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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ars Recte Vivende, by George William Curtis
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ars Recte Vivende
+       Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair"
+
+Author: George William Curtis
+
+
+Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7445]
+This file was first posted on April 30, 2003
+Last updated: April 30, 2013
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARS RECTE VIVENDE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred, William Flis and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team
+
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+
+ARS RECTE VIVENDI
+
+BEING ESSAYS CONTRIBUTED TO "THE EASY CHAIR"
+
+
+By George William Curtis
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The publication of this collection of Essays was suggested by some remarks
+of a college professor, in the course of which he said that about a dozen
+of the "Easy Chair" Essays in Harper's Magazine so nearly cover the more
+vital questions of hygiene, courtesy, and morality that they might be
+gathered into a volume entitled "Ars Recte Vivendi," and as such they are
+offered to the public.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+EXTRAVAGANCE AT COLLEGE
+
+BRAINS AND BRAWN
+
+HAZING
+
+THE SOUL OF THE GENTLEMAN
+
+THEATRE MANNERS
+
+WOMAN'S DRESS
+
+SECRET SOCIETIES
+
+TOBACCO AND HEALTH
+
+TOBACCO AND MANNERS
+
+DUELLING
+
+NEWSPAPER ETHICS
+
+
+
+
+EXTRAVAGANCE AT COLLEGE
+
+
+Young Sardanapalus recently remarked that the only trouble with his life
+in college was that the societies and clubs, the boating and balling,
+and music and acting, and social occupations of many kinds, left him no
+time for study. He had the best disposition to treat the faculty fairly,
+and to devote a proper attention to various branches of learning, and
+he was sincerely sorry that his other college engagements made it
+quite impossible. Before coming to college he thought that it might be
+practicable to mingle a little Latin and Greek, and possibly a touch of
+history and mathematics, with the more pressing duties of college life; but
+unless you could put more hours into the day, or more days into the week,
+he really did not see how it could be done.
+
+It was the life of Sardanapalus in college which was the text of some sober
+speeches at Commencement dinners during the summer, and of many excellent
+articles in the newspapers. They all expressed a feeling which has been
+growing very rapidly and becoming very strong among old graduates,
+that college is now a very different place from the college which they
+remembered, and that young men now spend in a college year what young men
+in college formerly thought would be a very handsome sum for them to spend
+annually when they were established in the world. If any reader should
+chance to recall a little book of reminiscences by Dr. Tomes, which was
+published a few years ago, he will have a vivid picture of the life of
+forty and more years ago at a small New England college; and the similar
+records of other colleges at that time show how it was possible for a poor
+clergyman starving upon a meagre salary to send son after son to college.
+The collegian lived in a plain room, and upon very plain fare; he had no
+"extras," and the decorative expense of Sardanapalus was unknown. In the
+vacations he taught school or worked upon the farm. He knew that his father
+had paid by his own hard work for every dollar that he spent, and the
+relaxation of the sense of the duty of economy which always accompanies
+great riches had not yet begun. Sixty years ago the number of Americans who
+did not feel that they must live by their own labor was so small that it
+was not a class. But there is now a class of rich men's sons.
+
+The average rate of living at college differs. One of the newspapers, in
+discussing the question, said that in most of the New England colleges a
+steady and sturdy young man need not spend more than six hundred dollars
+during the four years. This is obviously too low an estimate. Another
+thinks that the average rate at Harvard is probably from six hundred to ten
+hundred a year. Another computes a fair liberal average in the smaller New
+England colleges to be from twenty-four to twenty-six hundred dollars for
+the four years, and the last class at Williams is reported to have ranged
+from an average of six hundred and fifty dollars in the first year to seven
+hundred and twenty-eight dollars in the Senior. But the trouble lies in
+Sardanapalus. The mischief that he does is quite disproportioned to the
+number of him. In a class of one hundred the number of rich youth may be
+very small. But a college class is an American community in which every
+member is necessarily strongly affected by all social influences.
+
+A few "fellows" living in princely extravagance in superbly furnished
+rooms, with every device of luxury, entertaining profusely, elected into
+all the desirable clubs and societies, conforming to another taste and
+another fashion than that of the college, form a class which is separate
+and exclusive, and which looks down on those who cannot enter the charmed
+circle. This is galling to the pride of the young man who cannot compete.
+The sense of the inequality is constantly refreshed. He may, indeed, attend
+closely to his studies. He may "scorn delights, and live laborious days."
+He may hug his threadbare coat and gloat over his unrugged floor as the
+fitting circumstance of "plain living and high thinking." It is always
+open to character and intellect to perceive and to assert their essential
+superiority. Why should Socrates heed Sardanapalus? Why indeed? But the
+average young man at college is not an ascetic, nor a devotee, nor an
+absorbed student unmindful of cold and heat, and disdainful of elegance
+and ease and the nameless magic of social accomplishment and grace. He is
+a youth peculiarly susceptible to the very influence that Sardanapalus
+typifies, and the wise parent will hesitate before sending his son to
+Sybaris rather than to Sparta.
+
+When the presence of Sardanapalus at Harvard was criticised as dangerous
+and lamentable, the President promptly denied that the youth abounded
+at the university, or that his influence was wide-spread. He was there
+undoubtedly, and he sometimes misused his riches. But he had not
+established a standard, and he had not affected the life of the university,
+whose moral character could be favorably compared with that of any college.
+But even if the case were worse, it is not evident that a remedy is at
+hand. As the President suggested, there are two kinds of rich youth at
+college. There are the sons of those who have been always accustomed to
+riches, and who are generally neither vulgar nor extravagant, neither
+ostentatious nor profuse; and the sons of the "new rich," who are like men
+drunk with new wine, and who act accordingly.
+
+The "new rich" parent will naturally send his son to Harvard, because it
+is the oldest of our colleges and of great renown, and because he supposes
+that through his college associations his son may pave a path with
+gold into "society." Harvard, on her part, opens her doors upon the
+same conditions to rich and poor, and gives her instruction equally,
+and requires only obedience to her rules of order and discipline. If
+Sardanapalus fails in his examination he will be dropped, and that he is
+Sardanapalus will not save him. If his revels disturb the college peace, he
+will be warned and dismissed. All that can be asked of the college is that
+it shall grant no grace to the golden youth in the hope of endowment from
+his father, and that it shall keep its own peace.
+
+This last condition includes more than keeping technical order. To remove
+for cause in the civil service really means not only to remove for a penal
+offence, but for habits and methods that destroy discipline and efficiency.
+So to keep the peace in a college means to remove the necessary causes of
+disturbance and disorder. If young Sardanapalus, by his extravagance and
+riotous profusion and dissipation, constantly thwarts the essential purpose
+of the college, demoralizing the students and obstructing the peaceful
+course of its instruction, he ought to be dismissed. The college must judge
+the conditions under which its work may be most properly and efficiently
+accomplished, and to achieve its purpose it may justly limit the liberty of
+its students.
+
+The solution of the difficulty lies more in the power of the students than
+of the college. If the young men who are the natural social leaders make
+simplicity the unwritten law of college social life, young Sardanapalus
+will spend his money and heap up luxury in vain. The simplicity and good
+sense of wealth will conquer its ostentation and reckless waste.
+
+(_October_, 1886)
+
+
+
+
+BRAINS AND BRAWN
+
+
+It is towards the end of June and in the first days of July that the great
+college aquatic contests occur, and it is about that time, as the soldiers
+at Monmouth knew in 1778, that Sirius is lord of the ascendant. This year
+it was the hottest day of the summer, as marked by the mercury in New York,
+when the Harvard and Yale men drew out at New London for their race. Fifty
+years ago the crowd at Commencement filled the town green and streets, and
+the meeting-house in which the graduating class were the heroes of the
+hour. The valedictorian, the salutatorian, the philosophical orator, walked
+on air, and the halo of after-triumphs of many kinds was not brighter or
+more intoxicating than the brief glory of the moment on which they took the
+graduating stage, under the beaming eyes of maiden beauty and the profound
+admiration of college comrades.
+
+Willis, as Phil Slingsby, has told the story of that college life fifty and
+sixty years ago. The collegian danced and drove and flirted and dined and
+sang the night away. Robert Tomes echoed the strain in his tale of college
+life a little later, under stricter social and ecclesiastical conditions.
+There was a more serious vein also. In 1827 the Kappa Alpha Society was the
+first of the younger brood of the Greek alphabet--descendants of the Phi
+Beta Kappa of 1781--and in 1832 Father Eells, as he is affectionately
+called, founded Alpha Delta Phi, a brotherhood based upon other aims and
+sympathies than those of Mr. Philip Slingsby, but one which appealed
+instantly to clever men in college, and has not ceased to attract them to
+this happy hour, as the Easy Chair has just now commemorated.
+
+But neither in the sketches of Slingsby nor in the memories of those
+Commencement triumphs is there any record of an absorbing and universal
+and overpowering enthusiasm such as attends the modern college boat-race.
+The race of this year between the two great New England universities,
+Harvard and Yale--the Crimson and the Blue--was a twilight contest, for
+"high-water," says the careful chronicler, "did not occur until seven
+o'clock." At half-past six he describes the coming of the grand armada and
+the expectant scene in these words: "The _Block Island_ came down from
+Norwich with every square foot of her three decks occupied, the _Elm
+City_ brought a mass of Yale sympathizers from New Haven, and the
+big _City of New York_ filled her long saloon-deck with New London
+spectators. A special train of eighteen cars came up from New Haven, a
+blue flag fluttering from every window. The striking contrast to the life
+and bustle of the lower end of the course was the quiet river at the
+starting-point. The college launches, the huge tug _America_,
+the press-boat _Manhasset_, loaded with correspondents, the tug
+_Burnside_, swathed in crimson by her charter party of Harvard men,
+and the steam-yacht _Norma_, gay with party-colored bunting, floated
+idly up-stream, waiting for the start. The long train of twenty-five
+observation-cars stood quietly by the river-side, its occupants closely
+watching the boat-houses across the river."
+
+Did any fleet of steamers solid with eager spectators, or special train
+of eighteen cars, or long train of twenty-five observation-cars, a vast,
+enthusiastic multitude, ever arrive at any college upon any Commencement
+Day in Philip Slingsby's time to greet with prolonged roars of cheers and
+frenzied excitement the surpassing eloquence of Salutatorian Smith, or the
+melting pathos of Valedictorian Jones? Did ever--for so we read in the
+veracious history of a day, the newspaper--did ever a college town resound
+with "a perfect babel of noises" from eight in the summer evening until
+three in the summer morning, the town lighted with burning tar-barrels
+and blazing with fireworks, the chimes ringing, and ten thousand
+people hastening to the illuminated station to receive the victors in
+triumph--because Brown had vanquished the calculus, or Jones discovered a
+comet, or Robinson translated the _Daily Gong and Gas Blower_ into
+the purest Choctaw? In a word, was such tumult of acclamation--even the
+President himself swinging his reverend hat, and the illustrious alumni,
+far and near, when the glad tidings were told, beaming with joyful
+complacency, like Mr. Pickwick going down the slide, while Samivel Weller
+adjured him and the company to keep the pot a-bilin'--ever produced by any
+scholastic performance or success or triumph whatever?
