The age-herald., 1900-06-18
EAST AURORA AND GENTLEMEN
A Few Kind Words to Our Roycroft Brother" from Discreet Friend

From the New York Sun.
 Our Roycroft Brother, MT. Ebert Hub bard, of East Aurora and Philistia, gives to the Independent his views about gentle men. Sympathy, Knowledge, Poise," he says, "seem the three ingredients most needed in forming the Gentle Man" This is excellent in intention, and we dare say that Sir Charles Grandson would have approved it; yet to the unregenerate mind 1t smacks of department and Turveydrop. Whatever else a gentleman he should never wear capitals
 And why Is Knowledge especially neces- sary to the gentleman? There have been and are plenty of narrow, ignorant and prejudiccd men to whom the name of gentlemen could not be denied with right who had or have gentle manners and gen. tie hearts. Knowledge, except of etiquette, cannot be said to affect the manners, and its effect upon the character is not always evident. Knowledge is necessary to the scholar; scarcely to the gentleman.
 By Poise, MT. Hubbard means self-con- trol; or, as he more sweetly puts 1t, "Poise is a question of soul-spirit controlling flesh, heart controlling attitude" But ev erybody has to have Poise to keep out of the penitentiary. And "heart controlling altitude" is very different from spirit con- trolling flesh" The latter is self-control. The former may be mere sentimentality.
 Sympathy, too. Must a man have sym pathy to be a gentleman? Poor Jean Jacques had plenty of it. Sir Leicester Dedlock had mighty little of it, and yet Sir Leicester was a gentleman It Is an excellent quality, although it may be car ried to excess, as the case of the Hon. Bill ly Mason shows; but is it one of the three elements of the gentleman?
 Here we have the trouble. What is meant by a gentleman? It's widened meaning marks the characterization of the world First, it marked birth, then breeding. courtesy and honor; then it ceased to mark anything. The whole world is now ad- dressed as if it were commercial firm: "Gentemen." But in the more restricted sense how can the word gentlemen" be satisfactorily defined? Is it not best left undefined? Sometimes it refers to man. ners; sometimes to morals. We are not sure that it will not yet be crowded out by "man." The simpler term may come to be the more acceptable. At any rate, it would be rash to define gentleman save in elegant extracts from the poets
 Brother Hubbard wishes to be clear and concrete To him Joseph Addison seems to fulfill best the requirements of Sympathy Knowledge, and Poise. Addison was scarce ly sympathetic in his treatment of Dick Steele, but the creator of Sir Roger de Beverley must have been a gentleman. Here again are we talking of the periwig or of something else? If we are talking of the gentle heart, why old Sam Johnson, wearing his bill of fare on his clothes and by no means his heart upon his sleeve old Sam Johnson. growing and groping along Fleet street and going back to touch the posts-old Sam Johnson with his gar ments and his pensioners may seem finer gentleman to some of us than Addison with his great friends and immaculate manner and his Countess that drove him to drink Observe that we are talking about liter ary gentlemen as we might talk about com mercial or military gentlemen. We get no nearer the gentleman as gentleman and have to use examples, as Mr. Hubbard does
 One kind word more to our Roycroft Brother In giving his days and nights to Addison he is neglecting Shakespeare. He talks of "the lascivious pleasing of flute" and, though not with quotation marks, "cut such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make angels weep.' Can his Knowledge be slightly inferior to his Sym pathy and his Poise?