POLITENESS

New Zealand Tablet, 10 December 1908, Page 38

POLITENESS

If those who are doubtful as to the correct course to pursue in any given situation will remember that even the wrong thing is overlooked if one is but absolutely polite in the doing of it, their relief might be great. A genuineness of demeanor and a courteous response or question can never be out of place. A man may wear a business suit «f clothes to a wedding less noticeably than a truculent air of insolence. If he be perfectly well bred as far as behavior goes, it matters not so much what his outward garb, although by an unwritten law of social observance certain clothes are the correct thing for certain occasions. Politeness is never wrong. Its practice goes nearly all the way toward the goal of the right thing in the right place.' "We hear of polite insolence, but insolence is never polite, and it is never, under any circumstances, polite to be insolent.