one who is
easily put out of temper and who always wants to do something the others
do not. Whether traveling with your family or with comparative strangers,
you must realize that your personal likes and dislikes have at least on
occasion to be subordinated to the likes and dislikes of others; nor can
you always be comfortable, or have good weather, or make perfect
connections, or find everything to your personal satisfaction; and you
only add to your own discomfort and chagrin, as well as to the discomfort
of every one else, by refusing to be philosophical. Those who are bad
sailors should not go on yachting parties; they are always abjectly
wretched, and are of no use to themselves or any one else. Those who hate
walking should not start out on a tramp that is much too far for them and
expect others to turn back when they get tired. They need not "start" to
begin with, but having once started, they must see it through.

There is no greater test of a man's (or a woman's) "wearing" qualities
than traveling with him. He who is always keen and ready for anything,
delighted with every amusing incident, willing to overlook shortcomings,
and apparently oblivious of discomfort, is, needless to say, the one first
included on the next trip.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

GROWTH OF GOOD TASTE IN AMERICA

Good taste or bad is revealed in everything we are, do, or have. Our
speech, manners, dress, and household goods--and even our friends--are
evidences of the propriety of our taste, and all these have been the
subject of this book. Rules of etiquette are nothing more than sign-posts
by which we are guided to the goal of good taste.

Whether we Americans are drifting toward or from finer perceptions, both
mental and spiritual, is too profound a subject to be taken up except on a
broader scope than that of the present volume. Yet it is a commonplace
remark that older people invariably feel that the younger generation is
speeding swiftly on the road to perdition. But whether the present younger
generation is really any nearer to that frightful end than any previous
one, is a question that we, of the present older generation, are scarcely
qualified to answer. To be sure, manners seem to have grown lax, and many
of the amenities apparently have vanished. But do these things merely seem
so to us because young men of fashion do not pay party calls nowadays and
the young woman of fashion is informal? It is difficult to maintain that
yout