+
+Echo undoubtedly answers No; and she asks, also, whether in such a
+competition, when the appeal is to youth, eager, strong, combative, full of
+physical impulse and prowess, in the time of romantic enjoyment and heroic
+susceptibility, study is not heavily handicapped, and books at a sorry
+disadvantage with boats. This is what Echo distinctly inquiries; and what
+answer shall be made to Echo? Who is the real hero to young Slingsby, who
+has just fitted himself to enter college--the victor in the boat-race or
+the noblest scholar of them all? The answer seems to be given unconsciously
+in the statement that the number of students applying for entrance is
+notably larger when the college has scored an athletic victory. But this
+answer is not wholly satisfactory. There may be an observable coincidence,
+but young men usually prepare themselves to enter a particular college, and
+do not await the result of boat-races.
+
+But the fact remains that the true college hero of to-day is the victor in
+games and sports, not in studies; and it is not unnatural that it should
+be so. It is partly a reaction of feeling against the old notion that a
+scholar is an invalid, and that a boy must be down in his muscle because he
+is up in his mathematics. But, as Lincoln said in his debate with Douglas,
+it does not follow, because I think that innocent men should have equal
+rights, that I wish my daughter to marry a negro. It does not follow,
+because the sound mind should be lodged in a sound body, that the care of
+the body should become the main, and virtually the exclusive, interest.
+
+Yet that this is now somewhat the prevailing tendency of average feeling is
+undeniable, and it is a tendency to be considered by intelligent collegians
+themselves. For the true academic prizes are spiritual, not material; and
+the heroes for college emulation are not the gladiators, but the sages
+and poets of the ancient day and of all time. The men that the college
+remembers and cherishes are not ball-players, and boat-racers, and
+high-jumpers, and boxers, and fencers, and heroes of single-stick, good
+fellows as they are, but the patriots and scholars and poets and orators
+and philosophers. Three cheers for brawn, but three times three for brain!
+
+(_September_, 1887)
+
+
+
+
+HAZING
+
+
+As if a bell had rung, and the venerable dormitories and halls upon
+the green were pouring forth a crowd of youth loitering towards the
+recitation-room, the Easy Chair, like a college professor, meditating
+serious themes, and with a grave purpose, steps to the lecture-desk. It
+begins by asking the young gentlemen who have loitered into the room, and
+are now seated, what they think of bullying boys and hunting cats and tying
+kettles to a dog's tail, and seating a comrade upon tacks with the point
+upward. Undoubtedly they reply, with dignified nonchalance, that it is all
+child's play and contemptible. Undoubtedly, young gentlemen, answers the
+professor, and, to multiply Nathan's remark to David, You are the men!
+
+As American youth you cherish wrathful scorn for the English boy who makes
+another boy his fag, and you express a sneering pity for the boy who
+consents to fag. You have read _Dr. Birch and His Young Friends_, and
+you would like to break the head of Master Hewlett, who shies his shoe at
+the poor shivering, craven Nightingale, and you justly remark that close
+observation of John Bull seems to warrant the conclusion that the nature of
+his bovine ancestor is still far from eliminated from his descendant. And
+what is the secret of your feeling? Simply that you hate bullying. Why,
+then, young gentlemen, do you bully?
+
+You retort perhaps that fagging is unknown in America, and that
+high-spirited youth would not tolerate it. But permit the professor to
+tell you what is not unknown in America: a crowd of older young gentlemen
+surrounding one younger fellow, forcing him to do disagreeable and
+disgusting things, pouring cold water down his back, making a fool of him
+to his personal injury, he being solitary, helpless, and abused--all this
+is not unknown in America, young gentlemen. But it is all very different
+from what we have been accustomed to consider American. If we would morally
+define or paraphrase the word America, I think we should say fair-play.
+That is what it means. That is what the Brownist Puritans, the precursors
+of the Plymouth Pilgrims, left England to secure. They did not bring
+it indeed, at least in all its fulness, across the sea. Let us say,
+young gentlemen, that its potentiality, its possibility, rather than its
+actuality, stepped out of the _Mayflower_ upon Plymouth Rock. But from
+the moment of its landing it has been asserting itself. You need not say
+"Baptist" and "Quaker." I understand it and allow for it all. But fair-play
+has prevailed over ecclesiastical hatred and over personal slavery, and
+what are called the new questions--corporate power, monopoly, capital, and
+labor--are only new forms of the old effort to secure fair-play.
+
+Now the petty bullying of hazing and the whole system of college tyranny is
+a most contemptible denial of fair-play. It is a disgrace to the American
+name, and when you stop in the wretched business to sneer at English
+fagging you merely advertise the beam in your own eyes. It is not possible,
+surely, that any honorable young gentleman now attending to the lecture of
+the professor really supposes that there is any fun or humor or joke in
+this form of college bullying. Turn to your _Evelina_ and see what
+was accounted humorous, what passed for practical joking, in Miss Burney's
+time, at the end of the last century. It is not difficult to imagine Dr.
+Johnson, who greatly delighted in _Evelina_, supposing the intentional
+upsetting into the ditch of the old French lady in the carriage to be a
+joke. For a man who unconsciously has made so much fun for others as "the
+great lexicographer," Dr. Johnson seems to have been curiously devoid of a
+sense of humor. But he was a genuine Englishman of his time, a true John
+Bull, and the fun of the John Bull of that time, recorded in the novels and
+traditions, was entirely bovine.
+
+The bovine or brutal quality is by no means wholly worked out of the
+blood even yet. The taste for pugilism, or the pummelling of the human
+frame into a jelly by the force of fisticuffs, as a form of enjoyment or
+entertainment, is a relapse into barbarism. It is the instinct of the tiger
+still surviving in the white cat transformed into the princess. I will not
+call it, young gentlemen, the fond return of Melusina to the gambols of the
+mermaid, or Undine's momentary unconsciousness of a soul, because these are
+poetic and pathetic suggestions. The prize-ring is disgusting and inhuman,
+but at least it is a voluntary encounter of two individuals. But college
+bullying is unredeemed brutality. It is the extinction of Dr. Jekyll in Mr.
+Hyde. It is not humorous, nor manly, nor generous, nor decent. It is bald
+and vulgar cruelty, and no class in college should feel itself worthy of
+the respect of others, or respect itself, until it has searched out all
+offenders of this kind who disgrace it, and banished them to the remotest
+Coventry.
+
+The meanest and most cowardly fellows in college may shine most in hazing.
+The generous and manly men despise it. There are noble and inspiring ways
+for working off the high spirits of youth: games which are rich in poetic
+tradition; athletic exercises which mould the young Apollo. To drive
+a young fellow upon the thin ice, through which he breaks, and by the
+icy submersion becomes at last a cripple, helpless with inflammatory
+rheumatism--surely no young man in his senses thinks this to be funny, or
+anything but an unspeakable outrage. Or to overwhelm with terror a comrade
+of sensitive temperament until his mind reels--imps of Satan might delight
+in such a revel, but young Americans!--never, young gentlemen, never!
+
+The hazers in college are the men who have been bred upon dime novels and
+the prize-ring--in spirit, at least, if not in fact--to whom the training
+and instincts of the gentleman are unknown. That word is one of the most
+precious among English words. The man who is justly entitled to it wears
+a diamond of the purest lustre. Tennyson, in sweeping the whole range of
+tender praise for his dead friend Arthur Hallam, says that he bore without
+abuse the grand old name of gentleman. "Without abuse"--that is the wise
+qualification. The name may be foully abused. I read in the morning's
+paper, young gentlemen, a pitiful story of a woman trying to throw herself
+from the bridge. You may recall one like it in Hood's "Bridge of Sighs."
+The report was headed: "To hide her shame." "_Her_ shame?" Why,
+gentlemen, at that very moment, in bright and bewildering rooms, the arms
+of Lothario and Lovelace were encircling your sisters' waists in the
+intoxicating waltz. These men go unwhipped of an epithet. They are even
+enticed and flattered by the mothers of the girls. But, for all that, they
+do not bear without abuse the name of gentleman, and Sidney and Bayard and
+Hallam would scorn their profanation and betrayal of the name.
+
+The soul of the gentleman, what is it? Is it anything but kindly and
+thoughtful respect for others, helping the helpless, succoring the needy,
+befriending the friendless and forlorn, doing justice, requiring fair-play,
+and withstanding with every honorable means the bully of the church and
+caucus, of the drawing-room, the street, the college? Respect, young
+gentlemen, like charity, begins at home. Only the man who respects himself
+can be a gentleman, and no gentleman will willingly annoy, torment, or
+injure another.
+
+There will be no further recitation today. The class is dismissed.
+
+(_March_, 1888)
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUL OF THE GENTLEMAN
+
+
+To find a satisfactory definition of gentleman is as difficult as to
+discover the philosopher's stone; and yet if we may not say just what
+a gentleman is, we can certainly say what he is not. We may affirm
+indisputably that a man, however rich, and of however fine a title in
+countries where rank is acknowledged, if he behave selfishly, coarsely, and
+indecently, is not a gentleman. "From which, young gentlemen, it follows,"
+as the good professor used to say at college, as he emerged from a hopeless
+labyrinth of postulates and preliminaries an hour long, that the guests who
+abused the courtesy of their hosts, upon the late transcontinental trip to
+drive the golden spike, may have been persons of social eminence, but were
+in no honorable sense gentlemen.
+
+It is undoubtedly a difficult word to manage. But gentlemanly conduct and
+ungentlemanly conduct are expressions which are perfectly intelligible, and
+that fact shows that there is a distinct standard in every intelligent
+mind by which behavior is measured. To say that a man was born a gentleman
+means not at all that he is courteous, refined, and intelligent, but only
+that he was born of a family whose circumstances at some time had been
+easy and agreeable, and which belonged to a traditionally "good society."
+But such a man may be false and mean, and ignorant and coarse. Is he a
+gentleman because he was born such? On the other hand, the child of long
+generations of ignorant and laborious boors may be humane, honorable, and
+modest, but with total ignorance of the usages of good society. He may
+be as upright as Washington, as unselfish as Sidney, as brave as Bayard,
+as modest as Falkland. But he may also outrage all the little social
+proprieties. Is he a gentleman because he is honest and modest and humane?
+In describing Lovelace, should we not say that he was a gentleman? Should
+we naturally say so of Burns? But, again, is it not a joke to describe
+George IV. as a gentleman, while it would be impossible to deny the name to
+Major Dobbin?
+
+The catch, however, is simple. Using the same word, we interchange its
+different meanings. To say that a man is born a gentleman is to say that
+he was born under certain social conditions. To say in commendation or
+description of a man that he is a gentleman, or gentlemanly, is to say
+that he has certain qualities of character or manner which are wholly
+independent of the circumstances of his family or training. In the latter
+case, we speak of individual and personal qualities; in the former, we
+speak of external conditions. In the one case we refer to the man himself;
+in the other, to certain circumstances around him. The quality which is
+called gentlemanly is that which, theoretically, and often actually,
+distinguishes the person who is born in a certain social position. It
+describes the manner in which such a person ought to behave.
