces. I have often considered what there is in the character of Falstaff which should make him so popular a personage as he undoubtedly is, for, say what we will for him, he is after all a most disre- putable old fellow. — Dr. Johnson, having summed up his vices, attributes his popularity to his "per- petual gaiety " and to his never-failing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scopes and sallies of levity, which make sport but raise no envy. — But per- petual gaiety is the most tedious thing in the world, and sallies of levity must be well-timed, or else they will give annoyance rather than make sport, so I should like to add to Dr. Johnson's praise of Falstafif's wit, that it is never ill-natured — it is the least selfish thing about him. — He can laugh at a thing "which is invented on him" as much as at that which he invents. His object is not to hurt people's feelings nor to set up for being original, but to amuse others and draw them out QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 29 and to keep them in good humour. — Moreover, he suits himself to his company. If his jokes are coarse, so are the associates to whom they are ad- dressed, and as soon as we find him in the pre- sence of persons whom he respects his tone alters. He does not try personahties and broad jokes upon them, and in this, perhaps, we see the only glimmering of gentility which is in him. After all, it is a cheap, poor sort of wit which can get no farther than to make sharp speeches upon other people's dress, appearance, or habits. It is not much superior to the " chaff " of the street-boy who mimics your peculiarities or asks you " Who's your hatter ? " and though personal remarks are some- times so comical that it is impossible to resist a laugh, they are none the better for that, and I think that the laugh is generally less at the joke itself than at the impudence and want of tact of the joke- maker. Before closing this long letter I must make out a list of little marks by which we may always single out our gentleman from the common crowd. He is particular about trifles, answers his letters 30 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. promptly, is ciuick to acknowledge a kindness and thankful for small mercies — for gratitude is the very refinement of unselfishness, and, alas ! as rare a virtue now as it was in the days of the ten lepers — never forgets to pay a small debt, nor to offer an apology that is due. — He is punctual and neat, doing everything which he undertakes as thoroughly and heartily as possible, " as unto God," dear Harry, which after all, is the secret of doing it well. I fancy I see you yawning, so good-night. Your loving Mother. Q UITE A GENTLEMAN. 31 My Dear Mother, ^^^0^ DON'T know what you will say to 1J^5 ^^^^ letter, being hardly any of it my ^2 own, at least, I mean, we all talked about it, Mr. Ray, Maxwell, and I, and I could never have half answered your questions myself. — I am very sorry that you don't like " awfully," but I have tried the whole lot of those adverbs and don't think that they are at all the same. Only fancy saying that a book was " surpassingly good," or " exceedingly superior," you know. I should think from that that it was awfully dry. However I will try not to say it if you don't like it. — How we all came to be together was that I was trying to read your letter to Max- well in the class-room and some other fellows began to chaff and interrupt, and Mr. Ray was going through and saw us, and called to us and said, if we liked to come up into his study we were welcome to, so we went, and then I asked him what was the particular good of learning, and he 32 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. laughed at first, but when he found we were not making fun, but in real earnest, he was ever so kind, and got down books and read us bits to help us to think, and made Maxwell write some notes which are going to help me now. — He asked us what we thought were the uses of learning, and I said that I supposed it was to make us more useful and pleasant ; and Maxwell said, " and to help us to get our own living, and not be always dependent upon other people keeping us." — And Mr. Ray said it was for all that, and for something better too, but he would not tell us then, perhaps we should find out. — He said it was quite true that cultivation helps to make men more pleasant, and that as it is difficult to enlarge our minds without at the same time enlarging our hearts, the wider our knowledge is, the wider will be our sympathy or love for men and things. He said that he thought that ignorance and not intentional unkind- ness is at the bottom of half the harsh dealings and narrow-minded judgments which people pass upon each other. — If we knew more about each other's lives and troubles and all that, we should not be so QUITE A GENTLEMAN. ^^ hard upon each other, and should like each other better. Maxwell said that his father has a saying, " 111 bred people talk about people, and well bred people talk about things." He thinks that having something better to talk about prevents people from being gossiping, and often worse, because one seldom talks long about people without finding a flaw in them somewhere, and as it is so much easier to be amusing by showing up absurdities and faults than by finding out good, such talk often begins with twaddle and ends in ill-nature. — Mr. Ray liked what Maxwell said, and he said that it is very true that " out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," and out of an empty head and heart what could come but " folly and idle words, and the jest which is not convenient;" and he said, what do slang and chaff come from, except from poverty of ideas ? The same unmeaning, stupid words used over and over again to express the most opposite things. (Of course that is why you don't like my poor dear awful.) — He says he always considers that a grown-up man who is con- D 34 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. tent