The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-07-19
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JUST COMMON
 GOOD MANNERS.
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~ W " " ~ " 1~ wy ~ S<se" A certain young man who sells his wares In a tiny shop is an independent American citizen. and as such wishes 10 impress on every customer that he is as good as anybody and little bit better" Usually he sends home customers pur- chases Sometimes it is not convenient to do this. Then his royal highness re- fuses to make any concession. A custom CT asks If he can not send her some cream. later, after his rush hour. He says:
 "No. I won't send nothin' to nobody. You can take the cream or leave 1t, jist as your please"
 "But'-
 There's the cream, say and you can take 1t or leave it, jst as you like, and I don't want no more argyment about it"
 The customer, used tc being treated with courtesy, goes out and never en- ters the place again. The young man pats himself over the chest. looks into his little mirror and says to himself, I'll let these yer people know I'm as good as they are."
 If he had told the lady in a decent, courteous manner that he could not grant her request that time, no harm would have been done. But he was sim ply a coarse, ignorant. conceited, un- grammatical boor, filling post where kndliness and gentlemanly manners are peTpeIualy CdlieQ TOT. WOTSL or all, ne absolutely prided himself on his unwhip- ped boorishness.
 Then there is perhaps the woman who takes in orders for work at her home A stranger calls on her. She answers the ladys inquiry thus:
 T don't work for nobody but my own customers and folks my customers rec ommends, And I can't take no more work nohow for the next six weeks" And she slams the door in the lady's face to emphasize her opinion that she, too, is an independent American citizen, "as good as anybody and a little bit better" And she. too-heaven send her better light and knowledge!-is only @ coarse ignorant conceited boor and does not know it. A>
 It is sheer dumb brute ignorance in both the man and woman. Both these citizens mistake rudeness and bad man. ners for a manifestation of their inde- pendence. They have no conception that the very first element of real gentleman | liness or ladyhood Is habitual courtesy to | every creature. They will have to get many and many a hard knock and much hard luck before they have it pounded into their skulls that every human being owes to every other the debt of common civility. And we may be sure they will get the hard knocks and the hard luck both in heaped up measures. Grass ig- norance must be illuminated, even if 1t takes dynamite to accomplish the enlight- enment.
 It Is largely the fault of mothers that such deplorable rudeness, such lack of just plain, common good manners, is so often encountered They have not trained their children to practice habitually po- liteness and courtesy. They many time let their boys grow to manhood untamed cubs, their girls to womanhood with the mn aP fFa VaA aaIA "a ity all unrestrained. Did you ever think that the uncurbed, -underbred human an- imal is the most repellant of all creat- lures, worse even than the dumb brutes because his superior brain gives him so many more ways of being offensive? We, the citizens of the vaunted great republic of the world, are this day in our department below the Japanese. The rudeness and boorishness to one another of individuals in western nations are nev- CT found among that fine little Oriental people. The Jap iabOrer in the rice fields Is as polite to his vmateS and to the stranger as one American gentleman is to another. Maybe he gets drunk on sake and fights like a fend now and then, but apart from this in all his association with his fellow creatures he is charac- | terized by the exquisite courtesy and kindhness that Western peoples might well initiate.
 The animalish manners which are blen- ishes among other nations are unpar- donable in citizens of the great republic It Is the part of American women to cor rect our rudeness and boorishness. They can do 1t effectually and they are the | only ones who can. One point, too, might be borne in mind:
 | Bad manners and bad grammar fre- quently go together. Let us look after both among our children.
 Jane Moses.