“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.”

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXXX, Issue 2130, 8 February 1909, Page 2

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.”

“Lady” and “gentleman” are now so soiled by ignoble use that many of us prefer “woman” and “ man to them, and yet these words arc in themselves, and according to their derivation, very noble words. “Lady” is derived from t wo Saxon words, and means, literally, a loatgiver, or one who distributes bread. The word points to home as the especial sphere of woman’s duties, and teaches us that she is far more of a lady who looks after the t ceding and other duties connected with a household than she who leads a useless life and only thinks of dress and gossip. If the people who use “lady” rather than “woman” knew the proper meaning of the word, we could understand it. but they do so out of sheer snobbishness, a s did a parish clerk of whom I have heard. A curate, when churching a duchess, called her, in the words of the PrayerBook, “this woman. Thy servant.” The clerk, shocked at such a liberty, looked reprovingly at the clergyman and responded “who putteth her ladyship's trust in Thee.” Everyone now is called a gentleman, but the word (ells us on the face of it to whom alone it ought to be applied —to those who are gentle in thought, word, ami deed. Unfortunately clothes, money, ami even idleness are what are too commonly considered as constituting a gentleman. A friend of mine told me that the other day, coming over from Ireland, he heard two men in the steamer talking of a third. “ Who or what is he?” one of them asked. “I don’t know,” was the reply.

“but he is a gentleman : he always wears a tall hat.” —Rev. E. «E Hardy, author of “How to be Happy Though Married,” in the “Sunday at Home.”