There has been no time in the history of the world when good manners counted for more than at the present.  This is true of both men and women.  It is so true that in certain fields it is practically impossible to succeed without their aid.  The value of a pleasing manner can hardly be overestimated.  Such a manner is as far from the self-assurance and presumptuous familiarity which some men assume under the idea that these are impressive, as night is from day.

Value of Courtesy.—­Courtesy has a commercial value, and exerts no little influence upon a man’s success in business.  Polite attention and readiness to oblige bring customers again and again, where their lack would send people to rival houses.

We can forgive, in the intellectually great, or in the man of affairs who has done things worth doing, a lack of social training that would not be endured in a man with no such claim.  Yet this is not saying that the great man would not command more unqualified admiration were he to practise the social graces instead of ignoring them.  The truth is, the fact that we have to overlook the absence of these graces induces a more critical attitude toward his achievements.  Great though he be in spite of his lack of courtesy, we feel he would have been greater had he known and practised the art of gentle manners.

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The Manners of the Gentleman.—­These “gentle-manners,” that make the “gentle man” are an indispensable requisite to success in society.  They testify to a man’s good breeding, to his social affiliations; they “place him.”  They often bring a man many things that wealth could not.

The rich boor is despised in spite of his money.  The poor man may be popular because of his pleasing personality and his fine manner.

Men sometimes profess to despise those refinements that are associated with good manners, saying they detest affectations.  But these things are not to be affectations.  They should be the outward expression of inward kindness and good-will and unselfishness.  The cultivation of good manners is a duty; somebody has said that “the true spirit of good manners is so nearly allied to that of good morals that they seem almost inseparable.”  John G. Holland says somewhere:  “Young men would be thoroughly astonished if they could comprehend at a glance how greatly their personal happiness, popularity, prosperity, and usefulness depend on their manners.”  Emerson remarked that,—­“Manners should bespeak the man, independent of fine clothes.  The general does not need a fine coat.”

A Matter of Training.—­It may be that politeness is instinctive with some, but with most men (women also), it is a matter of training and habit, and careful discipline.  In process of time courtesy becomes perfectly natural, so gracefully spontaneous it seems to be.

Here is where the mother’s work in the early training of her sons comes in.  Taught from childhood, by example and precept, the observances that make for good manners, the young man wears them as easily and as unconsciously as he does his clothes.