Tact is as important in manners as in speech.  The word is closely allied to the word touch, and a person who has good tact is really one who can touch people gently, carefully, kindly, in all the relations of life.  In the animal creation no creature has more perfect tact than a well-bred kindly-treated household cat.  You may have seen one of these enter a room where perhaps a circle of people were seated around a stove or open fire.  Puss wants her warm place in front of the fire or stove, but she does not brusquely and rudely push her way there.  No.  She glides gently, purringly around the circle, rubs caressingly against this one and that, as though gently saying, “By your leave”; and when finally she reaches the desired spot, she lays herself down so gracefully and quietly and curls herself up so deftly that to witness the act really affords pleasure to the observer.  A creature of less tact and grace would only appear obtrusive and offend and antagonize the company, and probably rightfully receive reproof and be ejected from the room.

And so I would wish to see you and all young people cultivate tact; study how to speak and act so as to touch gently all with whom you are associated.  Behind the best tact lies the wish to be kind and to make people comfortable and happy, to avoid wounding and irritating; and so it is true that the basis of true tact is, after all, the moral sentiment.

The young person who would cultivate tact in speech and manners will carefully guard against obtrusiveness.  This is a defect in the manners of so many people, both young and old, and includes such a multitude of things, that it is worth while to particularize a little upon it.  Quietness, repose, order, are distinguishing marks of cultivated social life everywhere, and to people who are habituated to these conditions of life it is painful to have incongruous or inappropriate acts or sounds thrust upon their attention.  Here is a generalization that explains the reason why many things, harmless in themselves are unpleasant to and offend the taste of cultivated people.  No really cultivated young girl will, for instance, open and play upon a piano in a hotel parlor or any other parlor at inappropriate times or when it is occupied by strangers.  She will never perform in public any of the duties of the toilet, such as cleaning her nails or using a tooth-pick.  She will not eat peanuts or fruit or candy, or chew gum, in public places.  In fact, I cannot imagine a really refined young lady chewing gum even in the privacy of her own room, so offensive is it to good taste.  She will not descant upon bodily ailments in the drawing-room or at the table.  She will not rush noisily up and down stairs or through the house, clashing doors and startling everyone with unpleasant noises.  She will not interrupt people who are conversing, to ask an irrelevant question or one pertaining to her own affairs.  She will not slap an acquaintance familiarly on the shoulder,