George William Curtis

“ And so long as a man is merely an anonymous writer for a paper, so long as he writes to sustain the views of the paper, his actual opinions, being unknown to the reader, do not affect the power of the paper. Such a man, indeed, may write at the same time upon both sides of the same question for different papers. But if he have any convictions or opinions upon the subject, he is with one hand consciously injuring what he believes to be the truth, and a man cannot do that without serious harm to himself. If he have no convictions, his influence will vanish the moment that the fact is known. ”

“ Now the petty bullying of hazing and the whole system of college tyranny is a most contemptible denial of fair-play. It is a disgrace to the American name, and when you stop in the wretched business to sneer at English fagging you merely advertise the beam in your own eyes. It is not possible, surely, that any honorable young gentleman now attending to the lecture of the professor really supposes that there is any fun or humor or joke in this form of college bullying. ”

“ This sanitary service of humor in every form, as well as that of the honest wrath which shakes many a noble sentence of sinewy English as a mighty man-of-war is shaken by her own broadside, is something wholly apart from the billingsgate and blackguardism which are treated as if they were real forces. Publicity itself, as the Easy Chair has often said, has a certain power, and to call a man a rascal to a hundred thousand persons at once produces an undeniable effect. But we must not mistake it for what it is not. Being false, it is not an effect which endures, nor does it vex the equal mind. ”

“ Each society, of course, gets "the best fellows." Every touter informs the callow Freshman that all men of character and talent hasten to join his society, and impresses the fresh imagination with the names of the famous honorary members. The Freshman, if he be acute—and he is more so every year—naturally wonders how the youth, who are undeniably commonplace in the daily intercourse of college, should become such lofty beings in the hall of a secret society ”

“ There is a delicate question in newspaper ethics which is sometimes widely discussed, namely, whether "journalism" may be regarded as a distinct profession which has a moral standard of its own. The question arises when an editorial writer transfers his services from one journal to another of different political opinions. Is a man justified in arguing strenuously for free trade to-day and for protection to-morrow? Are political questions and measures of public policy merely points of law upon which an editor is an advocate to be retained indifferently and with equal morality upon either side? ”

“ There are certain pictures in American caricature which are wit made visible. They are the satire of instructive truth. Indeed, they tell to the eye the indisputable truth as words cannot easily tell it to the ear. In this way caricature is one of the most powerful agents in public discussion. But, like speech or writing, it may be merely blackguard. The incisive wit, the rich humor, the withering satire of speech, gain all their point and effect from the truth. They have no power when they are seen to be false. ”

“ To say that Lovelace has a gentlemanly manner is not to say that he is a gentleman, but only that he has caught the trick of a gentleman. To call him or Robert Macaire or Richard Turpin a gentleman is to say only that he behaves as a gentleman behaves. But he is not a gentleman, unless that word describes manners and nothing more.
This is the key to the question of Apollodorus. It is not easy to define a gentleman, but it is perfectly easy to see that in his pleasures and in the little indifferent practices of society the gentleman will do nothing which is disagreeable to others. ”

“ We may affirm indisputably that a man, however rich, and of however fine a title in countries where rank is acknowledged, if he behave selfishly, coarsely, and indecently, is not a gentleman. "From which, young gentlemen, it follows," as the good professor used to say at college, as he emerged from a hopeless labyrinth of postulates and preliminaries an hour long, that the guests who abused the courtesy of their hosts, upon the late transcontinental trip to drive the golden spike, may have been persons of social eminence, but were in no honorable sense gentlemen. ”

“ Nowhere in the world are women so truly respected as here, nowhere ought they to be more happy than in this country. But that is no reason that the New Orleans outrage should be possible, while the same good sense and love of justice which have removed so many barriers to fair-play for women should press on more cheerfully than ever to remove those that remain. ”

“ A gentleman, indeed, may sometimes lose his temper or his self-control, but no one who habitually does it, and swears and rails vociferously, can be called properly by that name. Here again it is easy to apply the canon to a newspaper. When a newspaper habitually takes an insulting tone, and deliberately falsifies, whether by assertion of an untruth or by a distortion and perversion of the truth, it is not the work of a gentleman, and if the writer be responsible for the tone of the paper, the manners of that newspaper are not good manners. ”