twenty times a day to use one word ignorantly or unsuitably when his language supplies him with fifty more appropriate, must be an ignoramus or a goose (so I must give it up you see !), and as to its being gentlemanly, well of course one can't exactly say that it is genteel to be ignorant or a goose. Mr. Ray said that the proverb " Good breeding comes from the heart " is true in a sense, but it is a half truth. Good breeding comes from the head as well as from the heart. — Nobody is " thorough- bred " who has not both ; and he .said that he had no patience wdth people who niigJit improve them- selves but don't, and who are content to remain in their ignorance. They must be jolly duffers ! At least / said that. He said "we have no right to be ignorant, any more than we have to be tiresome or useless. We may not happen to be clever, but it's our own fault in these days if we are empty- headed and ill informed. — To be sure there are people who read and read and never seem to become much the wiser, just as there are people who eat and eat, and grow none the fatter, because they do not, as the doctors call it, assimilate their QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 35 food — digest it and get the good out of it. Still anyone who tries to improve himself and to keep his eyes and ears open must be a more useful and agreeable creature than one who does none of this, but who only lives to be comfortable, which gene- rally ends in his living to be a nuisance." And we talked about how much we learnt by other ways than books, by hearing people talk and trying to listen and to understand, and by observ- ing, and hoAV much happier observant people are than those who walk through life and never learn to look beyond their own noses, and Mr. Ray says that although it is good to go into anything we do head and shoulders, and never be content till we get to the bottom of it, yet he does not despise a " smattering" knowledge of many things so much as some people do, because surely one must be better off by knowing even a little, than by know- ing nothing, and he says that he never found any kind of knowledge useless, whether it was how to construe a Greek passage, or to play the organ, or to splice a bat, cook a chop, tie up a cut finger, or sow on a shirt-button; and besides that, learning 36 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. one thing helps one to learn another, because our brains get stronger and more active by use just as our limbs do, and we must never say die over anything which we find hard, because if we keep on exercising our brains, very likely by-and-by the power to do the difficult thing will come. What a little talk takes up a great deal of room in a letter ! I have not told you half of what we said, and still there is your last difficult question to answer about the "Highest Aim." — We remem- bered that Mr. Rny had not told us what was the " something better " than making us pleasant and useful which learning is for. — I said, Is it to make us unselfish ? and Maxwell said, and to get us out of ourselves and help us to live for the good of other people, and Mr. Ray said. Yes, that is our duty to Man ; but is there not something better which urges us to do that duty? — Then it came into our heads, both at once, that of course duty to God comes first, and I thought of what you said at Christmas, about " Glory to God in the Highest," and Mr. Ray said. Yes, we must glorify God, not only with all our hearts in cheerful praise QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 37 and humble prayer, but we must praise him with all our minds too, and how can we do that if we do not use our minds, which means all the senses and powers which we have got and which God gave us, and how can we praise him properly for all the wonderful works which he has done if we do not know nor care anything about them, but take things just as if they came by chance and were not the work of a good God at all. I am afraid that I have not said it very well, but it was something like that ; and do you think that we have answered your (juestions pretty right and settled what is a gentleman. — What does father think about it ? I should like to know. I wish he could write me a good long letter, and what he calls ventilate the question, but of course he's very busy. Good-bye, and I send my love to all. Your affectionate Harry. P.S. — I'm sure it's right what you say about the jokes and personal remarks. There's a fellow up 38 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. here who is ahvays making them himself, and you can't say the least little thing to him but he takes huff and thinks you're laughing at him or some such rubbish, and he's a regular little cad 1 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 39 My dear Boy, jOUR mother has read me your cor- respondence. It has interested me much, and I am not so busy but that I must find time to make some re- marks which, I trust, will be within jour com- prehension, although I may not be able to put things so plainly before you as mother can do. — You have come to the conclusion that the truest gentleman is he who combines the most cultivated mind with the most sympathetic and unselfish heart. Good. This is what I wish you to remem- ber when you choose your friends, and when by- and-by you mix, as you will surely do, with people of all sorts and sizes. — Not long hence I shall have to call upon you to decide upon your choice of a profession, in order that your education may be carried forward in the way which will help you most directly to the end in view. — At your age, you know, of course, very little about the requirements of any profession ; but it is well that you should 40 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. keep your mind open to the fact that some day you will have to work for your own li\ing, and you should try to find out for what you are best suited. — There are so many careers open to yoiing