of the little courtesies which make so much of the sunshine of life.

There are children who in their hearts love and venerate their parents, who nevertheless shamefully neglect the visible and audible manifestation of their love and veneration. Both parents and children should know that love is a plant that needs to put forth leaves, flowers, and fruit, lest, hardy as it is, it may languish and die.

There are men, too, you are quite as likely to find them on the farm or in the backwoods as in the most crowded city, "Nature's noblemen," who are always polite, not according to any prescribed code of etiquette, but from the unerring instinct of native refinement and a kind and noble heart. Theirs is the only politeness which has the true ring. I make a distinction between true politeness and mere external polish : the one is solid gold, only brightened by the wear of daily life like the gold eagle passed from hand to hand; the other is but gilding, which soon wears off and shows the base, corroded metal beneath.

But the purest gold is sometimes hidden under a surface of base metal; it is good, indeed, to know that the gold is there, and that it will come out when emergency demands it, but how much better that it should always gladden the eye! Let there be no base metal. either within or without.

Granting, then, that the heart is good and true, how shall the manners be polished? I have spoken of men whose unerring instinct makes them always polite. But goodness of heart alone is not enough to give them this unerring instinct: there must be also refinement and good taste.

In manners as well as in morals it is not safe for men to judge the standards of others by their own. What is good enough for them is not necessarily good enough for others. A half-blind man should not rely upon his

own perception in preparing things for others to see. Untidy and ill-fitting garments may not offend their wearers, but their wearers should not suppose, therefore, that others will view them with like indifference. A generous, whole-souled fellow may drum with grimy fingers upon his plate, or use his knife instead of his fork, with the most serene complacency, totally oblivious of the fact that he is inflicting a sort of mild torture upon his neighbors, who never did him any harm. This is neither polite nor benevolent; it is not doing as he would be done by. He should know that all skins are not as thick as his own.

Trumbull Butters.

But how can he be blamed if he

does n't know any better?

Dr. Dix. He has no right not to know any better; he has no right to be guided by his own standard of taste and comfort where the taste and comfort of others are concerned. If he is to mingle with other people it is his duty to learn their requirements in manners as well as in morals. In fact, as I have already plainly said, good manners are properly included in good morals. No man can justly be a law unto himself in respect to either he must abide by the accepted laws, and it is a recognized principle of all law that an offender cannot be exculpated on the plea of ignorance.

Lucy Snow. I confess I never thought of the rules of etiquette in that light before.

Dr. Dix. Is it not the right light? The laws of good manners are as truly laws as are those of the civil government; the rewards of obedience and the penalties of disobedience are as assured.

Now, the man who drums with grimy fingers on his plate, and substitutes his knife for his fork, is an extreme case of ignorance and vulgarity. He and others like him are not the only persons who are satisfied with too low a standard of good breeding. The girl who shouts from the school-room window to a companion

across the street, who tears her French exercise into tiny bits and showers them down upon the floor in serene obliviousness of the uneasiness they cause her more tidy neighbors, who talks commonplace slang at home and abroad, apparently indifferent to, but secretly proud of, the attention she is attracting from total strangers - how should she know that their glances betoken either disgust or an admiration that she would rather not awaken ? - who is affable and sweet to those who care little for her and for whom she cares as little, but is cross and snappish to those who are all the world to her and to whom she is all the world, this girl, most certainly, has too low a standard. She may have a heart of gold, but it is so deeply buried under the outside coating of dross that it is difficult to believe in its existence, until some crucial test comes to burn away the dross and reveal the gold pure and shining.

And the boy who swaggers and swears, with the absurd notion that he is exciting general admiration for his spirit and dash, instead of contempt and dislike from all except those on or below his own low plane; who complacently sports his flashy jewelry (the African savage shows precisely the same complacency in his monstrous adornments); who makes himself obnoxious. by his aggressive conduct in the public thoroughfares and conveyances; who treats with flippant disrespect those whose superior age, wisdom, and worth entitle them to his profound reverence; who is unchivalrous to the other sex, especially his own mother and sisters, this boy most assuredly has too low a standard, both of benevolence and of good breeding.

Jonathan Tower. Is n't something more than benevolence, native refinement, and good taste needed to make people always polite?

Dr. Dix. I said that one who has these qualifications will always be polite, though he may not conform to any prescribed code of etiquette.

Joseph Cracklin. That does n't matter much, does it?

Dr. Dix. The education that one acquires in cultivated society bears the same relation to manners that the education of school and college bears to intelligence and learning. One can be self-taught in both directions; but it is no more than reasonable to suppose that the combined judgment and good taste of many learned and cultivated people are superior to those of one person, however intelligent and refined by nature.

It is the habit of some persons to speak slightingly of the rules of etiquette; but they are generally those who know little of them. More intimate knowledge would convince them that, for the most part, these rules are founded in common sense and pure benevolence, that they are the very best that can be devised to secure the highest degree of ease, comfort, and refined pleasure in social intercourse.

XXXIX.

PROFANITY AND OBSCENITY.

Dr. Dix. Pro, before; fanum, a temple. So the old Romans compounded the word from which comes our word profane.

We picture to ourselves a low-browed, villainouslooking lout standing before the portico of a noble edifice, and with insulting gestures pouring upon it a torrent of vulgar abuse. What to him is the spotless purity of that Pentelican marble, the ineffable grace of those fluted columns with their exquisitely chiselled. capitals? What to him is that realization of the poet's loftiest dream, the marble imagery of the pediment; or the majestic symmetry of the whole structure, which seems instinct with the spirit of the goddess whose superb figure stands within?

He sees them all, the columns, the smooth, pure walls, the sculptured gods and nymphs; but they inspire no noble awe or tender admiration in his baseborn soul. He stands there like a dragon befouling them with his fetid breath.

It matters not that the temple he profanes is the sanctuary of a pagan religion, that the divinity he insults exists only in the imagination of a deluded people. It is enough that the temple is a sanctuary, that the divinity is to many far nobler souls than his own a cherished reality, that to many other noble souls who may not believe in the religion they represent, they are, at least, the expression of a lofty ideal of beauty, power, and majesty.

Louisa Thompson. That was the way in which the