Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1921-06-01
YOUNG PEOPLES MANNERS.

AnQ now LIE. GliOs3 VI AAsAA 'eAA ~
views with alarm the manners of the
youth of our land. This and other
jeremiads upon the same theme re-
gently sent forth recall to mind the
famous motto of a famous school,
chosen by its famous founder, Will
liam of Wykeham, in the fourteenth
century. The motto modernized
reads, "Manners make the man."
: 1t is by no means my purpose to
.laud the manners and dress of Amer
lean young people. Both are open to
criticism. But my disapproval is
.chastened by memory of cur own
youth. We have reason to hesitate
to cast the next stone.
Every generation as it reaches
declining years finds fault with the
behavior of the rising generation.
Usually, it finds fault, also, with the
way girls dress. The clergy of every
creed in every age have led the cho-
rus of denunciation, and when one
reads their philippics in chronolog-
ical series, one is appalled, at the
uninterrupted downhill course of
the human race.
Particularly, Catholic ecclesias-
tics have thundered at young women
to cloth themselves more seemly. The
ideal of feminine apparel that pre-
vades these moralists seems strongly
influenced by the mans garb.
Their views on masculine attire are
distinctly more liberal, as witness the
splendor of texture and color worn
by the princes of the Church as they
mass in religious ceremonies 1t would
seem somewhat inconsistent for
bishops and cardinals to adjure young
women to dress soberly, but they do
not see it.
1t is natural that the manners OF
the mature should be gentler than
those of the young. Social experien-
ces aud employed energies bring this
about. Laments upon degeneracy of
the rising generation relieve the e.
motion of people who have quieted
down about people who have not.
Anyone familiar with animals has
seen old horses, dogs and cats look
look with similar evaporation upon
the gambols of the young of their
species.
: Manifestly it cannot be true that
the manners and dress of the young
people have been getting worse for
three thousand years, documentary
evidence to the contrary notwith-
standing. Such theory would, endow
prehistoric children with a wierd and
incredible perfection Also, even
we should on this theory have much
with a glacial slowness of descent,
worse manners than we have now.
1t is true that as we gaze about US
from Cambridge to San Francisco the
majority of girls chew gum and cack-
lie shrilly, and the majority of boys
lounge uncouthly and smoke. as DR..
Eliot says they do, in the presence of
the opposite sex. Moreover, "smart"
girls in increasing numbers are re-
taliating by smoking in the faces OF
the boys.
We cannot blame the war for
these crude manners. They were with
us before the war. But the war Ger
tainly gave new impulse to every
form of let-down. The manners. of
our youth but reflect the disillusion
and pessimism of worldwide ruin.
But granting the American young
people have crude manners, that city
girls paint and powder with Byzan-
tine lavishness and wander around
nights without chaperon-though the
chaperon business is a very feeble
encouragement to propriety-candor
compells us to remark that all is not
right with many of those who sorrow
so publicly over these things. Why
should the sight of a highly colored
girl in a short skirt, with her hair in
eaueer knobs, send one into virtuous
ybraiastorm? Very likely she is the
mainstay of a widowed mother and
lis sending little brothers and sisters
: to school out of fifteen dollars a
week. She has as good right to wear
her hair in knobs and use lipstick
/: as her critic has to wear stiff collar
and silk hat. Both methods of fix
ing up are equally abhorrent to the
angels and arise from precisely the