The Making of a Gentleman.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 480, 14 June 1890, Page 6

The Making of a Gentleman.

A TALK WITH BOYS.

The lectures I gave our boys at homo on habits and manners and tho trouble I took with them is something past belief. To look after a boy every day of fifteen years and tell him what ho ought to do and what not to do, makes a woman’s hair grey, if it is that kind of hair. The worst of it is I don’t see any more good of my efforts than if I had advised so many sparrows about their nest-building. The boys did as they pleased for so many years, and then took to picking up manners, bit by bit, for themselves. But as they did not make any use of the lectures, which are therefore as good as new, I make you a present of them. If they do anybody else’s boys any good I shall bo very much surprised. When the Abbess in ‘ Wanda ’ is asked concerning the rank of the stranger who hss been rescued from perishing at the castle steps, she says, ‘lt is impossible to tell,’ when her niece, the haughty chatelaine, answers : ‘lt. is always possible. Is his linen fine ? Is bis skin smooth ? Are his hands white and slender? Are his wrists and ankles small?’ Now, these are marks of rank among a feudal nobility, but we colonists, who are, or should be, all nobles, ought to soy : ‘ls bis linon clean ? Are his hands clean also ? Is his skin smooth and clear with health and sound living? Does he carry himself well ?’ Thes6 are the signs of good birth and well-being, which is more. For you may be born in a tworoomed cottage and yet by every sign of body and nature make yourself a gentleman, remember. The first thing is to be healthy, and the first necessity for that is to be clean in body and clothes. Your work f may be in grime and oil and dust. With the I instincts of a gentleman you will protect your clothes as much as possible by dressI ing for the work, and wearing blouse and I overalls as the greatest French sculptors do ■at their modelling in the clay. The moment leisure comes you will with brush and soap remove all grime till your face, neck and hands are as clean as a lady’s, and you will not sit down to eat with soiled cuffs"and collar or frou sy coat. Boys born to comfort and leisure will fail in these thinge, and I have bad a tramp, so-called, at my door, walking to town from the gumfields to save railway fare, asking food and lodging for his work, who was a model of personal care. He was a tall, well-built taciturn young fellow, who, after his day’s walk and two hours’ work sawing wood, refused to eat till he made a scrupulous toilet, dressing his hair with an old pocket comb and brushing his coat with the stump of a whisk broom drawn from his pocket. He spoke only when spoken to in the strange house to which he was admitted ; he sat by the table without offering to touch the newspapers on it. Until invited his speech was quiet and brief, his look guarded and serious, though straightforward, and his glance clear and steady as an eagle’s. I know that wayfaring lad was a gentleman by instinct, and I was not surprised when my cloak was found overnight in his room, where it had been flung before he came, to find it had not been touched, and my purse with £8 was safe in the pocket. lam nob in the habit of leaving purses around in the way of tramps and wanderers, bub it so happened, and

would feed a good many working tramps for the sake of that honest careful boy. When Theodore rushes from his ‘Three Burglars ’ to the table, with hair awry and peneilings, by the way, on his cuffs, I wish that I had the faculty of that tramp’s mother, for she had succeeded in making her boy a gentleman and I, alas ! had not so far.

I am as sure my tramp was a gentleman as Wanda was of her wayfarer, for he had another mark of good feeling, the instinct of approaching people. He knew it was his place to be silent and grave —it was becoming a stranger among strangers and women to be so. It is well among friends and neighbours to be blithe and cheery, with a well-turned jest by way of greeting, and there are a few privileged persons to whom a debonnair, gallant style is given by nature and allowed by all. But, whatever your good spirits, my lad, remember to be serious and deferential to women you do not know well, to elder persons and to all deformed or in trouble. The instinct that must laugh when it sees a man slip and fall, or his hat blow ofl, or at any discomfiture, is a low-bred, brutal feeling, which one should be in as much haste to be rid of as poor clothes or bail grammar. One of the best-mannered people I know anywhere is a joung fellow at a country station. Whether ho has nothing to do in hours of loneliness but to fix his mind on his manners and etudy to polish them, or he has the grace of innate breeding, I can’t say, but he has always the right manner, the right tone, just the nice degree of civility for everyone,’ friend, neighbour, distant acquaintance,„ without presuming or allowing himself to; be presumed upon. It is very agreeable to everyone who has anything to do with him. and there are few accomplishments so well worth study as this simple, unpretending finish of manners.

The Next Neighbour.