Iowa County democrat. [volume] (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1877-1938, 1888-07-06

| Deterioration of PolitenesS- Undue Famili-
aritieS Between Men ana Women.
The signal deterioration of manners
! that has for some time been going on in
| what is called good society is every year
becoming more glazing and more de-
| plorable, says the London Standard. The
| delicate and subtle difference which
| every gentleman used to pay 20 every
| woman because she was 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 q roon! full of
| ladies with as much Indifference and sans
facou as though they were entering the
morning room of their club, and quit il
with precisely the same want of cere-
mony and self-restraiut. While in the
society of women they loll, lean, and al
most lie at their ease, though they
were in the bosom of their OVID family
indeed with free and easy graceless
ness that generation ago no gentle
man would have permitted himself among
mis- most intimate relatives. In the first
approaches of members of one sex to
any sauvity, any hesitation, any we'll
bred referve; men and women who
scarcely know each other sct 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 par with the male behavior
we have described. Far from resenting
the upceremonIousness with which they
are treated by men who are In reality ut
ter strangers to them, they go to meet II
half way and permit Themselves to be on
foot of familiarity-as far as manner
is concerned-with the first conner, pro-
vided he seems to be one of their 'own
set" that could not be greater if their
acquaintance had existed for years.
| The same "dont-care-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 antiauited in his ideas as TO suppose
| that hospitality is to be regarded &c
| favor conferred on the person to whom 1t
| is extended. On the contrary, it is the
| guest who confers an obligation by pay
! ing call, accepting an Invitation to din
| der, or payinga country visit, and who
| has a perfect right to indulge in frank
| and free censure to his Heighbors in case
| he does Lot find everything to his hkeing
| 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
persons whom il is very good and amiable
| of them to notice at ell. 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 or their surname, without the
| prefix of M, or even by their Christian
| names, sbbreviatiug to suit the current
| taste for slang. And it is not shop girls
/ or grocers' young men who do this, but
/ ladies and gentlemen in good society.