It was such a little thing, so lightly done, so eloquent of perfect self-possession, and the impression it made upon six admiring Americans was a permanent one.  We fell to asking ourselves—­being honestly conscious of constraint—­how each one of us would have behaved in the Austrian lady’s place, whether or not that act of simple and sincere politeness would have been just as easy for us.  Then I called to mind one summer morning in New England, when I sat on a friend’s piazza, waiting idly for the arrival of the Sunday papers.  A decent-looking man, with a pretty and over-dressed girl by his side, drove up the avenue, tossed the packet of papers at our feet, and drove away again.  He had not said even a bare “Good morning.”  My kind and courteous host had offered no word of greeting.  The girl had turned her head to stare at me, but had not spoken.  Struck by the ungraciousness of the whole episode, I asked, “Is he a stranger in these parts?”

“No,” said my friend.  “He has brought the Sunday papers all summer.  That is his daughter with him.”

All summer, and no human relations, not enough to prompt a friendly word, had been established between the man who served and the man who was served.  None of the obvious criticisms passed upon American manners can explain the crudity of such a situation.  It was certainly not a case of arrogance towards a hapless brother of toil.  My friend probably toiled much harder than the paperman, and was the least arrogant of mortals.  Indeed, all arrogance of bearing lay conspicuously on the paperman’s part.  Why, after all, should not his instinct, like the instinct of the French waiter, have bidden him say something; why should not his taste have recommended that the something be agreeable?  And then, again, why should not my friend, in whom social constraint was unpardonable, have placed his finer instincts at the service of a fellow creature?  We must probe to the depths of our civilization before we can understand and deplore the limitations which make it difficult for us to approach one another with mental ease and security.  We have yet to learn that the amenities of life stand for its responsibilities, and translate them into action.  They express externally the fundamental relations which ought to exist between men.  “All the distinctions, so delicate and sometimes so complicated, which belong to good breeding,” says M. Rondalet in “La Reforme Sociale,” “answer to a profound unconscious analysis of the duties we owe to one another.”

There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their manifest insincerity.  They cannot be brought to believe that the expressions of unfelt pleasure or regret with which we accept or decline invitations, the little affectionate phrases which begin and end our letters, the agreeable formalities which have accumulated around the simplest actions of life, are beneficent influences upon character, promoting gentleness of spirit.  The Quakers, as