men now-a-days, and so many drawbacks as well as ad- vantages attached to each, that it is a blessing when some decided bent on the boy's own part re- lieves the parents from the anxiety of thinking what they shall do with him. — Probably more boys would ponder this subject for themselves if it were more clearly put before them as a subject to be pondered, and I believe, too, that boys would study with far more pleasure if they could be made to feel that their work was all tending towards some useful re- sult, and helping to make them what they actually looked forward to becoming — a lawyer, or a clergy- man, or an engineer, or whatever it might be. What has set me off upon this topic is a speech which I heard from a young fellow on the railway station this morning. — " My governor," he was say- ing to a friend, "is quite savage because I won't accept a stool in old Blank's counting-house. Likely notion, isn't it? First brings me up as a QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 41 gentleman, and then expects to sit me down to dirty work like that. Why, I'd rather go to the diggings at once !" — These sentiments were most suggestive. What, for instance, do you imagine is that young man's idea of a gentleman? Why should he fear the loss of his gentlemanhood as a consequence of sitting on a stool in Mr. Blank's counting-house ? and in what manner would it be secured by his going to the diggings ? — These questions presented themselves, and along with them sympathy for the poor old father, who, ap- parently, had done his best to make his son a gentleman, but hadn't, and was only called a "governor" for his pains. One more thought came too, and that was, the difficulty which there is in these days of finding employment in England for the numbers of young men who are growing up, and who wish to earn their livelihood here " as gentle- men." — Every profession is overstocked, there are more young men (yes, and capable, well-educated young men) than there are places for them to fill. — Only last week a friend of my own wanted 42 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. a clerk in his liousc of business in the City. He was weak enough to advertise this fact, and in two days was bewildered by receiving no less than four hundred applications from competent persons for this valuable appointment of ;^9o a year. — I dare say that you tliink ^90 is a good deal of money, and so it is for pocket-money and to spend as you like ; but it is not much to live upon for a whole year, being about the wages of a first-rate gardener or artizan, and half what your school expenses cost me now. Well, my boy, you are sensible enough to un- derstand that the result of this excess of supply over demand must be one of two things. — Young men with no especial talents to bring them to the top, or with no powerful friends to give them a lift in life, are either driven out of the country (taking appointments in India and the colonies, or going out to seek their fortunes in any way that may open up before them), or else they have to go into trades and lines of business here which would have been thought most derogatory — impossible — to a gentleman's son half a century ago. — We can QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 43 see this going on around us, and it is a phase of affairs which I feel certain will not pass away, but which will become more obvious every day. It is, then, my wish that you should all face' this fact, and see how it ought to influence your own lives and your judgments of others. — You will all have to earn your own living, as the catechism tells us that it is the duty of every man to do ; to work — yes, even though he may have been born to such wealth or to such prospects that the necessity for earning his daily bread does not urge him, as it urges most of us, to work — yet work for others, if not for himself, he is bound to do. "If he will not work neither shall he eat," says St. Paul. I wonder how many would go with- out their dinners if this rule were to be enforced to-day ! But is there a more pitiable or contemptible animal than the young man who is contented, through the best years of his life, to " do nothing," who follows no profession, takes to no profitable pursuit, but dawdles away his days in the drawing- room or the stable, because he has, or will have, so 44 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. much money that he need not work for his bread or his comforts and pleasures. — That is a very selfish ground to go ui)on. " It is a poor centre of a man's actions, himself right earth, for that only standeth upon its own centre." — True, " charity begins at home;" but it should not end there, and if a man has no need to work for himself because somebody has worked for him and i)ut him in an independent position, then it is clear that he is bound to do his duty in working for others, and in cultivating himself, so as to render himself the more worthy of the state of life in which it has pleased God to ])lace him. — The higher that state, the greater will be its responsibilities, and the more work will there be to do for God and man. — I sup- pose that the highest type of the " good old English gentleman " is to be found in a man of this sort ; a dignified, cultivated, and withal warm-hearted country squire, liberal and hospitable, the neigh- bourly ma?!, as we say in Sussex. But here I am going up the ladder when I meant to stay at the bottom in company with the young gentleman who preferred to go to QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 45 the diggings rather than sit on a stool in a counting-house. — You see he thought that he should be degraded rather than exalted by that process, and that he would cease to be a gen- tleman. Now how about this? — I cannot tell what business was proposed for him, but probably it was something equal to his powers, and if so, would he be less a gentleman, less fit for associating with his fellow men, than he was before ? When Charlie was about your age I talked to him in much the same manner that I now write to you, and I remember his saying, " Surely some professions are more thought of than others. Is it not thought more gentleman- like to be a clergyman, or a barrister, or an officer in the army than to be 'in business?' and I am sure that you would prefer that I should be a very poor clergyman or a banker's clerk, rather than a rich shopkeeper or a footman, or anything of that sort." — This is true. "A man is what he knows," and I should think it a sorry result of all the care bestowed upon your education ever since you were born, if, having arrived at man's estate. 