Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1888-07-12
DECLINE OF GOOD MANNERS.
Deterioration of Politeness-Undue Fami
arities Between Men and Women.

Deterioration of Pojiteness-Undue Famili-
arities Between Men and 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 to 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 a room full of
ladies with as much Indifference and sans
facon as though they were entering the
morning room of their club, and quit it
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, as though they
were in The bosom of their Own family
indeed, with free and easy graceless-
ness that 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 we'll
bred res erye; 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 par with the male behavior
we have described. Far from resenting
the observation-disclosures with which they
are treated by men who are in reality ut
ter strangers to them, they go to meet it
half way and permit themselves to be on
a foot of familiarj+y-as far as manner
is concerned-with the first conner, pro-
vided he seems to be one of their Gown
set" that could not be greater if their
AGO uaint lance had existed for years.
The same "dont- cares hang" conduct is
perceptible in the conduct of visitors and
guests to their host and hostess.
The notion that people are to be special
ly honored in their own houses has gone
quite out of fashion. No one nowadays is
so antiquited in his ideas as to suppose
that hospitality is to be regarded as a
favor conferred on the person to whom it
is extended. On the contrary, it is the
guest who conters an oblIgatIon by pay
ing call, accepting an invitation to din
der, or paying country visit, and who
has perfect right to indulge in frank
and free censure to his neighbors in case
he does Lot find everything to his likeiIg
in the establishment he condescends to
distinguish by bis presence. In word,
guests nowadays treat hosts and hostesses
as men treat women; that is to say. as
persons whom it is very good and amiab;e
of them to notice 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 ceremonius of our fathers. Women
call men by their surname, without the
prefix of Mr., or even by their Christian
names, abbreviatiug 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.