+
+Behavior, however, can be imitated. Therefore, neither the fact of birth
+under certain conditions, nor a certain ease and grace and charm of manner,
+certify the essential character of gentleman. Lovelace had the air and
+breeding of a gentleman like Don Giovanni; he was familiar with polite
+society; he was refined and pleasing and fascinating in manner. Even the
+severe Astarte could not call him a boor. She does not know a gentleman,
+probably, more gentlemanly than Lovelace. She must, then, admit that
+she can not arbitrarily deny Lovelace to be a gentleman because he is a
+libertine, or because he is false, or mean, or of a coarse mind. She may,
+indeed, insist that only upright and honorable men of refined mind and
+manner are gentlemen, and she may also maintain that only men of truly
+lofty and royal souls are princes; but there will still remain crowds of
+immoral gentlemen and unworthy kings.
+
+The persons who abused the generous courtesy of the Northern Pacific trip
+were gentlemen in one sense, and not in the other. They were gentlemen so
+far as they could not help themselves, but they were not gentlemen in what
+depended upon their own will. According to the story, they did not even
+imitate the conduct of gentlemen, and Astarte must admit that they belonged
+to the large class of ungentlemanly gentlemen.
+
+(_December_, 1883)
+
+
+
+
+THEATRE MANNERS
+
+
+An admirable actress said the other day that the audience in the theatre
+was probably little aware how much its conduct affected the performance. A
+listless, whispering, uneasy house makes a distracted and ineffective play.
+To an orator, or an actor, or an artist of any kind who appeals personally
+to the public, nothing is so fatal as indifference. In the original
+Wallack's Theatre, many years ago, the Easy Chair was one of a party in
+a stage-box during a fine performance of one of the plays in which the
+acting of the manager was most effective. It was a gay party, and with the
+carelessness of youth it made merry while the play went on. As the box was
+directly upon the stage, the merriment was a gross discourtesy, although
+unintentional, both to the actors and to the audience; and at last the old
+Wallack, still gayly playing his part, moved towards the box, and without
+turning his head, in a voice audible to the offenders but not to the rest
+of the audience, politely reminded the thoughtless group that they were
+seriously disturbing the play. There was some indignation in the box, but
+the rebuke was courteous and richly deserved. Nothing is more unpardonable
+than such disturbance.
+
+During this winter a gentleman at one of the theatres commented severely
+upon the loud talking of a party of ladies, which prevented his enjoyment
+of the play, and when the gentleman attending the ladies retorted warmly,
+the disturbed gentleman resorted to the wild justice of a blow. There was
+an altercation, a publication in the newspapers, and finally an apology and
+a reconciliation. But it is to be hoped that there was some good result
+from the incident. A waggish clergyman once saw a pompous clerical brother
+march quite to the head of the aisle of a crowded church to find a seat,
+with an air of expectation that all pew-doors would fly open at his
+approach. But as every seat was full, and nobody stirred, the crestfallen
+brother was obliged to retrace his steps. As he retreated by the pew, far
+down the aisle, where the clerical wag was sitting, that pleasant man
+leaned over the door, and greeted his comrade with the sententious whisper,
+"May it be sanctified to you, dear brother!" Every right-minded man will
+wish the same blessing to the rebuke of the loud-talking maids and youths
+in theatres and concert-halls, whose conversation, however lively, is not
+the entertainment which their neighbors have come to hear.
+
+Two or three winters ago the Easy Chair applauded the conduct of Mr.
+Thomas, who, at the head of his orchestra, was interrupted in the midst of
+a concert in Washington by the entry of a party, which advanced towards the
+front of the hall with much chattering and rustling, and seated themselves
+and continued the disturbance. The orchestra was in full career, but
+Thomas rapped sharply upon his stand, and brought the performance to an
+abrupt pause. Then, turning to the audience, he said--and doubtless with
+evident and natural feeling: "I am afraid that the music interrupts the
+conversation." The remark was greeted with warm and general applause; and,
+waiting until entire silence was restored, the conductor raised his baton
+again, and the performance ended without further interruption.
+
+The Easy Chair improved the occasion to preach a short sermon upon bad
+manners in public places. But to its great surprise it was severely rebuked
+some time afterward by Cleopatra herself, who said, with some feeling, that
+she had two reasons for complaint. The first was, that her ancient friend
+the Easy Chair should place her in the pillory of its public animadversion;
+and the other was, that the Easy Chair should gravely defend such conduct
+as that of Mr. Thomas. No remonstrance could be more surprising and nothing
+more unexpected than that Cleopatra should differ in opinion upon such a
+point. To the personal aspect of the matter the Easy Chair could say only
+that it had never heard who the offenders were, and that it declined to
+believe that Cleopatra herself could ever be guilty of such conduct. Her
+Majesty then explained that she was not guilty. She was not of the party.
+But it was composed of friends of hers who seated themselves near her, and
+when the words of Mr. Thomas concentrated the gaze of the audience upon the
+disturbers of the peace, her Majesty, known to everybody, was supposed to
+be the ringleader of the _émeute_. The story at once flew abroad, upon
+the wings of those swift birds of prey--as she called them--the Washington
+correspondents, and she was mentioned by name as the chief offender.
+
+It was not difficult to persuade the most placable of queens that the Easy
+Chair could not have intended a personal censure. But the Chair could not
+agree that Thomas's conduct was unjustifiable. Cleopatra urged that the
+conductor of an orchestra at a concert is not responsible for the behavior
+of the audience. An audience, she said, can take care of itself, and it is
+an unwarrantable impertinence for a conductor to arrest the performance
+because he is irritated by a noise of whispering voices or of slamming
+doors. "I saw you, Mr. Easy Chair," she said, "on the evening of Rachel's
+first performance in this country. What would you have thought if she had
+stopped short in the play--it was Corneille's _Les Horaces_, you
+remember--because she was annoyed by the rustling of the leaves of a
+thousand books of the play which the audience turned over at the same
+moment?"
+
+The Easy Chair declined to step into the snare which was plainly set in its
+sight. It would not accept an illustration as an argument. The enjoyment at
+a concert, it contended, for which the audience has paid in advance, and to
+which it is entitled, depends upon conditions of silence and order which
+it can not itself maintain without serious disturbance. It may indeed cry
+"Hush!" and "Put him out!" but not only would that cry be of doubtful
+effect, but experience proves that a concert audience will not raise it. If
+the audience were left to itself, it would permit late arrivals, and all
+the disturbance of chatter and movement. To twist the line of Goldsmith,
+those who came to pray would be at the mercy of those who came to scoff;
+and such mercy is merciless. The conductor stands _in loco parentis_.
+He is the _advocatus angeli_. He does for the audience what it would
+not do for itself. He protects it against its own fatal good-nature. He
+insists that it shall receive what it has paid for, and he will deal with
+disturbers as they deserve. The audience, conscious of its own good-humored
+impotence, recognizes at once its protector, and gladly applauds him for
+doing for it what it has not the nerve to do for itself. No audience whose
+rights were defended as Thomas defended those of his Washington audience
+ever resented the defence.
+
+"No," responded Cleopatra, briskly; "the same imbecility prevents."
+
+"Very well; then such an audience plainly needs a strong and resolute
+leadership; and that is precisely what Thomas supplied. A crowd is always
+grateful to the man who will do what everybody in the crowd feels ought to
+be done, but what no individual is quite ready to undertake."
+
+When Cleopatra said that an audience is quite competent to take care of
+itself, her remark was natural, for she instinctively conceived the
+audience as herself extended into a thousand persons. Such an audience
+would certainly be capable of dispensing with any mentor or guide. But when
+the Easy Chair asked her if she was annoyed by the chattering interruption
+which Thomas rebuked, she replied that of course she was annoyed. Yet
+when she was further asked if she cried "Hush!" or resorted to any means
+whatever to quell the disturbance, the royal lady could not help smiling as
+she answered, "I did not," and the Easy Chair retorted, "Yet an audience is
+capable of protecting itself!"
+
+Meanwhile, whatever the conductor or the audience may or may not do,
+nothing is more vulgar than audible conversation, or any other kind of
+disturbance, during a concert. Sometimes it may be mere thoughtlessness;
+sometimes boorishness, the want of the fine instinct which avoids
+occasioning any annoyance; but usually it is due to a desire to attract
+attention and to affect superiority to the common interest. It is, indeed,
+mere coarse ostentation, like wearing diamonds at a hotel table or a purple
+velvet train in the street. If the audience had the courage which Cleopatra
+attributed to it, that part which was annoyed by the barbarians who chatter
+and disturb would at once suppress the annoyance by an emphatic and
+unmistakable hiss. If this were the practice in public assemblies, such
+incidents as that at the Washington concert would be unknown. Until
+it is the practice, even were Cleopatra's self the offender, every
+self-respecting conductor who has a proper sense of his duties to the
+audience will do with its sincere approval what Mr. Thomas did.
+
+(_April_, 1883)
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN'S DRESS
+
+
+The American who sits in a street omnibus or railroad-car and sees a young
+woman whose waist is pinched to a point that makes her breathing mere
+panting and puffing, and whose feet are squeezed into shoes with a high
+heel in the middle of the sole, which compels her to stump and hobble as
+she tries to walk, should be very wary of praising the superiority of
+European and American civilization to that of the East. The grade of
+civilization which squeezes a waist into deformity is not, in that respect
+at least, superior to that which squeezes a foot into deformity. It is in
+both instances a barbarous conception alike of beauty and of the function
+of woman. The squeezed waist and the squeezed foot equally assume that
+distortion of the human frame may be beautiful, and that helpless idleness
+is the highest sphere of woman.
+
+But the imperfection of our Western civilization shows itself in more
+serious forms involving women. The promiscuous herding of men and women
+prisoners in jails, the opposition to reformatories and penitentiaries
+exclusively for women, and, in general, the failure to provide, as a matter
+of course, women attendants and women nurses for all women prisoners and
+patients, is a signal illustration of a low tone of civilization. The most
+revolting instance of this abuse was the discovery during the summer that
+the patients in a woman's insane hospital in New Orleans were bathed by
+male attendants.
+
+It should not need such outrages to apprise us of the worth of the general
+principle that humanity and decency require that in all public institutions
+women should be employed in the care of women. A wise proposition during
+the year to provide women at the police-stations for the examination of
+women who are arrested failed to become law. It is hard, upon the merits of
+the proposal, to understand why. Women who are arrested may be criminals,
+or drunkards, or vagabonds, or insane, or witless, or sick. But whatever
+the reason of the arrest, there can be no good reason whatever, in a truly
+civilized community, that a woman taken under such circumstances should be
+abandoned to personal search and examination by the kind of men to whom
+that business is usually allotted. The surest sign of the civilization
+of any community is its treatment of women, and the progress of our
+civilization is shown by the constant amelioration of that condition. But
+the unreasonable and even revolting circumstances of much of the public
+treatment of them may wisely modify ecstasies over our vast superiority.
+
+The squeezed waists and other tokens of the kind show that our civilization
+has not yet outgrown the conception of the most meretricious epochs, that
+woman exists for the delight of man, and is meant to be a kind of decorated
+appendage of his life, while the men attendants and men nurses of women
+prisoners and patients show a most uncivilized disregard of the just
+instincts of sex. We are far from asserting that therefore the position of
+women in this country is to be likened to their position in China, where
+the contempt of men denied them souls, or to that among savage tribes,
+where they are treated as beasts of burden. But because we are not
+wallowing in the Slough of Despond, it does not follow that we are sitting
+in the House Beautiful. The traveller who has climbed to the _mer de
+glace_ at Chamouni, and sees the valley wide outstretched far below him,
+sees also far above him the awful sunlit dome of "Sovran Blanc." Whatever
+point we may have reached, there is still a higher point to gain. Nowhere
+in the world are women so truly respected as here, nowhere ought they to be
+more happy than in this country. But that is no reason that the New Orleans
+outrage should be possible, while the same good sense and love of justice
+which have removed so many barriers to fair-play for women should press on
+more cheerfully than ever to remove those that remain.
