The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1885-08-28

TuCt COulSS.
1t will be guessed that we do not
entirely and implicitly agree with
all that we are in the habit of read
ing in the pages of Ouida and Co.
Still, we have no wish to deny that
our aristocrats, as rule, have
pretty manners, very pretty manners
indeed. What really surprises us is
that these accomplished writer's seem
to imagine that the rich and well
born of other countries are to
great extent destitute of these
graces, and that the British "heavy
SWELL is q specimen of the genus
homo to all intents and purposes
unique, 1t would be very easy to
point out the magnitude of this mis-
take. The intelligent and impartial
amongst those who have seen the
ways of many men and their cities
will tell you that the manners of the
Gentiles, using the word in its clas-
steal acceptation, are now very
similar all the world over, and that
the same "hig-lif iargon is to be
heard, and the same "torm " seen,
in the Prado as in the Bots de
Boulogne, at Jerome Park as at
Goodwood. Besides, the manners
of the rich and noble, of the mag
mates of the earth and minions of
fortune. have always been notice
able for flneness, suavity, and re-
pose. The records of the past are
full of examples. Alexander the
Great, when not in liquor, must have
been man of wonderful dignity
and department, and Pericles
and Alcibiades are instances which
will be readily recalled. Again,
what plungcr of to-day, we should
like to know, on the eve of Il bad
settling, would show the same cool
ness and airy contempt of fate
which julius Caesar exhibited when
he left Rome to better himself in
Gaul, with debts amounting to mil
lions of our money on his shoulders?
And Augustus Caesar was just like
his uncle, only, if possible, "more
so.'' And, not to multiply illustra-
tons, what number of high-born
heroes and herones, faithful and
devoted in life, calm and self-sus-
tanned in death, did the lurid and
blood-dripping torch of the French
Revolution show forth to an admir-
ing and revering world!
| The fact of the matter is that
pretty manners come naturally to
those who from their birth have all
the crooked paths of life made
straight for them, and all the rough
places smooth. "It isn't them as
has money!" says Lord Tennyson's
Northern Farmer, "as breaks into
houses and Steals His lordship
is quite right: why should they?
Similarly, the members of our
aristocratic, that is, of our here
ditarily wealthy class, have no oc-
casion to adopt the sharp, abrupt
manner and style of speaking which
people who have to work for their
daily bread, men of business, and
the poor generally, find that the
tenor of their lives and the force of
their surroundings compel them to
assume. Can our eyes have the
languorous love-light in them when
we are being told that the water will
be cut off next week? or can we
stroke our tawny boards, and smile
lazily whilst the landlord, the bill
of-sale-man, and the representative
of the Hire-Purchase Furnishing
Company are .disputing as to which
of the trio has the best right to re-
move and sell our !'sticks" ? Scarce
ly. A man may commence life with
a temper for which the epithet
angelic is mild and colorless praise,
but if he is fated to bear fardels
and endure poverty and its con-
comitant annoyances and inconven-
fences throughout his career, he will
be something more than human if
he does not ultimately develop a
general nastiness'' comparable to
that of the spirit in the arabian
Nights, who was kept in bond in a
bottle at the bottom of lake by the
all-powerful seal of Solomon, till he
made up his mind to kill the. I'M
fortunate who should find and re-
lease him, instead of offering him
an adequate reward, as he had at
first proposed to do.
Briefly, the tyrant circumstance,
to use an expressive phrase of Ralph
Waldo Emerson's, has in the vast
majority of cases the first and last
word to say on this question and if
the authors of to-day really cannot
write novels of plot and incident, it
is at any rate high time for them to
cast about for fresher materials fol-
the manufacture of their stuff than