The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1885-08-28
Chr 1ailg g llletin.
FRIDAY, AUG. %, 1885.
PRETTY MANNERS.

he COllcuN VI uihllilplo 10 as CA
tinct as the dodo or long credit. If
the critical and refined public of
1885 wants wit and humor it can
regale itself with Punch, and if it
requires the occasional Utilization of
piguante improperly it can obtain
it attain absurdly cheap rate in the
columns of an evening paper. The
works of Congreve and, Farquhar,
Sheridan and Coleman, are seldom
or never given in our theatres, and
are probably only read by those
fossilised bookworms who obstin-
ately affect to see in them con-
siderably more brilliancy,. true
knowledge of the world, and literary
merit, than is to be found in such
modern masterpieces of stage
authorship and stage-carpentering
as On tie Pld,,hs and The Flesh and
tie Devil. 1t is the novel which
holds the mirror up to the nature Of
to-day. Not the novel of incident
and intrigue, in which the hero and
heroine are always young, hand
some, and accomplished, and the
"bad people" as invariably ugly
and middle-aged, if not old, and in
which episodes connected with
forged wills, missing heirs-at-law,
shipwrecks, bigamies, and murders
are headed up thick as leaves in
Vallambrosa; but what might not
inaptly be called the novel of man.
ners, the novel which is as much an
invention of our American cousins
as the last mangle or potato peeler,
and whose dramatis personD, male
and female, never do anything but
posture and talk about silly compli-
cations and entanglements of their
own creation, and sometimes-what
would Miss Laura Matilda have said
to this?-do not even get married
at the end of the third volume.
This kind of novel deals princi-
pally with the manners and GUS
toms of those who move in the
world of fashion, resembling the
comedy which preceded it in that
respect, and in that respect only.
The pretty manners of the members
of our aristocracy seem to afford
food for perpetual wonder and adj
miration to the authors and author
esses of books of this sort, and Mr..
George Lawrence, Madame de la
Rance, Miss Rhoda Broughton, Miss
Helen Mathers, and their host of
imitators, write as if they had been
the first to discover that the "little
ways" of what are termed the
upper classes are as rule calm,
courteous, and pleasant, and are
never tired of comparing them di-
rectly or indirectly with the coarse
speech and rough and ready habits
of the proletariat. Page after page
and chapter after chapter are de-
voted to the subject, and the fash
ionable puppets are presented again
and again to the reverent contem-
plation of the reader. The ladies
lounge dangerously on .fauteuils
(the word painter commonly drops
into French in these descriptions),
or crouch on the leopard skin before
the fire of the 6oudoir, trifling with
their diamond rings. Their amorous
eyelids droop over eyes in which the
love-rapture sparkles, and their
white, 1.-the fingers toy. The men,
the short cropped and broad Shout
dered men, the men with long ca
valry moustaches and heavy sensual
jaws, who can crumple up pewter
pots in their hands like dry leaves,
who throw big, brawny welshers
about like tennis balls, and ride
horses in the Grand National who
start at the abnormal odds of 10 to
CT on them-the men are everlast-
ingly placid and self-contained, and
seldom open their mouths except to
insert in them choice Partagas, or
imbibe the contents of those beakers
of Moselle or "cup" so loved by the
souls of the creme de la creme of
our .jeuneSse doree. To be sure, oc-
casionally the careful student may
remark that the conduct OF these
great creatures is not exactly con-
sistent, and scoffer might even go
as far as to say that they get on very
well up to the time when their i'm
perturbable sang. troid and patrician
hauteur would stand them in the
best stead, and then break down.
Speaking from long and strong ex-
perience of the works of their faith
full chroniclers, it seems to us that
they behave admirably until they
are what is vulgarly called "put
out" The chateIaine in her draw
ing-room, the M. f. II. doing the
honors of the hunting-field, and the
young guardman operating on his
cheoelTe with gold-backed hair
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