+
+(_December_, 1882)
+
+
+
+
+SECRET SOCIETIES
+
+
+The melancholy death of young Mr. Leggett, a student at the Cornell
+University, has undoubtedly occasioned a great deal of thought in every
+college in the country upon secret societies. Professor Wilder, of Cornell,
+has written a very careful and serious letter, in which he strongly opposes
+them, plainly stating their great disadvantages, and citing the order
+of Jesuits as the most powerful and thoroughly organized of all secret
+associations, and therefore the one in which their character and tendency
+may best be observed. The debate recalls the history of the Antimasonic
+excitement in this country, which is, however, seldom mentioned in recent
+years, so that the facts may not be familiar to the reader.
+
+In the year 1826 William Morgan, living in Batavia, in the western part of
+New York, near Buffalo, was supposed to intend the publication of a book
+which would reveal the secrets of Masonry. The Masons in the vicinity were
+angry, and resolved to prevent the publication, and made several forcible
+but ineffective attempts for that purpose. On the 11th of September, 1826,
+a party of persons from Canandaigua came to Batavia and procured the arrest
+of Morgan upon a criminal charge, and he was carried to Canandaigua for
+examination. He was acquitted, but was immediately arrested upon a civil
+process, upon which an execution was issued, and he was imprisoned in the
+jail at Canandaigua. The next evening he was discharged at the instance of
+those who had caused his arrest, and was taken from the jail after nine
+o'clock in the evening. Those who had obtained the discharge instantly
+seized him, gagged and bound him, and throwing him into a carriage, hurried
+off to Rochester. By relays of horses and by different hands he was borne
+along, until he was lodged in the magazine of Fort Niagara, at the mouth of
+the Niagara River.
+
+The circumstances of his arrest, and those that had preceded it,
+had aroused and inflamed the minds of the people in Batavia and the
+neighborhood. A committee was appointed at a public meeting to ascertain
+all the facts, and to bring to justice any criminals that might be found.
+They could discover only that Morgan had been seized upon his discharge in
+Canandaigua and hurried off towards Rochester; but beyond that, nothing.
+The excitement deepened and spread. A great crime had apparently been
+committed, and it was hidden in absolute secrecy. Other meetings were held
+in other towns, and other committees were appointed, and both meetings and
+committees were composed of men of both political parties. Investigation
+showed that Masons only were implicated in the crime, and that scarcely a
+Mason aided the inquiry; that many Masons ridiculed and even justified the
+offence; that the committees were taunted with their inability to procure
+the punishment of the offenders in courts where judges, sheriffs, juries,
+and witnesses were Masons; that witnesses disappeared; that the committees
+were reviled; and gradually Masonry itself was held responsible for the
+mysterious doom of Morgan.
+
+The excitement became a frenzy. The Masons were hated and denounced as the
+Irish were in London after the "Irish night," or the Roman Catholics during
+the Titus Oates fury. In January, 1827, some of those who had been arrested
+were tried, and it was hoped that the evidence at their trials would clear
+the mystery. But they pleaded guilty, and this hope was baffled. Meanwhile
+a body of delegates from the various committees met at Lewiston to
+ascertain the fate of Morgan, and they discovered that in or near the
+magazine in which he had been confined he had been put to death. His book,
+with its revelations, had been published, and what was not told was, of
+course, declared to be infinitely worse than the actual disclosures. The
+excitement now became political. It was alleged that Masonry held itself
+superior to the laws, and that Masons were more loyal to their Masonic
+oaths than to their duty as citizens. Masonry, therefore, was held to be a
+fatal foe to the government and to the country, which must be destroyed;
+and in several town-meetings in Genesee and Monroe counties, in the spring
+of 1827, Masons, as such, were excluded from office. At the next general
+election the Antimasons nominated a separate ticket, and they carried the
+counties of Genesee, Monroe, Livingston, Orleans, and Niagara against both
+the great parties. A State organization followed, and in the election
+of 1830 the Antimasonic candidate, Francis Granger, was adopted by the
+National Republicans, and received one hundred and twenty thousand votes,
+against one hundred and twenty-eight thousand for Mr. Throop. From a State
+organization the Antimasons became a national party, and in 1832 nominated
+William Wirt for the presidency. The Antimasonic electoral ticket was
+adopted by the National Republicans, and the union became the Whig party,
+which, in 1838, elected Mr. Seward Governor of New York, and in 1840
+General Harrison President of the United States.
+
+The spring of this triumphant political movement was hostility to a secret
+society. Many of the most distinguished political names of Western New
+York, including Millard Fillmore, William H. Seward, Thurlow Weed, Francis
+Granger, James Wadsworth, George W. Patterson, were associated with it. And
+as the larger portion of the Whig party was merged in the Republican, the
+dominant party of to-day has a certain lineal descent from the feelings
+aroused by the abduction of Morgan from the jail at Canandaigua. And as
+his disappearance and the odium consequent upon it stigmatized Masonry, so
+that it lay for a long time moribund, and although revived in later years,
+cannot hope to regain its old importance, so the death of young Leggett is
+likely to wound fatally the system of college secret societies.
+
+The young man was undergoing initiation into a secret society. He was
+blind-folded, and two companions were leading him along the edge of a cliff
+over a deep ravine, when the earth gave way, or they slipped and fell from
+the precipice, and Leggett was so injured that he died in two hours. There
+was no allegation or suspicion of blame. There was, indeed, an attempt of
+some enemies of the Cornell University--a hostility due either to supposed
+conflict of interests or sectarian jealousy--to stigmatize the institution,
+but it failed instantly and utterly. Indeed, General Leggett, of the
+Patent-office in Washington, the father of the unfortunate youth, at once
+wrote a very noble and touching letter to shield the university and the
+companions of his son from blame or responsibility. He would not allow his
+grief to keep him silent when a word could avert injustice, and his modest
+magnanimity won for his sorrow the tender sympathy of all who read his
+letter.
+
+Every collegian knows that there is no secrecy whatever in what is called
+a secret society. Everybody knows, not in particular, but in general,
+that its object is really "good-fellowship," with the charm of mystery
+added. Everybody knows--for the details of such societies in all countries
+are essentially the same--that there are certain practical jokes of
+initiation--tossings in blankets, layings in coffins, dippings in cold
+water, stringent catechisms, moral exhortations, with darkness and sudden
+light and mysterious voices from forms invisible, and then mystic signs
+and clasps and mottoes, "the whole to conclude" with the best supper that
+the treasury can afford. Literary brotherhood, philosophic fraternity,
+intellectual emulation, these are the noble names by which the youth
+deceive themselves and allure the Freshmen; but the real business of the
+society is to keep the secret, and to get all the members possible from the
+entering class.
+
+Each society, of course, gets "the best fellows." Every touter informs the
+callow Freshman that all men of character and talent hasten to join his
+society, and impresses the fresh imagination with the names of the famous
+honorary members. The Freshman, if he be acute--and he is more so every
+year--naturally wonders how the youth, who are undeniably commonplace in
+the daily intercourse of college, should become such lofty beings in the
+hall of a secret society; or, more probably, he thinks of nothing but the
+sport or the mysterious incentive to a studious and higher life which the
+society is to furnish. He feels the passionate curiosity of the neophyte.
+He is smitten with the zeal of the hermetical philosophy. He would learn
+more than Rosicrucian lore. That is a vision soon dispelled. But the
+earnest curiosity changes into _esprit du corps_, and the mischief is
+that the secrecy and the society feeling are likely to take precedence of
+the really desirable motives in college. There is a hundredfold greater
+zeal to obtain members than there is generous rivalry among the societies
+to carry off the true college honors. And if the purpose be admirable, why,
+as Professor Wilder asks, the secrecy? What more can the secret society
+do for the intellectual or social training of the student than the open
+society? Has any secret society in an American college done, or can it do,
+more for the intelligent and ambitious young man than the Union Debating
+Society at the English Cambridge University, or the similar club at Oxford?
+There Macaulay, Gladstone, the Austins, Charles Buller, Tooke, Ellis, and
+the long illustrious list of noted and able Englishmen were trained, and
+in the only way that manly minds can be trained, by open, free, generous
+rivalry and collision. The member of a secret society in college is really
+confined, socially and intellectually, to its membership, for it is found
+that the secret gradually supplant the open societies. But that membership
+depends upon luck, not upon merit, while it has the capital disadvantage
+of erecting false standards of measurement, so that the _Mu Nu_ man
+cannot be just to the hero of _Zeta Eta_. The secrecy is a spice that
+overbears the food. The mystic paraphernalia is a relic of the baby-house,
+which a generous youth disdains.
+
+There is, indeed, an agreeable sentiment in the veiled friendship of the
+secret society which every social nature understands. But as students
+are now becoming more truly "men" as they enter college, because of the
+higher standard of requirement, it is probable that the glory of the
+secret society is already waning, and that the allegiance of the older
+universities to the open arenas of frank and manly intellectual contests,
+involving no expense, no dissipation, and no perilous temptation, is
+returning. At least there will now be an urgent question among many of the
+best men in college whether it ought not to return.
+
+(_January_, 1874)
+
+
+
+
+TOBACCO AND HEALTH
+
+
+We do not know if readers upon your side of the water have watched with
+any interest the present violent onslaught in both England and France upon
+the use of tobacco. Sir Benjamin Brodie (of London) has declared strongly
+against its use; and at a recent meeting at Edinburgh of the British
+Anti-Tobacco Society, Professor Miller, moving the first resolution, as
+follows: "That as the constituent principles which tobacco contains are
+highly poisonous, the practices of smoking and snuffing tend in a variety
+of ways to injure the physical and mental constitution," continued: "No man
+who was a hard smoker had a steady hand. But not only had it a debilitating
+and paralyzing effect; but he could tell of patients who were completely
+paralyzed in their limbs by inveterate smoking. He might tell of a
+patient of his who brought on an attack of paralysis by smoking; who was
+cured, indeed, by simple means enough, accompanied with the complete
+discontinuance of the practice; but who afterwards took to it again, and
+got a new attack of paralysis; and who could now play with himself, as it
+were, because when he wanted a day's paralysis or an approach to it, he
+had nothing to do but to indulge more or less freely with the weed. Only
+the other day, the French--among whom the practice was carried even to
+a greater extent than with us--made an estimate of its effects in their
+schools, and academies, and colleges. They took the young men attending
+these institutions, classified them into those who smoked habitually and
+those who did not, and estimated their physical and intellectual standing,
+perhaps their moral standing too, but he could not say. The result was,
+that they found that those who did not smoke were the stronger lads and
+better scholars, were altogether more reputable people, and more useful
+members of society than those who habitually used the drug. What was
+the consequence? Louis Napoleon--one of the good things which he had
+done--instantly issued an edict that no smoking should be permitted in any
+school, college, or academy. In one day he put out about 30,000 pipes in
+Paris alone. Let our young smokers put that in their pipe and smoke it."
+The resolution was agreed to.