“ But such a man may be false and mean, and ignorant and coarse. Is he a gentleman because he was born such? On the other hand, the child of long generations of ignorant and laborious boors may be humane, honorable, and modest, but with total ignorance of the usages of good society. He may be as upright as Washington, as unselfish as Sidney, as brave as Bayard, as modest as Falkland. But he may also outrage all the little social proprieties. Is he a gentleman because he is honest and modest and humane? In describing Lovelace, should we not say that he was a gentleman? ”

“ But whatever the reason of the arrest, there can be no good reason whatever, in a truly civilized community, that a woman taken under such circumstances should be abandoned to personal search and examination by the kind of men to whom that business is usually allotted. The surest sign of the civilization of any community is its treatment of women, and the progress of our civilization is shown by the constant amelioration of that condition. But the unreasonable and even revolting circumstances of much of the public treatment of them may wisely modify ecstasies over our vast superiority. ”

“ Nobody can enjoy it more than its subject when it is merely humorous; nobody perceive so surely its pungent touch of truth; nobody disregard more completely its mere malice and falsehood. True wit and humor, whether in controversial letters or art, whether in the newspaper article or the "cartoon," as we now call it, often reveal to the subject in himself what otherwise he might not have suspected. ”

“ But if a man be guilty of a gross offence who upon a dignified scene violates the self-restraint and respect for the company which are not only becoming, but so much assumed that whoever violates the requirement is felt to insult his associates and the public, why do we not consider whether every scene is not too dignified for mature and intelligent men to attempt to rival in blackguardism the traditional fishwives of Billingsgate? ”

“ Good manners in civilized society are the same everywhere and in all relations. A newspaper is not a mystery. It is the work of several men and women, and their manners in doing the work are subject to the same principles that govern their manners in society or in any other human relation. If a man is a gentleman, he does not cease to be one because he enters a newspaper office, and it would seem to be equally true that if his work on the paper does not prove to be that of a gentleman, it could not have been a gentleman who did the work. ”

“ The position that in a party contest it is six on one side and half a dozen on the other is too much akin to the doctrine that naught is everything and everything is naught to be very persuasive with men who are really in earnest. Such a position in public affairs inevitably, and often very unjustly to them, produces an impression of want of hearty conviction, which paralyzes influence as effectually as the evident prejudice and partiality of the party advocate. ”

“ Let us hope that he knows the test of a gentleman not to be the ownership of blood-horses and a unique drag, but perfect courtesy founded upon fine human feeling—that rare and indescribable gentleness and consideration which rests upon manner as lightly as the bloom upon a fruit. ”

“ But permit the professor to tell you what is not unknown in America: a crowd of older young gentlemen surrounding one younger fellow, forcing him to do disagreeable and disgusting things, pouring cold water down his back, making a fool of him to his personal injury, he being solitary, helpless, and abused—all this is not unknown in America, young gentlemen. But it is all very different from what we have been accustomed to consider American. If we would morally define or paraphrase the word America, I think we should say fair-play. ”

“ Or a young man comes alone upon the deck of a steamer, where throngs of ladies are sitting, and blows clouds of tobacco smoke in their faces, without even remarking that tobacco is disagreeable to some people. This is not, indeed, one of the seven deadly sins, but a man who unconcernedly sings false betrays that he has no ear for music, and the man who smokes in this way shows that he is not quite a gentleman.
But some ladies smoke? Yes, and some ladies drink liquor. Does that mend the matter? The Easy Chair has seen a lady at the head of her own table smoking a fine cigar. ”

“ THE SOUL OF THE GENTLEMAN
To find a satisfactory definition of gentleman is as difficult as to discover the philosopher's stone; and yet if we may not say just what a gentleman is, we can certainly say what he is not. ”