46 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. you were fit for nothing better than to serve behind a counter or to wait at table. But observe. If you had been born to such a state of life, and had educated and raised yourself to a superior level, I should consider you just as much of a gentleman as if you had been born in the condition to which, by your own exertions, you were justly raised, and should admire you all the more on account of the difficulties which you had surmounted and the un- equal race which you had to run. — The race is a very unequal one, there can be no doubt ; for who shall pretend to estimate the amount of education which we receive unconsciously from the surround- ings of a refined home, from the conversation and example of cultivated i)arents and companions, and from the manner in which we have been carefully screened from contamination with coarseness and vulgarity. — Yes, to be sure, it is an unequal race, and when a " self-made man " wins it, honour be to him ! — The contempt (if there is any) which at- taches to any business or i)rofession, does not belong to the business itself, but to the person en- QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 47 gaged in it, {/"he ought to be something better, but is not. ]f he has had a refined home and a high education, but has made no adequate use of these advantages ; if, with ample opportunity for im- proving himself and fitting himself for higher ser- vice, he has made no use of his time or opportuni- ties or talents, but has been contented to eat and drink and lounge away his life till, being incapable of filling the positions for which his birth and bringing up should have qualified him, he is forced to drop to a lower level — then, indeed, a man may be justly ashamed of his business, though even then he had better be ashamed of himself. — I should not like to see you weighing out raisins or mea- suring ribbons for your daily bread ; not because there is anything base or demoralizing in these acts, but because your education ought, by this time, to have fitted you for something better, and if it had not done so, I should feel it to be a dis- grace to you and to myself But suppose that anything should happen hereafter which should throw you upon your own resources, do you imagine that you would 48 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. be any the less a gentleman because you had to use your hands instead of your head ? — When men emigrate, they often have to do very queer things, but they are none the worse for that, often better, by as much as a useful independent man is superior to a lazy fine gentleman who is not ashamed to hang on to other people and live at their cost rather than exert himself in any way which may give him trouble or compromise his gentility. Think of this : not a man's origin, nor his occupation, nor his want of one, stamps him a gentleman ; but " handsome is as handsome does " and "manners maketh man" are true proverbs, and the most honourable work is that which is the best done with all our heart and all our mind, be- cause it is our duty to do. — I sincerely hope and believe that the narrow-minded \ulgarity of mere class distinction is beginning to die out in England, and that goodness and intellect will always hold their own against either "blood" or "money." — Still, although there is much more liberality than formerly amongst thoughtful people, there is much QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 49 to be done before we can show a clean bill in this respect. I was speaking, a few days ago, to an experi- enced schoolmaster, of the improvement which I thought was observable since my own school days, when I remember with shame how town boys were bullied and scouted, and most rudely jeered at by the others, simply for being town boys, or because their parents or grandparents had been in trade. — The friend to whom I spoke assured me that this disgraceful system still prevails in some schools, and, curiously enough, that the boys who chiefly indulge in it, are those whose family tree had not sprouted for more than two or three gene- rations. — He told me of a nice, "gentlemanlike," industrious little fellow whom he had sometimes found crying to himself in a corner of the school- room because the boys, having discovered that his grandfather had kept a shop in Regent Street, tor- mented him and insulted him by calling him "shopkeeper." — Can one conceive anything more truly vulgar than this ? If we had to pronounce between these boys which was the gentleman E 50 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. and which the snob, I do not think that there would be much difficulty in deciding. The very same boys who are ignorant and underbred enough to behave in such a way as this, are the same who will probably, in later life, become tuft-hunters, and toadies to wealth and position, and then they will find them- selves playing up to some of the very class whom they inwardly despise ; for in the present day it appears undoubted that the largest for- tunes are being amassed by the shop-keeping class, and if these give their children the good education which we have found to be necessary to produce gentlefolks, then these children will become the gentlefolks of the next generation, let schoolboys