A gentleman never takes advantage of a woman in a business dealing, nor of the poor or the helpless.

One who is not well off does not “sponge,” but pays his own way to the utmost of his ability.

One who is rich does not make a display of his money or his possessions.  Only a vulgarian talks ceaselessly about how much this or that cost him.

A very well-bred man intensely dislikes the mention of money, and never speaks of it (out of business hours) if he can avoid it.

A gentleman never discusses his family affairs either in public or with acquaintances, nor does he speak more than casually about his wife.  A man is a cad who tells anyone, no matter who, what his wife told him in confidence, or describes what she looks like in her bedroom.  To impart details of her beauty is scarcely better than to publish her blemishes; to do either is unspeakable.

Nor does a gentleman ever criticise the behavior of a wife whose conduct is scandalous.  What he says to her in the privacy of their own apartments is no one’s affair but his own, but he must never treat her with disrespect before their children, or a servant, or any one.

A man of honor never seeks publicly to divorce his wife, no matter what he believes her conduct to have been; but for the protection of his own name, and that of the children, he allows her to get her freedom on other than criminal grounds.  No matter who he may be, whether rich, or poor, in high life or low, the man who publicly besmirches his wife’s name, besmirches still more his own, and proves that he is not, was not, and never will be, a gentleman.

No gentleman goes to a lady’s house if he is affected by alcohol.  A gentleman seeing a young man who is not entirely himself in the presence of ladies, quietly induces the youth to depart.  An older man addicted to the use of too much alcohol, need not be discussed, since he ceases to be asked to the houses of ladies.

A gentleman does not lose control of his temper.  In fact, in his own self-control under difficult or dangerous circumstances, lies his chief ascendancy over others who impulsively betray every emotion which animates them.  Exhibitions of anger, fear, hatred, embarrassment, ardor or hilarity, are all bad form in public.  And bad form is merely an action which “jars” the sensibilities of others.  A gentleman does not show a letter written by a lady, unless perhaps to a very intimate friend if the letter is entirely impersonal and written by some one who is equally the friend of the one to whom it is shown.  But the occasions when the letter of a woman may be shown properly by a man are so few that it is safest to make it a rule never to mention a woman’s letter.

A gentleman does not bow to a lady from a club window; nor according to good form should ladies ever be discussed in a man’s club!