Part 11

The best guide for a boy in forming Friendships is to choose none for his friend whom his father or mother would disapprove of, if they knew all about him.

No. XX.

GENTLEMANLINESS

+The four chief marks of a gentleman are: Honesty, Gentleness, Generosity, Modesty.+

Thackeray, who is noted among great English writers as a hater of shams, said: "Perhaps a gentleman is a rarer man than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant, whose want of meanness makes them simple, who can look the world honestly in the face with an equal manly sympathy for the great and small? We all know a hundred whose coats are very well made, and a score who have excellent manners, and one or two happy beings who are what they call in the inner circles, and have shot into the very centre of fashion; but of gentlemen, how many?"

These four qualities of the gentleman include more than might appear at a single glance. Honesty means far more than not stealing. The "gentleman's psalm" tells us as one of his characteristics that "he speaketh the truth in his heart." He who does that is honest in his words, in his deeds, and in his thoughts. He so hates dishonesty that honesty has become part of his life--it is in his heart. Such a man can look the world in the face without flinching. He is the most fearless of men, because he has nothing to hide from the light of day. As one great man once said of another, "He has the ten commandments stamped upon his countenance." Here, then, to be honest is to be brave also; we cannot imagine a true gentleman as a coward.

The second quality is Gentleness. It is hard for a boy to be gentle, because he spends most of the time during which he controls his own actions with other boys, and gentleness is not much called for. Some boys look upon this quality as womanish, the mark of a coward, a thing to be avoided. But what should we say of a boy who roughly handled a bird with a broken wing? All boys possess this quality of Gentleness, because it is founded on sympathy with the sufferings of the weak. If a small boy falls and breaks his arm, how eagerly the bigger boys come to his assistance, and how careful they are to touch the broken limb with all tenderness! The feeling of sympathy makes them gentle. No boy is without this God-given faculty. It is there to begin with, and if a boy wish to become a gentleman he must cultivate it, as he does his other powers. It is a faculty soon lost if we neglect it; it is easy to learn to be rough and loud-mouthed, and roughness soon leads to cruelty. The true gentleman practises Gentleness towards the weak at all times, whether they are suffering or not. The boy should learn it in his own home; that is the best and easiest place to learn it. It is easy to be gentle with one's mother; it is a bad-hearted boy who suffers himself to be rough in his speech, or rude in his manner, to her. The same rule of Gentleness should be steadily observed towards his sisters and younger and weaker brothers. He who has thus practised gentleness in his home will go out into the world a character actually trained to be gentle to those weaker than himself, and to be sympathetic towards the sorrows and sufferings of the unfortunate.

The third mark of a gentleman is Generosity. By this I do not mean open-handedness about money. Lavish liberality may be only another name for careless imprudence. By Generosity is meant the utter absence of selfishness. Aristotle called his true gentleman the magnanimous man. Generosity is large-heartedness. It involves the absence of all thought of self, and a never-failing consideration for the feelings of others. Such a man was Sir James Outram. When the English army was marching to the relief of Lucknow, Sir James, who was the senior officer, allowed Havelock to take command, and to win the glory of the siege, and himself went in a subordinate position. Of him it was said that he was "one of the bravest, and yet gentlest, of men; respectful and reverent to women, tender to children, helpful to the weak, stern to the corrupt, honest as day, and pure as virtue." When Edward the Black Prince took the French king and his son prisoners at the battle of Poictiers, he gave a banquet for them in the evening, and he insisted on waiting upon and serving them at the table. At the battle of Dettingen a squadron of French cavalry charged an English regiment, and the two leaders found themselves opposed to each other. The young French officer raised his sword to attack his opponent, when he saw that he had only one arm, with which he held his bridle. Instead of cutting him down, the Frenchman saluted him with his sword, and passed on.

