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To speak constantly of public characters or distinguished people as your intimate friends, even if they are so, is a certain mark of low-breeding. Boasting of your own position, wealth, luxuries or possessions of any kind is in equally bad taste. Never speak to a literary person of his works.
Pressing the food upon a guest with "Oh, do take some," or "You must, it was made by so- and-so," or indeed any remark upon the repast, is not only annoying to the guest, but a proof of low-breeding in the entertainers. There is a sort of hospitality about it, but it is a rough barbarism.
Do not whistle, loll about, scratch your head, or fidget with any portion of your dress while speaking. 'Tis excessively awkward, and indicative of low-breeding. Strictly avoid anything approaching to absence of mind.
I object, of course, to his terms; but since he foresaw that my habits would be expensive, it is to be regretted that he did not make suitable provision for their indulgence. He did not, however, do so. Persons of low-breeding never can comprehend their duties to the more refined.
So we have again mounted that same old hobby-horse. There was so much low-breeding at the North, landlords were so extortionate, vulgarity in fine clothes got in your way wherever you went, servants were so impertinent, and the trades people were so given to cheating. We would shake our garments of the North, if only some one would tell us how to do it becomingly.
No dog, however "dear or interesting," can be admitted to the drawing-room, and it is bad taste to have one follow you from home, if you intend to make calls. It is better for a lady not to have a child with her when paying calls, unless it is trained to sit silent, or old enough to behave with quiet propriety. It is a sign of low-breeding to fidget with the hat, cane or parasol during a call.
Equally to be censured as a violation of etiquette, and more so in a moral point of view, is the use of profanity; it is a sure mark, not only of low-breeding, but of a narrow, degraded if not a positively vicious mind. Lamont says: "Whatever fortune may be made by perjury, I believe there never was a man who made a fortune by common swearing.
The Caterpillar, an agreeable gossip, because he condemned nothing except dirt and low-breeding, told John that Beaumont-Greene was losing many shekels. And about the middle of October Caesar said to John "What do you think, old Jonathan? I've jolly nearly paid on the Demon. And you wanted me to chuck the thing. Nice sort of counsellor." "Beaumont-Greene must have lost a pot?"
The usual toasts and sentiments were drunk at the dinner-table, and the usual excesses committed; for at that time it was thought a mark of low-breeding for a man to remain sober all the evening.
Laughter being generally supposed to be the effect of gaity, its absurdity is not properly attended to; but a little reflection will easily restrain it, and when you are told it is a mark of low-breeding, I persuade myself you will endeavour to avoid it. Some people have a silly trick of laughing whenever they speak, so that they are always on the grin, and their faces are ever distorted.
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