TRUE GENTLEMEN.

Western Star, Issue 1353, 11 May 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

TRUE GENTLEMEN.

5 True courtesy is ■ " the beauty of the heart." How well it is that no one class has a monopoly in this kind of beauty ; that while favourable circumstances undoubtedly do render good manners more common among persons moving in higher rather than in lower spheres, there should nevertheless be no positive hindrance to the poorest classes having good manners. Here is an illustration of true politeness exhibited by both classes of society. One day, in hastily turning the corner of a crooked street in the city or London, a young l«dy ran with great force against a ragged little beggar boy, and almost knocked him down. Stopping as soon as she could, she turned round and said, very kindly, to the boy, " I beg your pardon, my little fellow; I am very sorry that I ran against you." The poor boy was astonished. He looked at her for a moment in surprise, and then, taking off about three-quarters of a cap, he made a low bow and said, while a broad, pleasant smile spread itself all over his face, " You can hev my parding, miss, and welcome; and the next time you run agin me, you may knock me clean down, and I won't say a word." After the Ldy had passed on he turned to his companion and said," I say, Jim, it's the first time I ever had anvbody ask my parding, and its kind o' took me off my feet." One very cold day the American preacher Henry Ward Beecher bought a paper from a very ragged little boy. "Poor little fellow ! " said he, "ain't you very cold ?" I was, sir, before you passed," replied the boy, with natural good manners. Politeness has been defined as benevolence in small things. This is well illustrated by the following incident, which is related in the "Life of General Sir William Napier, K.C.8." Taking a country walk one day, he met a little girl, about five years old, sobbing over a broken bowl, which she had dropped in the bringing it back from the field to which she had taken her father's dinner. She said she would be beaten on her. return home for having broken it, With a sudden gleam of hope she innocently looked up into his face, and said, " But zu can mend it—can t 'ee 9" He explained that he. could not mend the bowl; but he would give he* a sixpence to buy another. However, on opening his purse it was destitute of silver, and he had to make amends by promising to meet his little friend in the same spot at the same hour next dav, and to bring the sixpence with him \ bidding her tell her mother she had seen a gentleman who would bring her ihe money lor the bowl the next day. The child, entirely trusting him, went on her way comforted. On his return home he found an invitation asking him to dine in Bath the following evening, to meet someone whom he specially wished to see. He hesitated for some little time, trying to| calculate the possibility of going to

meet his little friend of the*broken bowl, and of still being in time for the dinner party; but finding this could not be, he wrote to decline accepting the invitation, on the plea of a pr<? engagement, saying—" I cannot disappoint her. She trusted me so implicity." This anecdote of Christian chivalry on the part of a really " gallant " genuine gentlemen is all the more impressive from the fact that the action was not in itself a little one, but was done for the sake of one of those " little ones " who are made the test of purity of principle.—From the Quiver.