Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1888-07-12
DECLINE OF coon MANNERS.
Deterioration Of Poltcness Undue Famil
arities Between Men ana Women.

| Deterioration Of poltcness Undue Famin-
arities Between Men ana Women.
The signal deterioration of manners
that has for some time been going on in
what is called good society ia every year
becoming more glaring and more de-
plorable, says the London Standard. The
delicate and subtle difference which
every gentleman used to pay TO every
woman because she was a woman, and for
no other reason whatever, is already old.
| fashioned, and promises shortly TO be-
come obsolete. No woman now thinks
of expecting from any man the polite
! homage which once on time was the
| privilege of one sex and the honor of the
other. Men come into n room full of
| ladies with as much indifference and sans
facon as though they wore entering the
morning room of their club, and quit il
with precisely the same want of cere-
mony and self-restraint. While in the
society of women they Toll, lean, and al
most lie ut their ease, as though they
were in the bosom of their own family
! indeed, with free and easy graceess'
ness that q generation ago no gentle
man would have permitted himself among
| his most intimate relatives. In the first
approaches of members OF one sex To
members of the other there is no longer
any sauvity, any hesitation, any well
| bred regerve; men and women who
scarcely know each other act as though
| they were hail fellow well met; had been
in the playground together and had been
acquainted all their lives.
The demeanor of women, nowadays, TO
men is on a par with the male behavior
we have described. Far from resenting
| TIE unceremonlousness with which they
are treated by men who are in reality ut
ter strangers TO them, they go TO meet IL
half way and permit themselves TO be on
foot of familiarity-as far as manner
is commemorative the first conner, pro
vided he seems TO be one of their Gown
set" that could not be greater il their
acquaintance had existed for years.
The same "dont-oare. a-hang" conduct is
perceptible in the conduct of visitors and
guests to their host and hostess.
The notion that people are to be special.
! ~ honored in their own houses has gone
quite out Of fashion. No one nowadays is
so antiquited in his ideas as 70 suppose
that hospitality is to be regarded as
favor conferred on the person to whom IL
is extended On the contrary, 10 is the
guest who confers an obligation by pay
ing a call, accepting an invitation to din
der, or paying country visit, and who
has perfect right TO indulge in frank
and free eensure to his neighbors in case
he does lot find everything to his likeing
in the establishment he condescends TO
distinguish by bis presence. In a word,
guests nowadays treat hosts aud hostesses
as men treat women; that is to say, as
persona whom il is very good and amiable
/ of them to notice az all. And where
people really know each other intimately
| the behavior of men to women, and vice
versa, is such as would have appalled, the
| least ceremonius of our fathers. Women
call men by their surname, without the
prefix Of Mr., or even by their Christian
nance, abbreviatiug to suit the current
taste for slang. And it is not shopgirls
or grocers' young men who do this, but
| ladies and gentlemen ia good society.