omen who, like
themselves, are going to work. Old people, afflicted people, men and
women who are carrying children in their arms, and other people who
obviously need to sit down are nearly always given precedence over the
rest of us. This is, of course, as it should be.

But the heart of what constitutes courtesy has not changed and never
will. It is exactly what it was on that day nearly four hundred years
ago when Sir Philip Sidney, mortally wounded on the field of Zutphen,
gave his last drop of water to the dying soldier who lay near him and
said, "Thy need is greater than mine."

V

TABLE MANNERS

In the old books of etiquette in the chapter on table manners the
authors used to state that it was not polite to butter your bread with
your thumb, to rub your greasy fingers on the bread you were about to
eat, or to rise from the table with a toothpick in your mouth like a
bird that is about to build her nest. We have never seen any one butter
his bread with his thumb, but----

There are in the United States nearly five million people who can
neither read nor write. We have no statistics but we venture to say
there are as many who eat with their knives. There are people among
us--and they are not all immigrants in the slum districts or Negroes in
the poorer sections of the South--who do not know what a napkin is, who
think the proper way to eat an egg is to hold it in the hand like a
piece of candy, and bite it, the egg having previously been fried on
both sides until it is as stiff and as hard as a piece of bristol board,
who would not recognize a salad if they saw one, and who have never
heard of after-dinner coffee.

Very few of them are people of wealth, but an astonishing number of
successful business men were born into such conditions. They had no
training in how to handle a knife and fork and they probably never read
a book of etiquette, but they had one faculty, which is highly developed
in nearly every person who lifts himself above the crowd, and that is
observation.

In addition to this a young man is very fortunate, especially if his way
of life is cast among people whose manners are different from those to
which he has been accustomed, if he has a friend whom he can consult,
not only about table manners but about matters of graver import as well.
And he should not be embarrassed to ask questions. The disgrace, if
disgrace it could be called, lies only in ignorance.

A number of years ago