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These same persons would, probably, deem it out of place to raise their hats on entering a man's shop, and perhaps every one would feel it to be so in England; but in other countries, were they not to do so, the shopkeeper, from experience, would merely attribute the omission to what he deems an instance of ill-breeding, habitual to John Bull; or, when he is not aware of this, he will frequently decline to accommodate his customer.
To bear with the feelings of those about us, with their infirmities, their bad judgments, their ill-breeding, their perverse tempers to endure neglect where we feel we have deserved attention, and ingratitude where we expected thanks to bear with the company of disagreeable people, whom Providence has placed in our way, and whom he has perhaps provided on purpose for the trial of our virtue these are the best exercise; and the better because not chosen by ourselves.
This uneasiness, which is common to every spectator, must be more sensible to the superior; and that because the near approach of the inferior is regarded as a piece of ill-breeding, and shews that he is not sensible of the disproportion, and is no way affected by it.
The duties of social life every man is obliged to discharge; but these attentions are voluntary acts, the free-will offerings of good-breeding and good nature; they are received, remembered, and returned as such. Women, particularly, have a right to them; and any omission in that respect is downright ill-breeding. Do you employ your whole time in the most useful manner?
Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding, that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground; and almost all the biographers of Addison have said something about this failing.
I have before now been tempted myself to adopt stray puppies, when I have seen them in the round, soft, innocent, bright-eyed stage. And when they have grown up in the hands of more credulous friends into lanky, ill-conditioned, misconducted curs, I have congratulated myself that I was not misled by the graces of an age at which ill-breeding is less apparent than later in life."
"You should be content," he said, "not to eat what you don't like; but to find fault with your host's ill-breeding is to be as ill-bred as himself."
He takes the orchestra in both hands, tears it to pieces, catches up a fragment of it here, a fragment of it there, masters it like an enemy; he makes it do what he wants. But he uses his fist where Wagner touches with the tips of his fingers; he shows ill-breeding after the manners of the supreme gentleman.
I bowed to this dictum, only observing that there was a point in our language where delicacy became indelicate; that I thought the noble river had a priority of claim over a contemptible vessel; and, reverting to the former part of his discourse I said that we in England were not ashamed to call things by their proper names; and that we considered it a great mark of ill-breeding to go round about for a substitute to a common word, the vulgar import of which a well-bred and modest woman ought never to have known.
It was accounted ill-breeding in Scotland, about forty years since, to use the phrase rebellion or rebel, which might be interpreted by some of the parties present as a personal insult. 'You are not, then, by profession a soldier? said Waverley. 'Na, na; thank God, answered this doughty partisan, 'I wasna bred at sae short a tether; I was brought up to hack and manger.
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