Manners And Society

Fine social intereeurse is really the fines of the fine arts; and if painAog and sculpture and architecture are worth cherishing, so is that higher standard of nianners without which these things are merely a misplaced fringe f or barbarism. It is true that manners joined with nothing better are disappoioting. It is trae that a hungry man wonld rather diñe with a boor on vension toan with Duke Humphrey on his proverbial dinner - that is, on nothing. But if the boorishness destroys one's appetite, where is the good of vension? and "a dinner of herbs where lo ve isf' - or even where refinement is - turns out the better bilí of fare. The trne charm of fine manners is best seen in poverty, when attainable there; but wealth is doubtless the better school for them at first, and this is one reason why men are tempted by wealth. The English word "means," or the phrase "a man of means," is very instructive, for it views property but as a means toward something more important. And though many men go no further than the means, yet it is something that we have this great -truth recognized in language. So all the love for fashionable novela is really an expression of a longing after the refinements of life. And though the "society columns" are often made up largely of the doings of the socially obscure, and thougl# the socially prominent usually try to keep out of them, yet they are no doubt a humble school for good manners to those readers who distrust themselves. The young jirl who with vague admiration reads of Mrs. A.'s and Mrs. B.'s entertainmenta perhaps acquires the wish that when she also is annexed to some matrimonial letter of the alphabet, she also may have