+
+Is it possible to entertain the idea that Louis Napoleon has increased
+the tax on tobacco, latterly, very largely, in the hope of discouraging
+its use, and so contributing to the weal of the nation? If so, it would
+illustrate one of the beautiful uses of despotic privilege.
+
+(_February_, 1861)
+
+
+
+
+TOBACCO AND MANNERS
+
+
+I
+
+The "old school" of manners has fallen into disrepute. Sir Charles
+Grandison is a comical rather than a courtly figure to this generation; and
+the man whose manners may be described as Grandisonian is usually called
+a pompous and grandiloquent old prig. Certainly the elaborately dressed
+gentleman speaking to a lady only with polished courtesy of phrase, and
+avoiding in her presence all coarse words and acts, handing her in the
+minuet with inexpressible grace and deference, and showing an exquisite
+homage in every motion, was a very different figure from the gentleman in a
+shooting-jacket or morning sack "chaffing" a lady with the freshest slang,
+and smoking in her face. They are undeniably different, and the later
+figure is wholly free from Grandisonian elegance and elaboration. But is he
+much more truly a gentleman? Is he our Sidney, our Chevalier Bayard, our
+Admirable Crichton? Is that refined consideration and gentle deference,
+which is the flower of courtesy, an old-fashioned folly?
+
+The overwrought politeness is made very ridiculous upon the stage, and
+Richardson is undoubtedly hard reading for the general consumer of novels.
+It is true, also, that fine morals do not always go with fine manners, and
+that Lovelace had a fascination of address which John Knox lacked. The
+chaff and slang of the Bayard of to-day are at least decent, and his morals
+probably purer than those of the courtly and punctilious old Sir Roger
+de Coverleys. Possibly; but it has been wisely said that hypocrisy is the
+homage paid by vice to virtue. The good manners of a bad man are a rich
+dress upon a diseased body. They are the graceful form of a vase full of
+dirty water. The liquid may be poisonous, but the vessel is beautiful.
+Some of the worst Lotharios in the world have a personal charm which is
+irresistible. Many a stately compliment was paid by a graciously bowing
+satyr in laced velvet coat and periwig, at the court of Louis the Great,
+and paid for the basest purpose; but the grace and the courtesy were
+borrowed, like plumage of living hues to deck carrion. They were not a part
+of the baseness, and you do not escape dirty water by breaking the vase.
+If the older morals were worse than the new, and the older manners were
+better, cannot we who live to-day, and who may have everything, combine the
+new morals and the old manners?
+
+We can spare some elaboration of form, but we cannot safely spare the
+substance of refined deference. If Romeo be permitted to treat Juliet as
+hostlers are supposed to treat barmaids, and as the heroes of Fielding and
+Smollett treat Abigails upon a journey, they will both lose self-respect
+and mutual respect. It was a wise father who said to his son, "Beware of
+the woman who allows you to kiss her." The woman who does not require
+of a man the form of respect invites him to discard the substance. And
+there is one violation of the form which is recent and gross, and might
+be well cited as a striking illustration of the decay of manners. It
+is the practice of smoking in the society of ladies in public places,
+whether driving, or walking, or sailing, or sitting. There are _preux
+chevaliers_ who would be honestly amazed if they were told they did
+not behave like gentlemen, who, sitting with a lady on a hotel piazza, or
+strolling on a public park, whip out a cigarette, light it, and puff as
+tranquilly as if they were alone in their rooms. Or a young man comes alone
+upon the deck of a steamer, where throngs of ladies are sitting, and blows
+clouds of tobacco smoke in their faces, without even remarking that tobacco
+is disagreeable to some people. This is not, indeed, one of the seven
+deadly sins, but a man who unconcernedly sings false betrays that he has
+no ear for music, and the man who smokes in this way shows that he is not
+quite a gentleman.
+
+But some ladies smoke? Yes, and some ladies drink liquor. Does that mend
+the matter? The Easy Chair has seen a lady at the head of her own table
+smoking a fine cigar. You will see a great many highly dressed women in
+Paris smoking cigarettes. Does all this change the situation? Does this
+make it more gentlemanly to smoke with a lady beside you in a carriage, or
+upon a bench on the piazza? But some ladies like the odor of a cigar? Not
+many; and the taste of those who sincerely do so cannot justify the habit
+of promiscuous puffing in their presence. The intimacy of domesticity is
+governed by other rules; but a gentleman smoking would hardly enter his
+own drawing-room, where other ladies sat with his wife, without a word
+of apology. The Easy Chair is no King James, and is more likely to issue
+blasts of tobacco than blasts against it. But King James belonged to a very
+selfish sex--a sex which seems often to suppose that its indulgences and
+habits are to be tenderly tolerated, for no other reason than that they
+are its habits. Therefore the young woman must defend herself by showing
+plainly that she prohibits the intrusion of which, if suffered, she is
+really the victim. In other times the Easy Chair has seen the lovely Laura
+Matilda unwilling to refuse to dance with the partner who had bespoken her
+hand for the german, although when he presented himself he was plainly
+flown with wine. The Easy Chair has seen the hapless, foolish maid
+encircled by those Bacchic arms, and then a headlong whirl and dash down
+the room, ending in the promiscuous overthrow and downfall of maid,
+Bacchus, and musicians.
+
+If in the Grandisonian day the morals were wanting, it was something to
+have the manners. They at least were to the imagination a memory and a
+prophecy. They recalled the idyllic age when fine manners expressed fine
+feelings, and they foretold the return of Astrća to her ancient haunts.
+Here is young Adonis dreaming of a four-in-hand and a yacht, like any other
+gentleman. Let us hope that he knows the test of a gentleman not to be the
+ownership of blood-horses and a unique drag, but perfect courtesy founded
+upon fine human feeling--that rare and indescribable gentleness and
+consideration which rests upon manner as lightly as the bloom upon a fruit.
+It may be imitated, as gold and diamonds are. But no counterfeit can harm
+it; and, Adonis, it is incompatible with smoking in a lady's face, even if
+she acquiesces.
+
+(_September_, 1879)
+
+
+II
+
+Apollodorus came in the other morning and announced to the Easy Chair that
+it had been made by common consent arbiter of a dispute in a circle of
+young men. "The question," said he, "is not a new one in itself, but it
+constantly recurs, for it is the inquiry under what conditions a gentleman
+may smoke in the presence of ladies."
+
+The Easy Chair replied that it could not answer more pertinently than in
+the words of the famous Princess Emilia, who, upon being asked by a youth
+who was attending her in a promenade around the garden, "What should you
+say if a gentleman asked to smoke as he walked with you?" replied, "It is
+not supposable, for no gentleman would propose it."
+
+Naturally that youth did not venture to light even a cigarette. Emilia had
+parried his question so dexterously that, although the rebuke was stinging,
+he could not even pretend to be offended. His question was merely a form of
+saying, "I am about to smoke, and what have you to say?" That he asked the
+question was evidence of a lingering persuasion, inherited from an ancestry
+of gentlemen, that it was not seemly to puff tobacco smoke around a lady
+with whom he was walking.
+
+Apollodorus was silent for a moment, as if reflecting whether this anecdote
+was to be regarded as a general judgment of the arbiter that a gentleman
+will never smoke in the presence of a lady. But the Easy Chair broke in
+upon his meditation with a question, "If you had a son, should you wish to
+meet him smoking as he accompanied a lady upon the avenue? or, were you
+the father of a daughter, should you wish to see her cavalier smoking as
+he walked by her side? Upon your own theory of what is gentlemanly and
+courteous and respectful and becoming in the manner of a man towards a
+woman, should you regard the spectacle with satisfaction?"
+
+"Well," replied Apollodorus, "isn't that rather a high-flying view? When
+can a man smoke--"
+
+"But you are not answering," interrupted the Easy Chair. "Of two youths
+walking with your daughter, one of whom was smoking a cigarette, or a
+cigar, or a pipe, as he attended her, and the other was not smoking, which
+would seem to you the more gentlemanly?"
+
+"The latter," said Apollodorus, promptly and frankly.
+
+"It appears, then," returned the Easy Chair, assuming the Socratic manner,
+"that there are circumstances under which a gentleman will not smoke in
+the presence of a lady. But to answer your question directly, it is not
+possible to prescribe an exact code, although certain conditions may be
+definitely stated. For instance, a gentleman will not smoke while walking
+with a lady in the street. He will not smoke while paying her an evening
+visit in her drawing-room. He will not smoke while driving with her in the
+Park."
+
+It is significant of a radical change in manners that such rules can
+be laid down, because formerly the question could not have arisen. The
+grandfather of Apollodorus, who was the flower of courtesy, could no more
+have smoked with a lady with whom he was walking or driving than he could
+have attended her without a coat or collar. Yet manners change, and the
+grandfather must not insist that those of his time were best because they
+were those of his time. It is but a little while since that a gentleman
+who appeared at a party without gloves would have been a "queer" figure.
+But now should he wear gloves he would be remarked as unfamiliar with good
+usage.
+
+It does not argue a decline of courtesy that the Grandisonian compliment
+and the ineffable bending over a lady's hand and respectful kissing of the
+finger-tips have yielded to a simpler and less stately manner. The woman
+of the minuet was not really more respected than the woman of the waltz.
+However the word gentlemanly may be defined, it will not be questioned
+that the quality which it describes is sympathetic regard for the feelings
+of others and the manner which evinces it. The manner, of course, may be
+counterfeited and put to base uses. To say that Lovelace has a gentlemanly
+manner is not to say that he is a gentleman, but only that he has caught
+the trick of a gentleman. To call him or Robert Macaire or Richard Turpin a
+gentleman is to say only that he behaves as a gentleman behaves. But he is
+not a gentleman, unless that word describes manners and nothing more.
+
+This is the key to the question of Apollodorus. It is not easy to define a
+gentleman, but it is perfectly easy to see that in his pleasures and in the
+little indifferent practices of society the gentleman will do nothing which
+is disagreeable to others. He certainly will not assume that a personal
+gratification or indulgence must necessarily be pleasant to others, nor
+will he make the selfish habits of others a plea for his own.
+
+Apollodorus listened patiently, and then said slowly that he understood the
+judgment to be that a gentleman would smoke in the presence of ladies only
+when he knew that it was agreeable to them, but that, as the infinite grace
+and courtesy of women often led them, as an act of self-denial, to persuade
+themselves that what others wish to do ought not to annoy them, it was very
+difficult to know whether the practice was or was not offensive to any
+particular lady, and therefore--therefore--
+
+The youth seemed to be unable to draw the conclusion.
+
+"Therefore," said the mentor, "it is well to remember the old rule in
+whist."
+
+"Which is--?" asked Apollodorus.
+
+"When in doubt, trump the trick."
+
+"But what is the special application of that rule to this case?"
+
+"Precisely this, that the doubting smoker should follow the advice of
+_Punch_ to those about to marry."
+
+"Which is--?" asked Apollodorus.
+
+"Don't."
+
+(_September_, 1883)
+
+
+
+
+DUELLING
+
+
+Twenty-five years ago, at the table of a gentleman whose father had fallen
+in a duel, the conversation fell upon duelling, and after it had proceeded
+for some time the host remarked, emphatically, that there were occasions
+when it was a man's solemn duty to fight. The personal reference was too
+significant to permit further insistence at that table that duelling was
+criminal folly, and the subject of conversation was changed.
