Waterbury evening Democrat., 1888-03-26
THE DECLINE OF PoLITENEss.

DepIorabIe Change Going On in the Man.
 ners of English Society.
 The signal deterioration of manners that has for some time been going on in what is called good society is every year becoming more glaring and more deplorable. The deli cate and subtle deference which every gen tleman used to pay to every woman, because she was woman and for no other reason whatever, is already old fashioned, and promises shortly to become 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 room full of ladies with as much indifference and sans facon as though they were entering the morn ing room of their club, and quit it with pre- cisely the same want of ceremony and self coastraint While in the society of women they loll, lean, and almost lie at their ease, as though they were in the bosom of their own family-indeed with a free and easy grace lessness that a generation ago no gentleman would have permitted himself among his most intimate relatives. In the first ap- breaches of members of one sex to members of the other, there is no longer any suavity, any hesitation, any well bred reserve; men and women who scarcely know each other act as though they were ehail-fellow-well-met, had been in the playground together, and 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 the un- ceremoniousness with which they are treated by men who are in reality utter strangers sto them, they go to meet it half way, and per init themselves to be on a foot of familiarity -as far as manner is concerned-with the first conner, provided he seems to be one of their Gown set" that could not be greater if their acquaintance had existed for years The same "don't-care-a-hang" conduct is per ceptible in the conduct of visitors and guests to their host and hostess.
 The notion that people are to be specially honored in their own houses has gone quite out of fashion. No one nowadays is so an- tiquated in his ideas as to suppose that hos pitality is to be regarded as a favod. conferred on the person to whom it is extended. On the contrary, it is the guest who confers an obligation by paying call, accepting an in vitation to dinner, or paying country visit, and who has perfect right to indulge in frank and free censure to his neighbors in case he does not find everything to his liking in the establishment he condescepds to dis tinguish by his presence. In a word, guests nowadays treat hosts and hostesses as men treat women-that is to say, as persons whom it is very good and amiable of them to no- tice at 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 ceremonious of our fathers. Women call men by their surname, without the prefix of Mr., or even by their Christian names, abbreviated to suit the cur rent taste for slang. And it is not shop girls or grocers young men who do this, but la dies and gentlemen in good society.-London Standard