—­I had meant to make this note of our conversation a text for a few axioms on the matter of breeding.  But it so happened, that, exactly at this point of my record, a very distinguished philosopher, whom several of our boarders and myself go to hear, and whom no doubt many of my readers follow habitually, treated this matter of manners.  Up to this point, if I have been so fortunate as to coincide with him in opinion, and so unfortunate as to try to express what he has more felicitously said, nobody is to blame; for what has been given thus far was all written before the lecture was delivered.  But what shall I do now?  He told us it was childish to lay down rules for deportment,—­but he could not help laying down a few.

Thus,—­Nothing so vulgar as to be in a hurry.—­True, but hard of application.  People with short legs step quickly, because legs are pendulums, and swing more times in a minute the shorter they are.  Generally a natural rhythm runs through the whole organization:  quick pulse, fast breathing, hasty speech, rapid trains of thought, excitable temper. Stillness of person and steadiness of features are signal marks of good-breeding.  Vulgar persons can’t sit still, or, at least, they must work their limbs—­or features.

Talking of one’s own ails and grievances.—­Bad enough, but not so bad as insulting the person you talk with by remarking on his ill-looks, or appearing to notice any of his personal peculiarities.

Apologizing.—­A very desperate habit,—­one that is rarely cured.  Apology is only egotism wrong side out.  Nine times out of ten, the first thing a man’s companion knows of his shortcoming is from his apology.  It is mighty presumptuous on your part to suppose your small failures of so much consequence that you must make a talk about them.

Good dressing, quiet ways, low tones of voice, lips that can wait, and eyes that do not wander,—­shyness of personalities, except in certain intimate communions,—­to be light in hand in conversation, to have ideas, but to be able to make talk, if necessary, without them,—­to belong to the company you are in, and not to yourself,—­to have nothing in your dress or furniture so fine that you cannot afford to spoil it and get another like it, yet to preserve the harmonies throughout your person and dwelling:  I should say that this was a fair capital of manners to begin with.

Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an overestimate of our special individuality, as distinguished from our generic humanity.  It is just here that the very highest society asserts its superior breeding.  Among truly elegant people of the highest ton, you will find more real equality in social intercourse than in a country village.  As nuns drop their birth-names and become Sister Margaret and Sister Mary, so high-bred people drop their personal distinctions and become brothers and sisters of conversational