+
+The host, however, had only reiterated the familiar view of General
+Hamilton. His plea was, that in the state of public opinion at the time
+when Burr challenged him, to refuse to fight under circumstances which
+by the "code of honor" authorized a challenge, was to accept a brand of
+cowardice and of a want of gentlemanly feeling, which would banish him to a
+moral and social Coventry, and throw a cloud of discredit upon his family.
+So Hamilton, one of the bravest men and one of the acutest intellects of
+his time, permitted a worthless fellow to murder him. Yet there is no doubt
+that he stated accurately the general feeling of the social circle in which
+he lived. There was probably not a conspicuous member of that society who
+was of military antecedents who would not have challenged any man who had
+said of him what Hamilton had said of Burr. Hamilton disdained explanation
+or recantation, and the result was accepted as tragical, but in a certain
+sense inevitable.
+
+Yet that result aroused public sentiment to the atrocity of this barbarous
+survival of the ordeal of private battle. That one of the most justly
+renowned of public men, of unsurpassed ability, should be shot to death
+like a mad dog, because he had expressed the general feeling about an
+unprincipled schemer, was an exasperating public misfortune. But that he
+should have been murdered in deference to a practice which was approved in
+the best society, yet which placed every other valuable life at the mercy
+of any wily vagabond, was a public peril. From that day to this there has
+been no duel which could be said to have commanded public sympathy or
+approval. From the bright June morning, eighty years ago, when Hamilton
+fell at Weehawken, to the June of this year, when two foolish men shot at
+each other in Virginia, there has been a steady and complete change of
+public opinion, and the performance of this year was received with almost
+universal contempt, and with indignant censure of a dilatory police.
+
+The most celebrated duel in this country since that of Hamilton and Burr
+was the encounter between Commodores Decatur and Barron, in 1820, near
+Washington, in which Decatur, like Hamilton, was mortally wounded, and
+likewise lived but a few hours. The quarrel was one of professional, as
+Burr's of political, jealousy. But as the only conceivable advantage of
+the Hamilton duel lay in its arousing the public mind to the barbarity of
+duelling, the only gain from the Decatur duel was that it confirmed this
+conviction. In both instances there was an unspeakable shock to the country
+and infinite domestic anguish. Nothing else was achieved. Neither general
+manners nor morals were improved, nor was the fame of either combatant
+heightened, nor public confidence in the men or admiration of their public
+services increased. In both cases it was a calamity alleviated solely by
+the resolution which it awakened that such calamities should not occur
+again.
+
+Such a resolution, indeed, could not at once prevail, and eighteen years
+after Decatur was killed, Jonathan Cilley, of Maine, was killed in a duel
+at Washington by William J. Graves, of Kentucky. This event occurred
+forty-five years ago, but the outcry with which it was received even at
+that time--one of the newspaper moralists lapsing into rhyme as he deplored
+the cruel custom which led excellent men to the fatal field,
+
+  "where Cilleys meet their Graves"--
+
+and the practical disappearance of Mr. Graves from public life, showed how
+deep and strong was the public condemnation, and how radically the general
+view of the duel was changed.
+
+Even in the burning height of the political and sectional animosity of
+1856, when Brooks had assaulted Charles Sumner, the challenge of Brooks
+by some of Sumner's friends met with little public sympathy. During the
+excitement the Easy Chair met the late Count Gurowski, who was a constant
+and devoted friend of Mr. Sumner, but an old-world man, with all the
+hereditary social prejudices of the old world. The count was furious
+that such a dastardly blow had not been avenged. "Has he no friends?" he
+exclaimed. "Is there no honor left in your country?" And, as if he would
+burst with indignant impatience, he shook both his fists in the air, and
+thundered out, "Good God! will not somebody challenge anybody?"
+
+No, that time is passed. The elderly club dude may lament the decay
+of the good old code of honor--a word of which he has a very ludicrous
+conception--as Major Pendennis, when he pulled off his wig, and took out
+his false teeth, and removed the padded calves of his legs, used to hope
+that the world was not sinking into shams in its old age. Quarrelling
+editors may win a morning's notoriety by stealing to the field, furnishing
+a paragraph for the reporters, and running away from the police. But they
+gain only the unsavory notoriety of the man in a curled wig and flowered
+waistcoat and huge flapped coat of the last century who used to parade
+Broadway. The costume was merely an advertisement, and of very contemptible
+wares. The man who fights a duel to-day excites but one comment. Should he
+escape, he is ridiculous. Should he fall, the common opinion of enlightened
+mankind writes upon his head-stone, "He died as the fool dieth."
+
+(_September_, 1883)
+
+
+
+
+NEWSPAPER ETHICS
+
+
+I
+
+Newspaper manners and morals hardly fall into the category of minor manners
+and morals, which are supposed to be the especial care of the Easy Chair,
+but there are frequent texts upon which the preacher might dilate, and
+push a discourse upon the subject even to the fifteenthly. Indeed, in
+this hot time of an opening election campaign, the stress of the contest
+is so severe that the first condition of a good newspaper is sometimes
+frightfully maltreated. The first duty of a newspaper is to tell the news;
+to tell it fairly, honestly, and accurately, which are here only differing
+aspects of the same adverb. "Cooking the news" is the worst use to which
+cooking and news can be put. The old divine spoke truly, if with exceeding
+care, in saying, "It has been sometimes observed that men will lie." So it
+has been sometimes suspected that newspapers will cook the news.
+
+A courteous interviewer called upon a gentleman to obtain his opinions,
+let us say, upon the smelt fishery. After the usual civilities upon such
+occasions, the interviewer remarked, with conscious pride: "The paper that
+I represent and you, sir, do not agree upon the great smelt question. But
+it is a newspaper. It prints the facts. It does not pervert them for its
+own purpose, and it finds its account in it. You may be sure that whatever
+you may say will be reproduced exactly as you say it. This is the news
+department. Meanwhile the editorial department will make such comments upon
+the news as it chooses." This was fair, and the interviewer kept his word.
+The opinions might be editorially ridiculed from the other smelt point of
+view, and they probably were so. But the reader of the paper could judge
+between the opinion and the comment.
+
+Now an interview is no more news than much else that is printed in a paper,
+and it is no more pardonable to misrepresent other facts than to distort
+the opinions of the victim of an interview. Yet it has been possible at
+times to read in the newspapers of the same day accounts of the same
+proceedings of--of--let us say, as this is election time--of a political
+convention. The _Banner_ informs us that the spirit was unmistakable,
+and the opinion most decided in favor of Jones. True, the convention voted,
+by nine hundred to four, for Smith, but there is no doubt that Jones is the
+name written on the popular heart. The _Standard_, on the other hand,
+proclaims that the popular heart is engraved all over with the inspiring
+name of Smith, and that it is impossible to find any trace of feeling for
+Jones, except, possibly, in the case of one delegate, who is probably an
+idiot or a lunatic. This is gravely served up as news, and the papers pay
+for it. They even hire men to write this, and pay them for it. How Ude
+and Caręme would have disdained this kind of cookery! It is questionable
+whether hanging is not a better use to put a man to than cooking news. Sir
+Henry Wotton defined an ambassador as an honest man sent to lie abroad for
+the commonwealth. This kind of purveyor, however, does not lie for his
+country, but for a party or a person.
+
+It is done with a purpose, the purpose of influencing other action. It is
+intended to swell the paean for Jones or for Smith, and to procure results
+under false pretences. Procuring goods under false pretences is a crime,
+but everybody is supposed to read the newspapers at his own risk. Has the
+reader yet to learn that newspapers are very human? A paper, for instance,
+takes a position upon the Jones or Smith question. It decides, upon all the
+information it can obtain, and by its own deliberate judgment, that Jones
+is the coming man, or ("it has been observed that men will sometimes lie")
+it has illicit reasons for the success of Smith. Having thus taken its
+course, it cooks all the news upon the Smith and Jones controversy, in
+order that by encouraging the Jonesites or the Smithians, according to the
+color that it wears, it may promote the success of the side upon which its
+opinion has been staked. It is a ludicrous and desperate game, but it is
+certainly not the honest collection and diffusion of news. It is a losing
+game also, because, whatever the sympathies of the reader, he does not care
+to be foolishly deceived about the situation. If he is told day after day
+that Smith is immensely ahead and has a clear field, he is terribly shaken
+by the shock of learning at the final moment that he has been cheated from
+the beginning, and that poor Smith is dead upon the field of dishonor.
+
+Everybody is willing to undertake everybody else's business, and an Easy
+Chair naturally supposes, therefore, that it could show the able editor a
+plan of securing and retaining a large audience. The plan would be that
+described by the urbane reporter as the plan of his own paper. It is
+nothing else than truth-telling in the news column, and the peremptory
+punishment of all criminals who cook the news, and "write up" the
+situation, not as it is, but as the paper wishes it to be. This is more
+than an affair of the private wishes or preferences of the paper. To cook
+the news is a public wrong, and a violation of the moral contract which
+the newspaper makes with the public to supply the news, and to use every
+reasonable effort to obtain it, not to manufacture it, either in the office
+or by correspondence.
+
+(_July_, 1880)
+
+
+II
+
+If, as a New York paper recently said, the journalist is superseding the
+orator, it is full time for the work upon _Journals and Journalism_,
+which has been lately issued in London. The New York writer holds that in
+our political contests the "campaign speech" is not intended or adapted
+to persuade or convert opponents, but merely to stimulate and encourage
+friends. The party meetings on each side, he thinks, are composed of
+partisans, and the more extravagant the assertion and the more unsparing
+the denunciation of "the enemy," the more rapturous the enthusiasm of the
+audience. In fact, his theory of campaign speeches is that they are merely
+the addresses of generals to their armies on the eve of battle, which are
+not arguments, since argument is not needed, but mere urgent appeals to
+party feeling. "Thirty centuries look down from yonder Pyramid" is the
+Napoleonic tone of the campaign speech.
+
+As an election is an appeal to the final tribunal of the popular judgment,
+the apparent object of election oratory is to affect the popular decision.
+But this, the journalist asserts, is not done by the orator, for the reason
+just stated, but by the journal. The newspaper addresses the voter, not
+with rhetorical periods and vapid declamation, but with facts and figures
+and arguments which the voter can verify and ponder at his leisure, and not
+under the excitement or the tedium of a spoken harangue. The newspaper,
+also, unless it be a mere party "organ," is candid to the other side, and
+states the situation fairly. Moreover, the exigencies of a daily issue and
+of great space to fill produce a fulness and variety of information and of
+argument which are really the source of most of the speeches, so that the
+orator repeats to his audience an imperfect abstract of a complete and
+ample plea, and the orator, it is asserted, would often serve his cause
+infinitely better by reading a carefully written newspaper article than by
+pouring out his loose and illogical declamation.
+
+But the argument for the newspaper can be pushed still further. Since
+phonographic reporting has become universal, and the speaker is conscious
+that his very words will be spread the next morning before hundreds of
+thousands of readers, it is of those readers, and not of the thousand
+hearers before him, of whom he thinks, and for whom his address is really
+prepared. Formerly a single charge was all that was needed for the
+fusillade of a whole political campaign. The speech that was originally
+carefully prepared was known practically only to the audience that heard
+it. It grew better and brighter with the attrition of repeated delivery,
+and was fresh and new to every new audience. But now, when delivered to an
+audience, it is spoken to the whole country. It is often in type before
+it is uttered, so that the orator is in fact repeating the article of
+to-morrow morning. The result is good so far as it compels him to precision
+of statement, but it inevitably suggests the question whether the newspaper
+is not correct in its assertion that the great object of the oration is
+accomplished not by the orator, but by the writer.