“ An admirable actress said the other day that the audience in the theatre was probably little aware how much its conduct affected the performance. A listless, whispering, uneasy house makes a distracted and ineffective play. To an orator, or an actor, or an artist of any kind who appeals personally to the public, nothing is so fatal as indifference. ”

“ Certainly the elaborately dressed gentleman speaking to a lady only with polished courtesy of phrase, and avoiding in her presence all coarse words and acts, handing her in the minuet with inexpressible grace and deference, and showing an exquisite homage in every motion, was a very different figure from the gentleman in a shooting-jacket or morning sack "chaffing" a lady with the freshest slang, and smoking in her face. ”

“ It is the practice of smoking in the society of ladies in public places, whether driving, or walking, or sailing, or sitting. There are preux chevaliers who would be honestly amazed if they were told they did not behave like gentlemen, who, sitting with a lady on a hotel piazza, or strolling on a public park, whip out a cigarette, light it, and puff as tranquilly as if they were alone in their rooms. ”

“ This is the inevitable result of blackguardism. The newspaper reader, as he sees that one man supports one measure because his wife's uncle is interested in it, and another man another measure to gratify his grudge against a rival, gradually learns from his daily morning mentor that there is no such thing as honor, decency, or public spirit in public affairs; he chuckles with the club cynic, although for a very different reason, and forgets the contents of one column as he begins upon the next. ”

“ The "new rich" parent will naturally send his son to Harvard, because it is the oldest of our colleges and of great renown, and because he supposes that through his college associations his son may pave a path with gold into "society." Harvard, on her part, opens her doors upon the same conditions to rich and poor, and gives her instruction equally, and requires only obedience to her rules of order and discipline. ”

“ It is always open to character and intellect to perceive and to assert their essential superiority. Why should Socrates heed Sardanapalus? Why indeed? But the average young man at college is not an ascetic, nor a devotee, nor an absorbed student unmindful of cold and heat, and disdainful of elegance and ease and the nameless magic of social accomplishment and grace. He is a youth peculiarly susceptible to the very influence that Sardanapalus typifies, and the wise parent will hesitate before sending his son to Sybaris rather than to Sparta. ”

“ A few "fellows" living in princely extravagance in superbly furnished rooms, with every device of luxury, entertaining profusely, elected into all the desirable clubs and societies, conforming to another taste and another fashion than that of the college, form a class which is separate and exclusive, and which looks down on those who cannot enter the charmed circle. This is galling to the pride of the young man who cannot compete. The sense of the inequality is constantly refreshed. ”

“ The hazers in college are the men who have been bred upon dime novels and the prize-ring—in spirit, at least, if not in fact—to whom the training and instincts of the gentleman are unknown. That word is one of the most precious among English words. The man who is justly entitled to it wears a diamond of the purest lustre. Tennyson, in sweeping the whole range of tender praise for his dead friend Arthur Hallam, says that he bore without abuse the grand old name of gentleman. "Without abuse"—that is the wise qualification. ”

“ The member of a secret society in college is really confined, socially and intellectually, to its membership, for it is found that the secret gradually supplant the open societies. But that membership depends upon luck, not upon merit, while it has the capital disadvantage of erecting false standards of measurement, so that the Mu Nu man cannot be just to the hero of Zeta Eta. The secrecy is a spice that overbears the food. The mystic paraphernalia is a relic of the baby-house, which a generous youth disdains. ”

“ He does for the audience what it would not do for itself. He protects it against its own fatal good-nature. He insists that it shall receive what it has paid for, and he will deal with disturbers as they deserve. The audience, conscious of its own good-humored impotence, recognizes at once its protector, and gladly applauds him for doing for it what it has not the nerve to do for itself. No audience whose rights were defended as Thomas defended those of his Washington audience ever resented the defence. ”

“ When an advocate upon the platform shouts until he is very hot and very red that the supporter of protection is a thief, a robber, a pampered pet of an atrociously diabolical system, he inflames passion and prejudice, indeed, to the highest fury, and he produces a state of mind which is inaccessible to reason, but he does not show in any degree whatever either that protection is inexpedient or how it is unjust. ”