turn up their noses as they will. This result would be more patent than it is if the notion that money makes the gendeman could be got out of people's heads. — But unluckily it often happens that the energetic but unpre- tending father, who has worked his way ujnvards, and whose greatest ambition it is to make ladies and gentlemen of his children, does not go QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 51 the right way to work to accompHsh his end. — By lavishing upon them all the luxuries which money can buy, and by thrusting them, with- out due preparation, into spheres of society for which their early experiences have not fitted them, the parent unconsciously drives his children into trusting to money for everything that is worth having. — Money is to raise them in the world, to get them friends, to make them shine in society; and from this springs the extravagance in dress, equipages, and living which distinguishes the so- called "parvenus " and " nouveaux riches." — Hence, too, the flashy and obtrusive manners, the " bad style," which gives so much offence to quiet folks, and which perhaps too often causes them to fix the stigma of vulgarity upon everything connected with " trade." In order to see British vulgarity exhibited in its most exuberant and full-blown state, we have only to take a trip on the Continent in the autumn. There we shall meet at every turn with smart, demonstrative, loud-voiced fellow-country- men, whose presence makes us uneasy, and whose 52 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. manners wc resent as a slur ujion our national re- putation. — Where do they come from, these hordes of noisy, inflated i)eople, whom the French, Ger- mans, and Swiss are criticising with undisguised aversion, as being fair representatives of English ladies and gentlemen ? We wonder ! for at home we see them but in twos and threes, and we had no idea that this right little tight little island contained so many of the species. We are annoyed to think that they cannot or will not stay at home until they have learnt to behave themselves, if not to talk the grammar of i-^;;/^ language, but that they must needs go forth into foreign countries to spread unfavourable opinions of this " nation of shop-keepers." Well, I hope that these things will right themselves as the march of intellect advances. — Meanwhile, to go back to ourselves. — Charlie, you know, wishes to be a clergyman. Well, he will probably have to be a poor man all his life, but he is earnest and hard- working ; his society and his pleasure will be in his books and his work, and mother and I are glad that he should be willing to give himself and his jjowcrs to the work of the ministry. Tom wishes QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 53 to be a surgeon, and we are glad of that too, be- cause, excepting that of the Church, the medical profession is the most unselfish, and consequently the noblest. I cannot think of any profession (ex- cepting these two, the clerical and the medical,) that has for its object simply to do good. It would seem as if it must be easier to lead a worthy life when it is actually one's profession to go about doing good, than when occupied by a busi- ness or profession which has been adopted merely as a means of money-getting. All the same, my boy, it is not every one who can be a doctor or a clergyman, and for the rest of us, we must not think that we are the less capable of serving God and man because we are not placed in such a favourable position for the exercise of beneficence and sympathy. — God's world wants men of all kinds to make it what it is, and we must not turn away from any work which may come to us to be done any more than we may turn from any person or class of persons calling them common or un- clean. If we think of this we shall never do our work 54 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. imperfectly in a scamped half-and-half sort of way ; nor grumble at it as if we despised the state of life in which God has placed us, and as if we thought (oh, foolisli thought !) tliat we could do better in any other. — If our occupations and line of life do happen to be uninteresting and narrow, that is all llie more reason why we should try to improve ourselves, and to throw out our sympathies beyond ourselves in all possible ways, lest we should become narrow and selfish too. — Our very words — refined, cultivated, polished, — show us how much we have to do for ourselves. — Nobody is born ready cultivated, you know. His mind is only the rough soil in which tares and wheat may equally be sown. — I do not suppose that one new baby is more refined than another, and only imagine a polished baby ! There is another word — thorough-bred — which is an attractive epithet applied to a man, and which does at first sight seem to express that what the man has good about him he inherited. But on looking closely into the matter, it appears that the expres- sion a thorough-bred man applies more to the out- side of the man than to his inside, more to his QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 55 person and his company manners than to his mind and heart ; although we get so into the habit of associating thorough-bred manners with education and good feeling that the ideas become a good deal mixed up. — We cannot dissociate the thought of a coarse face, a rough voice, uncouth or demonstra- tive gestures, and in short gracelessness and ugli- ness, from the thought of coarseness of mind, and a rude and ungentle breeding. — For plainness of features is not ugliness. — We may see many plain people whose faces are far more attractive and loveable than regular beauties, and plainness is not vulgarity either, for we may see many plain persons in whose faces there is a wonderful dignity and power. — Ugliness of face I do believe is always accompanied by ugliness of mind, and if we find ourselves exclaiming what a disagreeable-looking man ! what a vulgar-looking woman ! we are almost certain to find that the mind of the person answers to the face as well as to the gestures. I was struck the other day by some observations made to me by an artist concerning the marked change which he found to take place in the counte- 56 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. nances of many of the young people who sit to him as models. — He assured me that often when lie had occasion to paint the same face after long intervals of time, he found such a transformation in the features as could only be accounted for by taking into consideration the refining to which the model had been subjected by association with minds more elevated than his own.