+
+But this, after all, is like asking whether a chromo copy of a great
+picture does not supersede painting, and prove it to be an antiquated or
+obsolete art. Oratory is an art, and its peculiar charm and power cannot be
+superseded by any other art. Great orations are now prepared with care, and
+may be printed word for word. But the reading cannot produce the impression
+of the hearing. We can all read the words that Webster spoke on Bunker Hill
+at the laying of the corner-stone of the monument fifty years after the
+battle. But those who saw him standing there, in his majestic prime, and
+speaking to that vast throng, heard and saw and felt something that we
+cannot know. The ordinary stump speech which imperfectly echoes a leading
+article can well be spared. But the speech of an orator still remains a
+work of art, the words of which may be accurately lithographed, while the
+spirit and glow and inspiration of utterance which made it a work of art
+cannot be reproduced.
+
+The general statement of the critic, however, remains true, and the
+effective work of a political campaign is certainly done by the newspaper.
+The newspaper is of two kinds, again--that which shows exclusively the
+virtue and advantage of the party it favors, and that which aims to be
+judicial and impartial. The tendency of the first kind is obvious enough,
+but that of the last is not less positive if less obvious. The tendency
+of the independent newspaper is to good-natured indifference. The very
+ardor, often intemperate and indiscreet, with which a side is advocated,
+prejudices such a paper against the cause itself. Because the hot orator
+exclaims that the success of the adversary would ruin the country, the
+independent Mentor gayly suggests that the country is not so easily ruined,
+and that such an argument is a reason for voting against the orator. The
+position that in a party contest it is six on one side and half a dozen
+on the other is too much akin to the doctrine that naught is everything
+and everything is naught to be very persuasive with men who are really
+in earnest. Such a position in public affairs inevitably, and often very
+unjustly to them, produces an impression of want of hearty conviction,
+which paralyzes influence as effectually as the evident prejudice and
+partiality of the party advocate. Thorough independence is perfectly
+compatible with the strongest conviction that the public welfare will be
+best promoted by the success of this or that party. Such independence
+criticises its own party and partisans, but it would not have wavered in
+the support of the Revolution because Gates and Conway were intriguers, and
+Charles Lee an adventurer, and it would have sustained Sir Robert Walpole
+although he would not repeal the Corporation and Test laws, and withdrew
+his excise act.
+
+Journalism, if it be true that it really shapes the policy of nations, well
+deserves to be treated as thoughtfully as Mr. "John Oldcastle" apparently
+treats it in the book we have mentioned, for it is the most exacting of
+professions in the ready use of various knowledge. Mr. Anthony Trollope
+says that anybody can set up the business or profession of literature who
+can command a room, a table, and pen, ink, and paper. Would he also say
+that any man may set up the trade of an artist who can buy an easel, a
+palette, a few brushes, and some colors? It can be done, indeed, but only
+as a man who can hire a boat may set up for an East India merchant.
+
+(_December_, 1880)
+
+
+III
+
+"If you find that you have no case," the old lawyer is reported to have
+said to the young, "abuse the plaintiff's attorney," and Judge Martin
+Grover, of New York, used to say that it was apparently a great relief to
+a lawyer who had lost a case to betake himself to the nearest tavern and
+swear at the court. Abuse, in any event, seems to have been regarded by
+both of these authorities as a consolation in defeat. It is but carrying
+the theory a step further to resort to abuse in argument. Timon, who is a
+club cynic--which is perhaps the most useless specimen of humanity--says
+that 'pon his honor nothing entertains him more than to see how little
+argument goes to the discussion of any question, and how immediate is
+the recourse to blackguardism. "The other day," he said, recently, "I
+was sitting in the smoking-room, and Blunt and Sharp began to talk about
+yachts. Sharp thinks that he knows all that can be known of yachts, and
+Blunt thinks that what he thinks is unqualified truth. Sharp made a strong
+assertion, and Blunt smiled. It was that lofty smile of amused pity and
+superiority, which is, I suppose, very exasperating. Sharp was evidently
+surprised, but he continued, and at another observation Blunt looked at
+him, and said, simply, 'Ridiculous!' As it seemed to me," said Timon, "the
+stronger and truer were the remarks of Sharp, the more Blunt's tone changed
+from contempt to anger, until he came to a torrent of vituperation, under
+which Sharp retired from the room with dignity.
+
+"I presume," said the cynic, "that Sharp was correct upon every point.
+But the more correct Sharp was, the more angry Blunt became. It was very
+entertaining, and it seems to me very much the way of more serious
+discussion." Timon was certainly right, and those who heard his remarks,
+and have since then seen him chuckling over the newspapers, are confident
+it is because he observes in them the same method of carrying on
+discussion. Much public debate recalls the two barbaric methods of warfare,
+which consist in making a loud noise and in emitting vile odors. A
+member of Congress pours out a flood of denunciatory words in the utmost
+rhetorical confusion, and seems to suppose that he has dismayed his
+opponent because he has made a tremendous noise. He is only an overgrown
+boy, who, like some other boys, imagines that he is very heroic when he
+shakes his head, and pouts his lip, and clinches his fist, and "calls
+names" in a shrill and rasping tone. Other members, who ought to know
+better, pretend to regard his performances as worthy of applause, and
+metaphorically pat him on the back and cry, "St, boy!" They only share--and
+in a greater degree, because they know better--the contempt with which he
+is regarded.
+
+In the same way a newspaper writer attacks views which are not acceptable
+to him, not with argument, or satire, or wit, or direct refutation, but by
+metaphorically emptying slops, and directing whirlwinds of bad smells upon
+their supporters. The intention seems to be, not to confute the arguments,
+but to disgust the advocates. The proceeding is a confession that the views
+are so evidently correct that they will inevitably prevail unless their
+supporters can be driven away. This is an ingenious policy, for guns
+certainly cannot be served if the gunners are dispersed. Men shrink from
+ridicule and ludicrous publicity. However conscious of rectitude a man
+may be, it is exceedingly disagreeable for him to see the dead-walls and
+pavements covered with posters proclaiming that he is a liar and a fool. If
+he recoils, the enemy laughs in triumph; if he is indifferent, there is a
+fresh whirlwind.
+
+A public man wrote recently to a friend that he had seen an attack upon his
+conduct in a great journal, and had asked his lawyer to take the necessary
+legal steps to bring the offender to justice. His friend replied that he
+had seen the attack, but that it had no more effect upon him than the
+smells from Newtown Creek. They were very disgusting, but that was all.
+This is the inevitable result of blackguardism. The newspaper reader,
+as he sees that one man supports one measure because his wife's uncle is
+interested in it, and another man another measure to gratify his grudge
+against a rival, gradually learns from his daily morning mentor that there
+is no such thing as honor, decency, or public spirit in public affairs; he
+chuckles with the club cynic, although for a very different reason, and
+forgets the contents of one column as he begins upon the next. If a man
+covers his milk toast, his breakfast, his lunch, dinner, and supper with a
+coating of Cayenne pepper, the pepper becomes as things in general became
+to Mr. Toots--of no consequence.
+
+This kind of fury in personal denunciation is not force, as young writers
+suppose; it is feebleness. Wit, satire, brilliant sarcasm, are, indeed,
+legitimate weapons. It was these which Sydney Smith wielded in the early
+_Edinburgh Review_. But "calling names," and echoing the commonplaces
+of affected contempt, that is too weak even for Timon to chuckle over,
+except as evidence of mental vacuity. The real object in honest controversy
+is to defeat your opponent and leave him a friend. But the Newtown Creek
+method is fatal to such a result. Of course that method often apparently
+wins. But it always fails when directed against a resolute and earnest
+purpose. The great causes persist through seeming defeat to victory. But to
+oppose them with sneers and blackguardism is to affect to dam Niagara with
+a piece of paper. The crafty old lawyer advised the younger to reserve his
+abuse until he felt that he had no case. Judge Grover remarked that it was
+when the case was lost that the profanity began.
+
+(_September_, 1882)
+
+
+IV
+
+There is a delicate question in newspaper ethics which is sometimes widely
+discussed, namely, whether "journalism" may be regarded as a distinct
+profession which has a moral standard of its own. The question arises when
+an editorial writer transfers his services from one journal to another of
+different political opinions. Is a man justified in arguing strenuously for
+free trade to-day and for protection to-morrow? Are political questions and
+measures of public policy merely points of law upon which an editor is an
+advocate to be retained indifferently and with equal morality upon either
+side?
+
+This question may be illuminated by another. Would John Bright be a man of
+equal renown, character, and weight of influence if, being an adherent of
+peace principles, he had remained in an administration whose policy was
+war? This question will be thought to beg the whole question. But does
+it? Must it not be assumed that a man of adequate ability for the proper
+discussion of political questions must have positive political convictions,
+and can a man who has such convictions honorably devote himself to
+discrediting them, and to defeating the policy which they demand, under the
+plea that he has professionally accepted a retainer or a salary to do so?
+Would his arguments have any moral weight if they were known to be those of
+a man who was not himself convinced by them? And is not the concealment of
+the fact indispensable to the value of his services?
+
+To continue this interrogation: is not the parallel sought to be
+established between the editorial writer and the lawyer vitiated by
+the fact that it is universally understood that a lawyer's service is
+perfunctory and official; that he takes one side rather than another
+because he is paid for it, and because that is the condition of his
+profession, and that that condition springs from the nature of legal
+procedure, society not choosing to take life or to inflict punishment
+of any kind until the whole case has been stated according to certain
+stipulated forms? For this reason the advocate who defends a criminal
+is not supposed necessarily to believe him to be innocent. But no such
+reason existing in the case of the editor, is it not an equally universal
+understanding that an editor does honestly and personally hold the view
+that he presents and defends? For instance, the _Times_ in New York
+is a Republican and free-trade journal. If it should suddenly appear some
+morning as a Democratic and protectionist paper, would not the general
+conclusion be that it had changed hands? But if it should be announced that
+it was in the same hands, and had changed its views because of a pecuniary
+arrangement, could the _Times_ continue to have the same standing and
+influence which it has now?
+
+A distinction may be attempted between the owner of a paper and the editor.
+But for the public are they not practically the same? It is not, in fact,
+the owner or the editor, it is the paper, which is known to the public. If
+the public considers at all the probable relation of the owner and editor,
+it necessarily assumes their harmony, because it does not suppose that an
+owner would employ an editor who is injuring the property, and if the paper
+flourishes under the editor, it is because the owner yields his private
+opinion to the editor's, if they happen to differ, so that there is no
+discord. On the other hand, if the paper flags and fails, and the owner,
+to rescue his property, employs another editor, who holds other views,
+and changes the tone of the paper, the result is the same so far as the
+public is concerned. The profit of the paper may increase, but its power
+and influence surely decline. In the illustration that we have supposed,
+the proprietorship of the _Times_ might decide that a Democratic and
+protection paper would have a larger sale and greatly increase the profit.
