ing in New England, when I sat
on a friend's piazza, waiting idly for the arrival of the Sunday
papers. A decent-looking man, with a pretty and over-dressed girl
by his side, drove up the avenue, tossed the packet of papers at our
feet, and drove away again. He had not said even a bare "Good
morning." My kind and courteous host had offered no word of greeting.
The girl had turned her head to stare at me, but had not spoken. Struck
by the ungraciousness of the whole episode, I asked, "Is he a stranger
in these parts?"

"No," said my friend. "He has brought the Sunday papers all summer.
That is his daughter with him."

All summer, and no human relations, not enough to prompt a friendly
word, had been established between the man who served and the man
who was served. None of the obvious criticisms passed upon American
manners can explain the crudity of such a situation. It was certainly
not a case of arrogance towards a hapless brother of toil. My friend
probably toiled much harder than the paperman, and was the least
arrogant of mortals. Indeed, all arrogance of bearing lay
conspicuously on the paperman's part. Why, after all, should not his
instinct, like the instinct of the French waiter, have bidden him
say something; why should not his taste have recommended that the
something be agreeable? And then, again, why should not my friend,
in whom social constraint was unpardonable, have placed his finer
instincts at the service of a fellow creature? We must probe to the
depths of our civilization before we can understand and deplore the
limitations which make it difficult for us to approach one another
with mental ease and security. We have yet to learn that the amenities
of life stand for its responsibilities, and translate them into
action. They express externally the fundamental relations which
ought to exist between men. "All the distinctions, so delicate and
sometimes so complicated, which belong to good breeding," says M.
Rondalet in "La Reforme Sociale," "answer to a profound unconscious
analysis of the duties we owe to one another."

There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their
manifest insincerity. They cannot be brought to believe that the
expressions of unfelt pleasure or regret with which we accept or
decline invitations, the little affectionate phrases which begin and
end our letters, the agreeable formalities which have accumulated
around the simplest actions of life, are beneficent in