The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-04-03
"The Grand Old Name of Gentleman

MeIlpElS C0mHleTClai-Appfai.
 In an editorial under this caption Har- per's Weekly proceeds to tell why 1t agrees with the great parsonage who in recent interview, declared that no man without college education could be Ia gentleman. According to this editor
 and other authesities. to be a gentleman
 means "te live gently" We take this to
 mean uprightly. honestly. humanely.
 Does it require a college education to do
 these things? Does one have to possess
 an engraved sheepskin to refrain from
 violating the laws of morality from
 cheating. from shirking. from idling, from
 staining his hands with blood or his soul
 with n woman's shame? Unless some
 other occult explanation shall be found
 for the term "to live gently" we cannot
 see the space on which the great society
 parsonage" rests the lever of her logic
 If it takes college education to make a
 gentleman the inference is that every
 college graduate is a gentleman; this fol-
 lows as a natural sequence. But the
 pudding does not so prove fin the eating
 Some of the most consummate scamps the
 world has ever known have borne the ear-
 marks, the sign-manual of the great seats
 of learning. Every man of culture is not
 a man of principle, and principle is the
 standard by which a gentleman must be
 measured. whether he goes in overalls or
 DTOduCiOlH, WHetHeT tHdt WHICH l1S ndnd
 holds daily be a gold-headed cane or a
 laborer's pick. In European countries the
 state of being a gentleman depends upon the accident of birth and belongs to that
 upper closs whose living is an inherit ance, not thing attained by labor, tho class that has no settled and steady and necessary occupation. They are generally people of education. because they are the land owners with means to pay for in- s,ll the great society personage'' meant these educated idlers by custom and in. heritance-she should have been told the story of the Englishman who complained that everybody in America worked at something. that in our social system we had no leisure class, no gentlemen. "Oh. yes. we have a leisure class replied the bright American girl. ''but we call them tramps. not gentlemen
 The advantages of education are un. questioned and unauestionable both for | the gaining of worldly success and the en- joyment of it when once attained: but | many a man whose diploma is his trowel I or his plane is natures gentleman" 1 while many another who boasts a uniS versity degree is but a veneered and | cultured sneak. So many things enter | into the making of a gentleman that even | for so discriminating a critic as great l society parsonage" to pick out one thing | as the absolute essential. the absence of | which invalidates all the others seems | preposterously hopeless. But if one | special thing must he selected. then sure ly the word hosenty will come nearer | filling the breach than any other. since honesty means go much, and without if and generosity and kindness and learning become but as tinkling cymbals and sounding brass. The great society is hereby referred to the old | proverb that "an honest man Is the nohlest work of God;" and if he is not a according to her higher educa. tional rule. then is he something better, being the Makers masterpiece; and he ran afford to let it go at that