^The picturesque but coarse featured boy or girl, if they had any intellectual powers, would become interested in the art which they saw around them, and would absorb new and improving ideas from the conversations they heard. — Sometimes they would take to reading and even to painting ; and when such was the case, the refining influence could actually be traced, not only in the superior intelligence of the expression, but in the alteration of the features. Foreheads would widen, noses lengthen and fine down, and a different type of face would be j^roduced. It therefore becomes a question how much any of us are responsible for the shape of our own noses, and that opens a wide door; but, joking apart, it is clear there is much in the matter of looks and QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 57 voice (not to mention gesture) which we can do for ourselves. The most homely features are beautified by the light of intelligence and by the soft smile of a loving nature, and if to these is added a gentle and grace- ful manner, who will dare to call the plainest person ugly 2 Sir Francis Bacon says that " In beauty, that of favour (or features) is more than that of colour ; and that of decent and gracious motion, more than that of favour," and " That is the best part of beauty which a picture cannot express ; no, nor the first sight of the life." — And why is that ? but that beauty of mind is able to compensate for, if not to overcome, the imperfections of the face. — On the other hand, a good set of features and a superior air may be handed down to us by a long line of respectable ancestors. We may be happy in the possession of the family nose or " the trick of the nether lip," but gentle manners, " a decent and gracious motion," the " voice ever gentle and low," which is as excellent a thing in a man as Lear declared it to be in a woman, these are not 5& QUITE A GENTLEMAN. inherited ; if we had been changed at birth and brought up in the gutter, we should have had none of them ; they arc the resuUs of gentle teaching, much more than of gentle birth. And so, my boy, you will ne\-er wonder that mother and I are so anxious to see you thriving at school, and getting on in lessons and play. — For what is the object of all this ? It is to make an English gentleman of you, large hearted, large minded, unselfish, upright, honourable. — Ah ! that reminds me — How is it that neither you nor mother have had a word to say about Honour or Truth, that very backbone of the manly mind ? I suppose that we all take it for granted that a dishonourable, shirky, shifty, un- truthful gentleman is an impossible creature. — "There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame as to be found false, for a lie faces God and is a coward to man." — Yet it is a melancholy fact, that there are a great many persons passing for gentlemen who tliough they would shrink from utter- ing a positive falsehood, yet act and speak very dishonestly ; and so, at the risk of making my letter QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 59 a very long one, I want to talk to you a little about what Honour or Truth really is. Is it anything more or less than a principle of respect for others, which allows no thought of ourselves, nor of whether or not we may suffer or lose by being straightforward. — We are told that " the heart of man is deceitful above all things," and it is sometimes a very difficult thing to make a little child or an ignorant person understand in what the sin of story-telling consists. — It seems to be natural that under fear of punishment the un- taught child or the savage should " make lies their refuge," and if he has had the sad and too common experience that an outspoken lie brings a more severe punishment than any other sort of falseness, he learns to shuffle and prevaricate, and to act lies which he dares not express in words. — But although dread of punishment may sometimes force out an unwilling truth which would not otherwise have been extracted, it will never produce love of truth as a principle, for that grows out of a far different sentiment — Love to man for love of God, which is indeed truest Christianity. 6o QUITE A GENTLEMAN. For, my dear boy, great as Truth is, tliere is still something greater — it is tliis Love or Christian Charity. — David often calls this tenderness for other people Mercy. — The "new commandment," which made it a duty for us to love one another, and to return good for evil, had not been given in David's day, but his great love to God made his heart alive to the feeling of sympathy for God's creatures, as we feel in reading those beautiful psalms which are so warm and comfortable to us. — I have observed that on the twelve occa- sions when David speaks of Mercy and Truth together he invariably places Mercy first, and in many other verses where Goodness or Loving- Kindness is used instead of Mercy, the same order occurs. — Solomon, too, speaks four times of Mercy and Truth, but never of I'ruth and Mercy ; and throughout the Bible wherever the same con- junction is found (and it is very frecjuent) the same fact is presented to us — namely, that kindness, con- sideration for others is to come before bare truth — or in other words, that Truth must be with Love, unselfish and for the good of others ; or