THE PEOPLE.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 232, 21 February 1885, Page 14

THE PEOPLE.

".Nice" is a word-of -all- work, which is made to do a great deal of hard service. It is like a sixpence so worn by use that it is almost inrpossible to tell when it was coined, or what is its image and superscription. It is in our mouths every clay, and every hour in the day. Wo speak of a nice dinner, a nice dress, a nice party, a nice church, a nice fire, a nice theatre, a nice sermon, a, nice view, a nice book, and, more than all, we speak of nice people — nice men, nice woman, and nice children.. We do not stop to. inquire or make any very accurate definition as to what we mean by "nice." It conveys a sort of impression to our minds, and we are 'content to leave it so. Swift defined a "nice man as a man of nasty ideas;" ..certainly we do not mean anything of the kind. Our meaning rather is that a nice person is an unobjectionable person, one who is not likely to tread on our corns, one who is not violent or startling, not given to disagreeable crochets or dutrageous hobbies, who laughs enough, and does not' laugh too much, and talks enough, and does not talk . too much, who dresses enough, and does 100t .^ress too much, who is at once conventional and safe, neatly pared and clipped, and compressed into the shape which society has decreed to be correct. A' nice person is the antithesis of a Bohemian — nice people abhor Bohemianism, it is an offence to their nostrils, they will have none of it, their lives are spent trying to stamp it out, to frown it down, to do anything to remove such a plague spot from their midst. Nice people like to keep together; they look askance when any pariah who is not one of them invades their charmed circle, they view him with suspicion, they gaze at him superciliously, and then they gather up the skirts of their garments aud turn away. What has the offender done ? Has lie transgressed any moral law? I\ T o ! Has he written a wicked book? No ! Has he sung- an objectionable song ? No ! Then what is the reason for looking daggers at him ? Simply this, he is not nice, he is not acquainted with the Shibboleth of nice people, and if he were as eloquent as Demosthenes, as learned as Porson, or as scientific as .Sir Isaac .Newton, he would "still be an outsider. Matrons would not feel sure of him, and nice young ladies would be doubtful whether they ought to bow to him or not. Nice people are always orthodox ; they live in nice houses, they drive out in nice carriages, they wear nice clothes, they have nice gardens with nice flowers in them, their friends arc all nice, they read nothing but nice books, and have the nicest of nice pictures on their walls. When they die they have nice funerals, are buried in nice graves, and have nice epitaphs inscribed on their nice tomb-stones. It would be very well if the nice people would live in a world of their own, always doing the same things in the same way, driving along the same roads, and never varying their monotonous existence in the slightest degree. But they will not do this. They are always wanting other people, who are hovering on the brink, to pass over and belong to them — in fact, to be nice. Nice people cling to their traditions ; they adore precedent. " Come !" they say, " let us all be nice ; there is nothing so nice as being nice ; it is its own reward. Once within our charmed circle, you are all right ; you have the hall-mark of conventionality in you, and society will adopt you as her own." These are the darling doctrines of nice people, which they hammer at morning, noon, and night. " Don't call names," they say, " that's vulgar ; don't contradict, that's rude; don't argue, that's unpopular; don't take up my opinion too strongly, that's in bad ' taste ; if you do any of -these things, you will forfeit your title of being nice. Bo nice, whatever you are." And so "the gospel of the commonplace is preached every day. It certainly pays in the end. Hundreds of girls are married every year because they are nice ; not strikingly beautiful or accomplished, but simply nice— and tliis in the vernacular of society means a great deal ; it means safety, freedom from all extremes and extravagancies. Men have ■igpt on. in the world just because they were 'nice— "nice 3 sensible fellows," not likely to set the Waiiemata on fire ; and so they filled up a gap ' Which, if they had been more erratic or more gifted, they might not have done. There is an immensity of nice music, nice literature, and nice poetry in the world ; all the nice peoj)le lift up their hands and cry " How charming! " whenever they meet with it. You will never find a nice person painting a really fine picture or writing an original book, or giving a new reading of a play. Mcc people follow, they cannot hew out new paths of their own. They are the ones who exclaim at any evasion of the accepted rules which have been laid down. When they find that they are compelled to go Avith the current, they yield, but always reluctantly. They would strike out all the crimsons and scarlets, the bright reds aud flaunting yellows, from the world. They would reduce the ocean to a vast lake ; they would even like the clouds to be formed after a pattern of their own. It is a comfort that they cannot do as they would, that the world as a whole refuses to be trimmed as they wish it to be, and shoots out luxuriant tendrils and hanging creepers of its own. So, in private we may rejoice that we are not all nice ; if we were, the. world would become a very Taurndruni affair indeed, and yet nice people hayg their uses; they are a sort of drag- ,

•which, keeps the coach from slipping too rapidly down-hill. If we had not these dear, nice friends to hold us back, goodness knows how flighty and eccentric we might be ; they act as a wholesome check ; and Mrs Grundy, who is, in fact, the embodiment of rice people, keeps us all in order, so that we dare not offend her too much. Emerson says that consistency is a " right fool's word;" he would probably have said the same of "nice," but, at the same, what would be do without it ? We may protest against bringing it in at all time and occasions, but there seems to be nothing to take its place. We must still go on using it every five or ten minutes, and hope that some brilliant inventor will hit upon a new word which will take some of the work away from it, for it does occasionally lead the urnntiated astray. We want something that will suggest more definite ideas. If we 1 are told we are going to meet a '-nice girl," she may be as dull as ditch-water or she may be tolerably lively ! she may not have an idea, er she may be able to respond, to our brilliant remarks with animation. In the same way a "nice fellow" may be fairly intelligent or conversational, or he may be an unmitigated bore, of whom charity allows us to say that he is "nice," because he is not positive nuisance. Our nice people really require to be classified; they oughtjjto be mentally labelled 1., 11., 111. ; then we might bo better able to tell where we were, and what avc could expect from them. Wxrs' "BOUGH on Corns."— Ask for Wells " Rough on Corns." Qiuc7c relief, complete, permanen cure. Corns, warts, bunions. The JST.Z. Drug Co General Agents.