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I remember a delightful little paragraph out of one of his letters about un vieux chat noir, parfaitement laid, mais plein d'esprit et de discretion. Seulement il n'a eu que des gens vulgaires et manque d'usage." Mrs. A.D.T. Whitney, who has written so many helpful stories for girls, is another lover of cats. Cats do not lie curled up on cushions everywhere in her books, as they do in Mrs.
'Tout ce que la nature a fait acquerir ou perdre aux individus par l'influence des circonstances ou leur race se trouve depuis longtemps exposee, et par consequent, par l'influence de l'emploi predominant de tel organe, ou par celle d'un defaut constant d'usage de telle partie, elle le conserve par la generation aux nouveaux individus qui en proviennent, pourvu que les changements acquis soient communs aux deux sexes, ou a ceux qui ont produits ces nouveaux individus.
Madame de Sevigne observes, that there are few people sufficiently candid, or sufficiently enlightened, to distinguish, in their judgments of others, between those faults and mistakes which proceed from manque d'esprit, and those which arise merely from manque d'usage.
The professed cook, it appeared, laboured under a little manque d'usage on two delicate points, for she very unexpectedly burst into her lady's boudoir just as she was dressing for dinner, and exclaimed, "Mistress, dear, what'll I do with the vail?" "The veil?" said the dame, in horror; "what veil?"
I grieve to say, in that portion which is devoted to modesty and propriety of behaviour, the extreme freedom of manner and conversation in which young English females indulge, are both severely reprobated; their imprudence in walking about and sitting apart with young men held up as an example to be sedulously avoided by well-bred French girls; their so frequently taking complimens d'usage for real admiration, and either fancying the poor man, innocently repeating mere words of course, to be a lover, or else blushing and looking offended, as if he meant to insult, is sneered at rather ill-naturedly.
She bore with Lady Bearcroft, altogether, better than could have been expected; because she considered her only as a person unfortunately out of her place in society, and, without any fault of her own, dragged up from below to a height of situation for which nature had never intended, and neither art nor education had ever prepared her; whose faults and deficiencies were thus brought into the flash of day at once, before the malice of party and the fastidiousness of fashion, which knows not to distinguish between manque d'esprit, and manque d'usage.
L'étrenne d'usage
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