else it may QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 6i degenerate into all sorts of mean and self-seeking little vices, like gossip and tale-bearing, or swell into coarseness and vituperation. Those terrible persons who always speak their minds, and glory in it, who say what they think, in season and out of season, simply err in this respect, they place Truth before Love. They seem afraid of being kind if they do not quite like you, lest they should be swerving from the truth by letting you suppose that they do. — But if we do not approve of people it is for something that they say or do which jars or displeases us, and we shall not improve matters by acting in a way which jars and displeases them in return. — The truths spoken by such people do us no good, we shrink from them. If we are told that they are good souls though rather blunt, we resent it and are sorry that it should be possible to be so good and so unpleasing. — Downright and honest they may be, but we are not inclined to allow that they are gentlefolks, since they have not learned to mingle kindness with their plain speaking. 62 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. Good society is not too plain spoken ; it does not put forward unnecessary and unpleasant truths, it avoids personalities, tries not to tread upon one's mental toes, endures bores though it does not like them, and on the whole does its best to make people pleased as well as pleasing. — With this view society has framed a long code of laws, descending to very small details, telling us how to begin, end, and address our letters, how to return thanks for invitations, how to decline to receive visitors, how to express our acknowledgment of small attentions, and many other similar things. — The rising genera- tion are too much disposed to overlook or openly to deride the minor rules and regulations which society has instituted, and consequently we see less of refined good taste and behaviour than might be expected in these days of high-class education, and it appears to me that the idea of Mercy coming before Truth has not yet taken possession of men's minds. — We heard it argued at a dinner party a short time ago that our present forms of address in letter writing are "all humbug," that we write " Dear so-and so," and end " Yours affectionately," QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 63 when so-and-so is not dear but obnoxious ; that we say we are much obHged for a kind invitation when we are not obHged at all, but think it a horrible bore; that we go to call on our acquaintance, hoping that they will be out, and invite them to our houses, hoping that they will not come ; and that all this is insincerity and sham. — I cannot agree to this, for everyone knows that all such things are but forms adopted by general consent to enable us to conduct business or to hold communication with people of various kinds, and of various degrees of closeness to ourselves, without rudeness, or pre- sumption, and with due respect for the feelings of all. If in our letters we use forms less forcible or more forcible than usage or the rules of society prescribe, then we are taking the matter into our own hands, and must beware lest we may be thought impertinent, or give cause for offence and coldness. — So too, when mother is too busy or unwell to be able to receive visitors, she begs the servant to say " Not at home." If she were to announce that she was too much engaged to see visitors, she might 64 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. hurt somebody's feelings; for if the same person came twice and received the same answer lie might think it odd and unfriendly that mother should be in the house and yet twice refuse to see him ; but society kindly steps in, and invents a form of speech in order to meet such contingencies; every- body is supposed to know that " Not at home " means " Not able to receive visitors," and so nobody is aggrieved. No rules or ceremonies would be required if we all liked each othervery much. — In speaking or writing to real friends we say whatever comes into our minds, for we know that it will all be taken kindly ; and so with everything else; if we are dealing with those who, we are sure, love us truly, we do not require a book of etiquette nor a code of laws, we are not afraid that they will misunderstand us, or put any but the best and kindest interpretation on our words or deeds. — But with the outer world this cannot be. We have to do with a great many people who do not know us, and who if they did, might not fc;ncy us nor we them ; but we need not tell each other this, and so make matters worse, QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 65 like that impolite young person in the nursery rhymes : — "I do not like you, Dr. Fell, • The reason why I cannot tell, But this indeed I know full well, I do not like you, Dr. Fell." This is a state of mind with which we can all sympathize, but we must not give vent to our senti- ments, all the same, because it might be unpleasant to Dr. Fell.— So when we examine anything con- ventional in the habits of social life, we are sure to find that it is based upon the assumption — a good and proper assumption — that we wash well to people, and that even as regards those whom we do not like, we will do nothing which may annoy them or diminish the chance of our some day coming to a better understanding. — Such a desire is not con- temptible but right, it is the foundation of all true politeness and good manners, and is as different a thing from humbug and toadying, as a smile is from a grin. — I wonder if I have been firing over your head, or whether you follow what I have been trying to explain. — Any how, before you tear up this lengthy epistle for the next paper chace, I beg F 66 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. you to read it a second time, that there may be a better chance of some of these words of wisdom sticking to your memory. — By this time you must repent of your wish for a long letter from me, as much as the man repented of wishing the black- pudding at the end of his wife's nose. However, to make honourable amends for all that you must undergo in reading it, I will add the welcome news that you need not apswer it, for no doubt you are beginning to be busy with the exami- nations, and besides, this is rather an essay than a letter. The girls I know keep you well posted in the family news, so I prefer to write you a bit of my mind, and am pleased to think that you are intelligent enough to be able not only to read, but to "weigh and consider." Ever, my dear boy, Your affectionate Father. QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 67 My Dear Father, T is very good of you to write me such IS "' a long letter, and it would be very ll}^) unsrateful of me (and mother saj'S ^!