That hope casts its light over the efforts of years that are past, and gilds for me, with ineffaceable glow, the future of our race.
The lecture, "Is Polite Society Polite?" was written for a course of lectures given some years ago by the New England Women's Club of Boston. "Greece Revisited" was first read before the Town and Country Club of Newport, R.I. "Aristophanes" and "Dante and Beatrice" were written for the Summer School of Philosophy at Concord, Mass. "The Halfness of Nature" was first read before the Boston Radical Club. "The Salon in America" was written for the Contemporary Club in Philadelphia.
WHY do we ask this question? For reasons which I shall endeavor to make evident.
The life in great cities awakens a multitude of ambitions. Some people are very unscrupulous in following these ambitions, attaining their object either by open force and pushing, or by artful and cunning manoeuvres. And so it will happen that in the society which considers itself entitled to rank above all other circles one may meet with people whose behavior is guided by no sincere and sufficient rule of conduct. Observing their shortcomings, we may stand still and ask, Are these people what they should be? Is polite society polite?
For this society, which is supposed to be nothing if not polite, does assume, in every place, to set up the standard of taste and to regulate the tone of manners. It aims to be what Hamlet once was in Ophelia's eyes--"the glass of fashion and the mould of form." Its forms and fashions change, of course, from age to age, and yet it is a steadfast institution in the development of human civilization.
I should be sorry to overstate its shortcomings, but I wish I might help it to feel its obligations and to fulfil them.
What shall we accept in the ordinary sense of men as politeness? Shall we consider it a mere surface polish--an attitude expressive of deference--corresponding to no inward grace of good feeling? Will you like to live with the person who, in the great world, can put on fine manners, but who, in the retirement of home, manifests the vulgarity of a selfish heart and an undisciplined temper?
No, you will say; give me for my daily companions those who always wear the best manners they have. For manners are not like clothes: you can mend them best when you have them on.