oof and apart. A good mixer
among uncouth men may quite accurately be one who is also uncouth; but the
best "mixer" of all is one who adjusts himself equally well to finer as
well as to plainer society. Education that does not confer flexibility of
mind is an obviously limited education; the man of broadest education
tunes himself in unison with whomever he happens to be. The more subjects
he knows about, the more people he is in sympathy with, and therefore the
more customers or associates or constituents he is sure to have.

The really big man--it makes little difference whether he was born with a
gold spoon in his mouth or no spoon at all--is always one whose interest
in people, things, and events is a stimulating influence upon all those he
comes in contact with.

He who says, "That does not interest me," or "That bores me," defines his
own limitations. He who is unable to project sympathy into other problems
or classes than his own is an unimportant person though he have the birth
of a Cecil and the manners of a Chesterfield. Every gentleman has an
inalienable right to his own reserves--that goes without saying--and
because he can project sympathy and understanding where and when he
chooses, does not for one moment mean that he thereby should break down
the walls of his instinctive defenses.

It is not the latter type, but the "Gentleman Limited" who has belittled
the name of "gentleman" in the world of work; not so much because he is a
gentleman, as because he is not entirely one. He who is every inch a
gentleman as well as every inch a man is the highest type in the world
to-day, just as he has always been. The do-nothing gentleman is equally
looked down upon everywhere.

=ETIQUETTE IN "REVERSE GEAR"=

Etiquette, remember, is merely a collection of forms by which all personal
contacts in life are made smooth. The necessity for a "rough" man to
become polished so that he may meet men of cultivation on an equal
footing, has an equally important reverse. The time has gone by when a
gentleman by grace of God, which placed him in a high-born position, can
control numbers of other men placed beneath him. Every man takes his place
to-day according to born position plus the test of his own experience. And
just as an unlettered expert in business is only half authoritative to men
of high cultivation, so also is the gentleman, no matter how much he knows
of Latin, Greek, history, art and polish of manner, handicapped