^ Wsri) 1^=/* (.]^g^(- jg ungentlemanlike too) if I did not answer you. Haven't we had quite a debate ? I want to be in the debating society so much. I like to hear a thing talked about till we cannot think of any more to say about it. — I never should have thought there could be so much to say about a gentleman. I thought it meant a nice polite person, who was pretty well off and all that, but I never thought of all gentlemen having one thing the same in them, and how much we could do to make ourselves nice. — Mr. May quite agrees with you about Truth ; he says that no little child would be untruthful unless he was first afraid of something, and that however untruthful people may be there seems to be a natural liking for truth, so that people admire it in others even when they 68 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. do not practise it themselves. — Quite savage nations find out that EngHsh people are on the whole truthful, and they like us for that. — I hope we shall go on being thought truthful and honourable by other nations. I should not like to belong to a mean, sneaky nation. — Mr. May says that he is sure you can make people straightforward or crooked to you by your own way of speaking. — He knows masters to whom, in a row, certain boys are sure to tell stories and make shirky excuses, when those same boys are cjuitc truthful and straightforAvard to himself. — Maxwell says his father had a groom who used to tell most dreadful fiilsehoods to the coach- man. One day Mr. Maxwell had this groom up to speak to him about this, and the groom said, " I assure you, sir, I never tell any but the most neces- sary lies." Wasn't that good? Of course he thought it necessary to tell a lie if he was likely to get into a row. — And talking about disagreeable plain truths, Mr. May told us another story which was about David Roberts, the painter. — One day an acquaintance of his published a very sharp criticism QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 69 on one of his pictures, and then wrote to him abruptly Uke this :— " My dear Roberts, I dare say you have seen my critique on your picture ; I hope that it will make no difference in our friendship. Yours truly, &c., &c." To which the artist wrote back : — " My dear So and So, The next time that I meet you I shall pull your nose ; I hope that it will make no difference in our friendship " ; and as an instance that when we have to make a complaint we should be extra polite, unless we wish to get set down, he told us another story which makes me laugh whenever I think of it, so I must tell you. There was rather a grand old gentleman, who lived next door to a vulgar, stuck-up little man, who was always huffy because the old gentleman did not call upon him. — One day the old gentleman re- ceived this letter : — " Mr. Brown's compliments to General O , and sees no reason why his 'piggs ' should run in my garden." To which the old gen- tleman sent back this answer :— " General O— — 's compliments to Mr. Brown, and sees no reason why he should spell pigs with two g's." — And now I 70 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. must say good-bye. — Does mother think we have settled what is a gentleman, and come to an end about him ? I am quite sorry. Love to all, and ar'n't we jolly near the holidays. Your affectionate Harry. QUITE A GENTLEMAN. 71 ES, dear Harry, we all think that, .^ thanks to your kind friends, we have brought our nivestigations to a suc- cessful issue, and fairly ventilated the subject. — And now, since we seem to know so well what gentility is, not only so, but let us prac- tise what we know. We are counting the days to the holidays with as much eagerness as you do. — Wonderful plots are beginning to brew, surreptitious manufactures seem to be going on in the school- room and nursery, mysterious brown paper parcels are delivered at the house, but disappear before I can get a sight of them — spirited away in the most unaccountable manner ; and such a scuffling and plunging into drawers and cupboards takes place if I enter any of the chief seats of manufacture unex- pectedly, that I am obliged respectfully to announce my coming by a tap at the door. — -The only expla- nation that I can get of all this is, " Oh, Christmas is coming, Christmas is so near ! " — Well, in the midst of all the bustle and cheerfulness and family 72 QUITE A GENTLEMAN. fun of Happy Christmas we will never forget— will ^vc ? — the life-giving spirit of peace and good-will which should pervade it all ; the consideration and unselfishness which makes home so plqasant and so dear, and without which never was there any good deed done, nor good thing thought ; without which never was there a good poet, nor a good soldier, nor a good king, nor a good cricketer, nor even, dear Harry — Quite a Gentleman. Your loving Mother. ELZEVIR PRESS :— PRINTED BY JOHN C. WILKINS AND VERNON, 9, CASTLE STREET, CHA.NXERV LANE. THE LIBRARY ,jj,IVERSlTY OF CAUFOUNIA LOS ANGELLS This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. REMINGTON RAND INC. 20 213 (533) AA 000 386 3867 PR 3991 A1Q48 .:Xii^-miil^K'!'?^- I