+But could the change be made without a terrible blow to the character and
+influence of the paper? Now why is not an editor in the same position? He
+has a certain standing, and he holds certain views, like the paper. The
+paper changes its tone for a price. He does the same thing. The paper loses
+character and influence. Why does not he?
+
+Journalism is not a profession in the sense claimed. It does not demand a
+certain course of study, which is finally tested by an examination and
+certified by a degree. It is a pursuit rather than a profession. Of course
+special knowledge in particular branches of information is of the highest
+value, and indeed essential to satisfactory editorial writing, as to all
+other public exposition. There are also certain details of the collection
+of news, the organization of correspondence, and the "make up" of the
+paper, the successful management of which depends upon an energetic
+executive faculty, which is desirable in every pursuit. It is sometimes
+said that an editor, like the late Mr. Delane of the London _Times_,
+should not write himself, but select the topics and procure the writing
+upon them by others. And so long as a man is merely an anonymous writer for
+a paper, so long as he writes to sustain the views of the paper, his actual
+opinions, being unknown to the reader, do not affect the power of the
+paper. Such a man, indeed, may write at the same time upon both sides of
+the same question for different papers. But if he have any convictions or
+opinions upon the subject, he is with one hand consciously injuring what he
+believes to be the truth, and a man cannot do that without serious harm to
+himself. If he have no convictions, his influence will vanish the moment
+that the fact is known.
+
+Such strictures do not apply to papers which expressly renounce
+convictions, and blow hot or cold as the chances of probable profit and
+the apparent tenor of public opinion at the moment invite. Such papers,
+properly speaking, have no legitimate influence whatever. They produce
+a certain effect by mere publicity, and reiteration, and ridicule, and
+distortion and suppression of facts, and appeals to prejudice. There is a
+legitimate and an illegitimate power of the press. A lion and a skunk both
+inspire terror.
+
+But a paper which represents convictions, and promotes a public policy
+in accordance with them, necessarily implies sincerity in its editorial
+writing. The public assumes that among papers of all opinions the writer
+attaches himself to one with which he agrees. The nature of the pursuit
+is such that he cannot make himself a free lance without running the risk
+of being thought an adventurer, a soldier without patriotism, a citizen
+without convictions. If the best American press did not represent real
+convictions, but only the clever ingenuity of paid advocates, it would be
+worthless as an exponent of public opinion, and could not be the beneficent
+power that it is.
+
+(_October_, 1882)
+
+
+V
+
+One public man in a recent angry altercation with another taunted him with
+elaborately preparing his invective, and some notoriously vituperative
+speeches are known to have been written out and printed before they were
+spoken. Such cold venom is undoubtedly as effective in reading as the hot
+outbreak of the moment, and it may be even more effective in the delivery,
+since self-command is as useful to the orator as to the actor. But if a
+man be guilty of a gross offence who upon a dignified scene violates the
+self-restraint and respect for the company which are not only becoming, but
+so much assumed that whoever violates the requirement is felt to insult his
+associates and the public, why do we not consider whether every scene is
+not too dignified for mature and intelligent men to attempt to rival in
+blackguardism the traditional fishwives of Billingsgate?
+
+If an orator or a newspaper conducts a discussion without discharging the
+fiercest and foulest epithets at the opponent, it is often declared to be
+tame and feeble and indifferent. But to whom and to what does vituperation
+appeal? When an advocate upon the platform shouts until he is very hot and
+very red that the supporter of protection is a thief, a robber, a pampered
+pet of an atrociously diabolical system, he inflames passion and prejudice,
+indeed, to the highest fury, and he produces a state of mind which is
+inaccessible to reason, but he does not show in any degree whatever either
+that protection is inexpedient or how it is unjust. In the same way,
+to assail an opponent who favors revision of the tariff and incidental
+protection as a rascally scoundrel who is trying to ruin American
+industry--as if he could have any purpose of injuring himself materially
+and fatally--is absurd. The tirade merely injures the cause which the
+blackguard intends to help. But the man who carried on discussion in this
+style is described by other professors of the same art as manly and virile
+and hitting from the shoulder, and he comes perhaps to think himself a
+doughty champion of the right.
+
+The weapon that demolishes an antagonist and an argument is not rhetoric,
+but truth. This accumulation of "bad names" and ingenious combination of
+scurrility is merely rhetoric. It serves the rhetorical purpose, but it
+does not convince. It does not show the hearer or reader that one course
+is more expedient than another, nor give him any reason whatever for
+any opinion upon the subject. Virility, vigor, masculinity of mind, and
+essential force in debate are revealed in quite another way. If an American
+were asked to mention the most powerful speech ever made in the debates
+of Congress, he would probably mention Mr. Webster's reply to Hayne. It
+contained the great statement of nationality and the argument for the
+national interpretation of the Constitution, and it was spoken in the
+course of a famous controversy. Let any man read it, and ask himself
+whether it would have gained in power, in effect, in weight, dignity, or
+character, by personal invective and elaborate vituperation of any kind and
+any degree whatever.
+
+The truth is that the fury which is supposed to imply force is the
+conclusive proof of weakness. The familiar advice, "If you have no
+evidence, abuse the plaintiff's attorney," contains by implication
+the whole philosophy of what is called the manliness and force of the
+blackguard. He has no reason, therefore he sneers. He has no argument,
+therefore he swears. He will get the laugh upon his adversary if he can,
+forgetting that those who laugh at the clown may also despise him.
+
+Of wit, humor, satire, sarcasm, we are not speaking. The ordinary
+blackguardism of the political platform and press does not belong to that
+category. Caricature, however, easily may. There are certain pictures in
+American caricature which are wit made visible. They are the satire of
+instructive truth. Indeed, they tell to the eye the indisputable truth
+as words cannot easily tell it to the ear. In this way caricature is one
+of the most powerful agents in public discussion. But, like speech or
+writing, it may be merely blackguard. The incisive wit, the rich humor, the
+withering satire of speech, gain all their point and effect from the truth.
+They have no power when they are seen to be false.
+
+So it is with caricature. Nobody can enjoy it more than its subject when it
+is merely humorous; nobody perceive so surely its pungent touch of truth;
+nobody disregard more completely its mere malice and falsehood. True
+wit and humor, whether in controversial letters or art, whether in the
+newspaper article or the "cartoon," as we now call it, often reveal to the
+subject in himself what otherwise he might not have suspected. It is very
+conceivable that an actor, seeing a really clever burlesque of himself, may
+become aware of tendencies or peculiarities or faults which otherwise he
+would not have known, and quietly address himself to their correction.
+
+This sanitary service of humor in every form, as well as that of the honest
+wrath which shakes many a noble sentence of sinewy English as a mighty
+man-of-war is shaken by her own broadside, is something wholly apart from
+the billingsgate and blackguardism which are treated as if they were real
+forces. Publicity itself, as the Easy Chair has often said, has a certain
+power, and to call a man a rascal to a hundred thousand persons at once
+produces an undeniable effect. But we must not mistake it for what it is
+not. Being false, it is not an effect which endures, nor does it vex the
+equal mind.
+
+It is the fact that the public often seems to demand that kind of
+titillation, to enjoy fury instead of force, and ridicule instead of
+reason, which suggests the inquiry whether, if self-restraint and wise
+discipline are desirable for every faculty of the mind and body, the
+tongue and hand alone should be allowed to riot in wanton excess. If even
+the legitimate superlative must be handled, like dynamite, with extreme
+caution, blackguardism of every degree is a nuisance to be summarily
+discountenanced and abated by those who know the difference between
+grandeur and bigness, between Mercutio and Tony Lumpkin, between fair-play
+and foul.
+
+(_September_, 1888)
+
+
+VI
+
+The Easy Chair has been asked whether there is any code of newspaper
+manners. It has no doubt that there is. But it is the universal code of
+courtesy, and not one restricted to newspapers. Good manners in civilized
+society are the same everywhere and in all relations. A newspaper is not
+a mystery. It is the work of several men and women, and their manners in
+doing the work are subject to the same principles that govern their manners
+in society or in any other human relation. If a man is a gentleman, he does
+not cease to be one because he enters a newspaper office, and it would seem
+to be equally true that if his work on the paper does not prove to be that
+of a gentleman, it could not have been a gentleman who did the work.
+
+A gentleman, we will suppose, does not blackguard his neighbors, nor talk
+incessantly about himself and his achievements, nor behave elsewhere as he
+would be ashamed to behave in his club or in his own family. If a gentleman
+does not do these things, of course a gentleman does not do them in a
+newspaper. And does it not seem to follow, if such things are done in a
+newspaper, and are traced to a hand supposed to be that of a gentleman,
+that there has been some mistake about the hand?
+
+Good manners are essentially a disposition which moulds conduct. They can
+be feigned, indeed, as gilt counterfeits gold, and plate silver. But the
+clearest glass is not diamond. A man may smile and smile and be a villain.
+Scoundrels are sometimes described as of gentlemanly manners, and Lothario
+was not personally a boor. But he was not a gentleman, and he merely
+affected good manners. A gentleman, indeed, may sometimes lose his temper
+or his self-control, but no one who habitually does it, and swears and
+rails vociferously, can be called properly by that name. Here again it is
+easy to apply the canon to a newspaper. When a newspaper habitually takes
+an insulting tone, and deliberately falsifies, whether by assertion of an
+untruth or by a distortion and perversion of the truth, it is not the work
+of a gentleman, and if the writer be responsible for the tone of the paper,
+the manners of that newspaper are not good manners.
+
+But there is no uniformity in newspaper manners, as there is none
+elsewhere. Therefore it cannot be said that newspapers, as a whole, are
+either well-mannered or unmannerly, as you cannot say that men, as a body,
+are courteous or uncouth. Some newspapers are unmistakably vulgar, like
+some people. They are not so of themselves, however; they are made vulgar
+by vulgar people. There are very able newspapers which have very bad
+manners, and some which have no other distinction than good manners. A
+very dull man may be very urbane, and so may a very dull newspaper. On the
+other hand, a newspaper which is both brilliant and clever may be sometimes
+guilty of an injustice, a deliberate and persistent misrepresentation, to
+attain a particular end--conduct which is sometimes called "journalistic."
+But the person who is responsible for the performance, for similar conduct
+would be metaphorically kicked out of a club. But gentlemen are not kicked
+out of clubs.
+
+A newspaper gains neither character nor influence by abandoning good
+manners. It may indeed make itself disagreeable and annoying, and so
+silence opposition, as a polecat may effectually close the wood path which
+you had designed to take. It may be feared, and in the same way as that
+animal--feared and despised. But this effect must not be confounded with
+newspaper power and influence. It is exceedingly annoying, undoubtedly,
+to be placarded all over town as a liar or a donkey, a hypocrite or a
+sneak-thief. But although the effect is most unpleasant, very little
+ability is required to produce it. A little paper and printing, a little
+paste, a great deal of malice, and a host of bill-stickers are all that are
+needed, and even the pecuniary cost is not large. The effect is produced,
+but it does not show ability or force or influence upon the part of its
+producer.
+
+The manners of newspapers, as such, cannot be classified any more than the
+manners of legislatures, or of the professions or trades. This, however,
+seems to be true, that a well-mannered man will not produce an ill-mannered
+newspaper.
+
+(_April_, 1891)
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Ars Recte Vivende, by George William Curtis
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