The fourth mark of a gentleman is Modesty about his actions and opinions. Nothing more surely marks his opposite in society than self-assertiveness and bragging. The true gentleman never boasts of what he has done. On the other hand, he does not seek to belittle a good action for which he is praised. If such an action comes to general notice, he accepts the praise justly offered, and then seeks by silence, or by changing the topic of conversation, to withdraw particular notice from himself. He is content to do and let others talk. Sir Isaac Newton was one of the most modest men. He kept secret for a long time some of his greatest discoveries for fear of the notoriety they would bring him. He did not publish his marvellous discoveries of the Binomial Theorem and the Law of Gravitation for years, and when he published his solution of the theory of the moon's rotation round the earth he forbade the publisher to insert his name. The true gentleman is modest about his opinions. Comparatively few have deeds to boast about; but all have opinions to advance. We should guard against asserting them too strongly, or attempting to force them down people's throats. If an opinion is true or valuable, it is sure to make its own way by reason of its own force; it is only weakened by the loud assertion of the man of rude manner and coarse nature. It is a wise saying of the great apostle: "Not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think." The old Hebrew poet thought the highest type of gentleman him "that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart."

No. XXI.

COURTESY

+Courtesy is kindness of heart, combined with good manners. It is the special mark of a gentleman, particularly in his treatment of those in a humbler position than himself.+

One of the most famous schools in England, founded by William of Wykeham, in the reign of Henry III., has for its motto the words, "Manners maketh the man." Though this does not express the whole truth, it is, nevertheless, undoubtedly true that many a man owes his success in life to his good manners. Two boys leaving school desire to enter a bank. One is a boy of very pleasing manners; the other, though, perhaps, possessing greater ability, is unpolished in appearance, and gruff in manner. If the bank manager has reason to believe them fairly equal in knowledge and ability, he will take the pleasant-mannered youth in preference to the other, because he believes in securing a clerk who will be civil to customers, and obliging to all with whom he comes in contact. It is worth while, then, to cultivate politeness in speech and manner. A famous woman once said: "Civility costs nothing, and buys everything."

We must be careful to distinguish between Politeness and Courtesy. Any one can learn certain rules of Politeness, even though he be coarse at heart. Some men put on Politeness with their evening coats, but are the reverse of polite in their everyday garb. To such men Politeness is like varnish or veneer; scratch them on the surface, or merely rub them the wrong way, and their real nature comes out.

Politeness is an excellent thing when it is joined to genuine kindness of heart. It then becomes Courtesy. Courtesy is Kindness and Politeness joined together and exhibited at all times to all persons, no matter what their rank in life. The man who is kind to his servant, and speaks politely to him at one time, and at another gets into a furious temper and abuses him, has not learned Courtesy. Courtesy implies a certain gentleness in dealing with other people. It is a mistake to think that Manliness and Gentleness do not go together. The strongest and most manly men are noted for their quietness of disposition. Not only are they not self-assertive, but they are actually gentle to the weak.

Courtesy comes easily to some people; to others it is difficult. Some persons are naturally open and unreserved in their nature; others are reserved and shy, and it is hard to get at them. Boys and young men often suffer far more than people think on account of shyness, which keeps them from being openly friendly with people whom they do not know well. This shyness is sometimes put down to bad temper, or moroseness, or sometimes even to a desire to be rude. How earnestly should the boy or young man strive to get rid of a failing which may be the unfortunate cause of doing him so much harm in the eyes of others!

Bacon says: "If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them." If you wish to be known as a courteous man, begin at once to do little acts of kindness to others. Acts of kindness form the basis of true Courtesy. Lord Chesterfield said: "The desire to please is, at least, half the art of doing it." If we wish to learn how to get a reputation for Courtesy, we must make an effort to do what others like, though we may not care about it ourselves. Many a man owes his success in life to doing pleasant things in a pleasant way. The headmaster of one of the greatest public schools in England said: "Courtesy begets Courtesy; it is a passport to popularity. The way in which things are done is often more important than the things themselves." Another writer has said: "A good deed is never lost. He who sows Courtesy reaps friendship."

To be Courteous, we must not only do kindnesses; we must do them in a pleasing manner. "Manner will do everything. Give a young fellow on setting out in life a good manner, and he will want neither meat, drink, nor clothes. 'I like that lad,' some one says, 'he has such nice off-hand manners.'" "Sir Walter Raleigh was every inch a man, a brave soldier, a brilliant courtier, and yet a mirror of Courtesy. Nobody would accuse Sir Philip Sidney of having been deficient in manliness, yet his fine manners were proverbial. It is the Courtesy of Bayard, the knight, sans peur et sans reproche, which has immortalized him quite as much as his valour." Burke said: "Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. Manners are what vex, soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in."

