The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-02-25
EVENING CHAT
BIZ RUTH CAMERON.

I think there is as much merit in
beautiful manners as in hard work"
Emerson.
Two men who are likely to become
! candidates for the same political Office
before very long. were under discussion
at our office the other day.
Both men are forcefuL original, bril-
1ant personalities. The chief difference
betWee- them is that one, being brought
Up in very humble circumstances, lacks
any Semblance of breeding or polish,
While the other. who is the scion of an
old and distinguished family, has the
bearing and breeding of a worthy de-
scendant of a long line of distinguished
ancestors.
well, don't know a great deal about
either of them. but I'm going to vote
for A." said one man, naming the son
of the humble family.
''Why?" I asked.
'Oh, because this B has too good
manners. he answered. He's too pol
| ished. 1 want real man.
The old, old belief. that a real man"
can't have manners, that breeding and
polish are incompatible with strength.
Every time I meet that belief I stop
to quarrel with it.
admit willingly that breeding and
strength, but 1 firmly refuse to ac-
knowledge that they are detractors
from it.
The strong man. without education or
polish, is greater than the weak man
with BOTH but the strong man crowned
with breeding and polish is a greater
force than either.
If a bar of iron were to be polished,
would it lose strength by the process?
Is the steel that has been tempered
and worked over and polished less
strong than the crude iron?
In many cases, undoubtedly, a life of
overmuch ease and wealth rots a man
and leaves a shell of good manners with
a rotten center.
But that is no reason to hate the good
manners.
They are the good thing left by the
decay; not the cause or sign of the
decay.
They tell us sometimes that we wo-
men, if we had the suffrage, would vote
for man for no better reason than that
he had good manners.
1 cannot see that that would be any
more absurd than to vote against him
for the same reason.
1t seems to me 1t is an American fault
to discredit the value of good manners.
We are such worshippers of strength
and force and originality and brain
that we forget that there are other
things equally desirable.
But there are.
In one of Oliver Holmes Breakfast
Table Series is a paragraph that goes
to the heart of the matter so much
better than my feeble pencil can that
/ am going. to let you have it bodily:
II think it is unpopular in this coun-
try to talk much about gentlemen and
gentlewomen. People are touchy about
social distinctions. which no doubt are
often invi6ious and quite arbitrary and
accidental. but which it is as imposSi-
BILE to avoid recognizing as facts of
1atural history. Society stratities itself
everywhere. and the stratum which is
generally recognized as the uppermost
would be apt to have the advantage in
easy grace of manner and in unaSsum-
ing confidence, and consequently be
more agreeable to the superficial rela-
tons of life. To compare these adj
vantages with the virtues and utilities
would be foolish.
Much of the noblest work of life is
done by IL dressed, awkward, ungalnly
persons; but that is no more reason
for undertaking good manners and
what we call high breeding, than the
fact that the best part of the sturdy
labor of the world is done by men with
exceptional hands is to be urged against
the use of Brown Windsor as preliml-
Eary appearance in cultivated society