Social Moods.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 390, 29 October 1903, Page 2

Social Moods.

• POLITENESS. /-< , l-;\ \ M.T is the fashion of the present day to dm Bpeak of Politeness as if it wore as jjK* extinct as the dodo—an obao'ete usage, that finds no place among tbe so-called hooligans of Society (with a big •S') or the heat and hustle of commercial life. It depend*, however, to some ex bent en the precise meaning that one attaches to the word Politeness. A sufficiently accurate definition of Politeness was once given as 'Benevolence in small thing?,' and certainly benevolence, which, in its strict sense, means 'wishing well to one's neighbours,' is at the bottom of all Politeness that is really worthy of the name. For Politenoss, after- all, is only Society's interpretation of the high ideal of unselfishness, and even self-sacrifice, that is inculcated by all the higher forms of religion, and is the dirtcb outcome of that spirit of courtesy and chivalry which animated the famous knights of the Middle Ages. Its foundation-stoHe is undoubtedly the motion against the primitive creed that ' Might is Eight,' which may be summed up in the statement that' Weakness has a claim on Strength.' All the little ordinary acts of everyday courtesy, Buch as taking off one's hat to a lady, and allowing her invariable precedence under all ordinary circumstances, are really based upon the famous paradox of the Age of Chivalry—the Strength of Weakness. A humourist has remaiked that ' the keynote of true Politeness is B natural.' This is all very well, if you begin by training yovr nature to look at things from the point of view of a very advanced and highly complex state of civilisation, which is itself to a great extent based upon this very idea of the Strength of Weakness; but the untutored savage, if he acted upon his advice to ' B natural,' would probably strike his wife smartly over the head with a club or a tomahawk if she failed to serve „the missionary - cutlets in the style he was known to prefer ! Presumably, however, what the humourist really meant, when he stated that Politeness should be natural, was that it should ba at once spontaneous and unostentatious. It is well-known that a kitchenmaid who adorns herself for some great occasion in the clothes of a Duchess does not as a rule succeed in looking welldressed. She merely gives the impression of being what the French lan. guage neatly describes as * endimanche,' that is to say, ' Sunday-fled;' her finery having the effect of beifig specially put on for this occasion only. Now there! are certain kinds of Politc- : ness which suggest, on the one hand, the endimanchee ' general,' and on the other the wholly artificial flowers of rhetoric employed by the Euphuists of the Elizabethan age. In both cases the thing is artificial, insincere, .and- done solely i for effect, and is, consequently,; quite valueless. . ; . " . ■ '• ::-..%

One occasionally hears the remark that )'So-and-So has the most beautiful man* ners,' meaning, as a general rule, that they are elaborate and showy. Bat really good manners should no more call attention to their own excellence than clothes when properly worn should advertise the fact of their newness or costliness. It is certainly true that at the present day there is a decided absence of all the 'formal courtesy 8 that was in vogue at the beginning of the last century. The idea of deference towards parents and towards elders generally has certainly quite pone out of fashion in this twentieth century, which someone has described as .'The Apotheosis of the Infant.? Nevertheless, in. spite of this decay of formal courtesy, and the veryi free-and-easy style both of conversation and behaviour that has replaced it, there remains, at any rate among: the great middle classes, which are, after all, the real bulwark and mainstay of the nation, a large amount of that 'benevolence in small things' which it has been suggested is the keynote of all true Politeness,