Dr. Johnson once said: "Sir, a man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one--no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down." We should be especially courteous to servants and those below us in the world. A great man returned the salute of a negro who had bowed to him. Some one told him that what he had done was very unusual. "Perhaps so," said he, "but I would not be outdone in good manners by a negro."

The truly courteous man is never caught napping. He is courteous not only in crowds, where every one can see him, or in social life, among his equals; but also in little things, at odd moments, when no one of importance is by, and to the poor and ignorant. He is courteous, too, in his own home. That, perhaps, is the final and hardest test of all. It is easy to be polite when we are out at a party of friends, though even there it is sometimes hard to show real Courtesy. In giving advice to young men, Thackeray said: "Ah, my dear fellow, take this counsel: Always dance with the old ladies, always dance with the governesses!" He meant: show your gentlehood by being kind to those who have not many friends. But it is hard to be Courteous in the home when things do not please us, and we are out with the world. Yet it is there we must begin to practise Courtesy. It is there we must learn that kindness, and cheerfulness, and good manners which will earn for us the epitaph of Tennyson's friend:

"And thus he bore without abuse The grand old name of gentleman."

No. XXII.

REPENTANCE

+We are often sorry when we do wrong; this is the first step towards Repentance; but Repentance itself is more than being sorry; it is ceasing to do wrong, and beginning to do right.+

Man differs from the most intelligent of the lower animals in having a moral nature, called a soul; that is, he is responsible for his actions. One great evidence of this is to be found in the fact that, after he has done evil, his conscience generally reproaches him sharply, and he feels remorse, which is the keen pain brought about by the memory of wrongdoing. But we must not mistake this pain of remorse for Repentance. It should be the beginning of Repentance; but Repentance itself must go much further than that.

Two men with evil-looking faces were seen to enter a great church in Rome one day, where, in little chapels attached to the church, people were making confession of their sins to the priests, and obtaining absolution from them. These two men looked as though something very serious was weighing on their minds, as they searched for a priest to whom to confess. A short time after they had found one, they were again seen, coming down the aisle of the church, laughing together, and looking as jolly as possible. Next day they were arrested for attacking a traveller on the highway and almost murdering him. Probably those two men felt the pangs of remorse when they were in the church seeking to confess their sins. But there was no Repentance, because they went back at once to their evil courses.

A sick man was said by his doctor to be dying. His clergyman came to see him, and begged him to be reconciled to a neighbour with whom he had had a serious quarrel. At last he consented, and when the neighbour was brought to his bedside they had a short, friendly conversation, and shook hands. But as the neighbour was leaving the room, the sick man called out: "But you must remember this stands for nothing if I get better again." There was no real Repentance in the sick man's heart.

A man who had been living a very careless and sinful life went to hear a great man preach. The sermon had such an effect upon him that his conscience became very uneasy, and he felt keen remorse for the evil of his life, and determined to stop it all and begin again in a different way. He first went to see a neighbour who scoffed at religious things, and who, the moment he went in, began to ask him about the great preacher, and to make fun of him for paying much attention to what was "absurd, and all a lie." The man replied: "Never mind the preacher just now; I want to tell you about a very serious matter. Four years ago you lost two fine sheep out of your flock, and though you searched everywhere you could not find them. Those sheep came into my pasture field, and I caught them, and marked my brand on top of yours, and so they were not discovered. But I have now come to tell you of the matter, and to put myself in your hands. You can, if you like, have me arrested, or I will pay you whatever you ask." The neighbour was astonished, but at last said he would take the value of the sheep, with interest on the money from the time they were stolen. The man paid this down, and then doubled the amount. After he had gone his neighbour began to think that the sort of religion which made a man confess a sin long past, and which no one could ever find out, must have some reality about it, and he scoffed no more. That is a case of genuine Repentance.