If there be any real significance in
politeness, if it be not a mere empty and therefore altogether
hypocritical congeries of customs, it ought to have its birth,
cultivation and chief exercise at home. Of course there are the manners
suitable to strangers and those suitable to intimates, but politeness is
the one essential of both. I would not let the smallest child stroke his
father's beard roughly. Watch a child and when he begins to grow rough
you will see an evil spirit looking out of his eyes. It is a mean and
bad thing to be ungentle with our own. Politeness is either a true face
or a mask. If worn at one place and not at another, which of them is it?
And there were no mask if there ought not to be a face. Neither is
politeness at all inconsistent with thorough familiarity. I will go
farther and say, that no true, or certainly no profound familiarity is
attainable without it. The soul will not come forth to be roughly used.
And where truth reigns familiarity only makes the manners strike deeper
root in the being, and take a larger share in its regeneration.
Amongst the other small gifts over which Cornelius was too tender to
exhibit them at home, was a certain very small one of song.
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