The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1901-09-15
TALK ABOUT GOOD FORM.
Kings Lapse From 1t, as Well as
ROwdy-DOwdies.
From the Philadelphia Record.

From the Philadelphia Record
The thought of Dickens rolling
around drawing room floor, in the ex-
uberance of his youthful spirits, as
we learn from good authority he upon
one occasion did, is not pleasant to an
admirer of his genius and of what he
accomplished in the world. 1t was not
good form. Good form is not a term
indicative of mere affectation or of
conventional propriety. Good form or
it's opposite makes the very life aspect
of all human beings. 1t includes. more
than manners, for it is indicative of de-
gree of refinement, whereas manners
are an accomplishment either acquir-
ed by study or by unconscious imita-
ton. The relation of form to life is
profound, for what might be fitting in
certain places, what might be fitting at
certain times, might be detestable in
other places and at other times.
Even persons who would through
training seem to be by every right en-
titled to supremacy in good form, may
be in it lamentably deficient. Witness
that of the present Edward VII from
his youth to the present time. He be-
haved prettily in Philadelphia on the
trifling occasion when his hat was
injured by accident. Has he since
shown himself above the common
place level until now, when he has
freshly earned the title of Monsieur
Etiouette?" And what, down to the
present time, has his mentally superior
German nephew shown the world that
should outweigh for him a richly earn
ed title as Monsieur Gasconade? Po-
tentates of high rank though they are,
neither of them has shown good form.
On the contrary, they have shown both
conspicuously bad form in many reia-
lions of life
Shakespeare says that the very an
gels wept at some of mems fantastic
tricks. but one might rather suppose
that in some cases they laugh. There
is no immunity from constant folly,
but in the largest natural endowment
of sincerity, and of common sense, and
these are possessed in abundance by
only small minority of mankind
Your commonplace acquaintance may
go to Europe and at once become
connoisseur in art, punch you in the
ribs as he shows you one of his pic
lures exultingly, and says you have
no idea how much that cost me-" We
have known even a color-blind man to
become suddenly endowed with delicate
perception of color values. But what |
can YOU do about it: 1t hurts not him.
but you, to witness such falsity or self
deception, but you can do nothing Tor
him, for yourself nothing but flee. He
NAV be otherwise a very good fellow.
The misery of it is that he inf1icts so
much upon other persons unconscious
ly. impossible to correct without great
err violation of good form than his ar
rant pretense to art knowledge
summed up in terms of dollars.
The greatest infections of bad form
are to be found in travelling. There is
a class of men who seem never com
Portable unless their feet are elevated
upon some article of furniture. Dickens
says that Americans are the only peo-
pie who know what to do with the
small of the back-"they sit on it,
but the practice is by no means con-
fined to Americans. 1t is prevalent es-
pecially among men who have not been
used to good furniture and who at
tempt to show their familiarity with
it by contempt of the most elegant and
costly kinds. Others again, of the same
sort of persons. put their feet on ia
bles, and desks by way of asserting
their equality or perfect ease in per-
sonal bearing, or of showing that they
are not unused to elegance or oppress-
ed by the sight of 1t. We once saw
man comb his mustache with fork
at a hotel table, and for several days,
at another hotel table in another state,
a man who invariably finished his din
ner by unfolding MS unused napkin
and blowing upon it blast loud enough
to have charmed Robin Hood himself.
The whirligig of time, however, shortly
had its revenge, for outraged sentiment
of the 200 dinners, among whom this
fanfare ended their repast, rose at
lest in the form of a daily increasing
chorus uttering a single word that
drove the offender from the place as
precipitately as though he had been one
of the Biblical swine that rushed head
long down the steep into the sea.
These are OF course, extreme cases
of bad form witnessed in travelling.
But what shall we say of deily expert
ence In trolley cars? Despite the warn
ings In newspapers. medical works and
placards posted in the cars themselves.
expectoration on their floors has not