rom some similar accident, it is polite to call her attention to
the disaster. A gentleman may do this with perfect propriety if he
sees that she is not aware of it. He should preface the information
with "Pardon me," and should lift his hat, as always when offering any
civility.

When attending to business at banks, post-office, railroad
ticket-offices, etc., one should pay no attention to other people,
further than to guard against allowing one's absorbing interest in
one's own affairs to make one regardless of the just rights of others
in the matter of "turn" at ticket or stamp windows, or in the use of
the public desk, pens, etc.--trifling tests of good manners that
distinguish the well-bred, _and which illustrate very pointedly the
truth that selfishness is always vulgar, and that an unfailing habit of
considering other people's comfort is a mark of gentle breeding_.

A lady should say "Thank you" to a gentleman who gives up a seat to her
in a street-car or other public conveyance, where, having _paid_ for a
seat, he has a _right_ to it, and his voluntary relinquishment of it is
a matter of _personal courtesy_ on his part. The woman who slides into
a place thus offered without acknowledging the obligation is very
thoughtless, or else she has erroneous ideas of how far chivalry is
bound to be the slave of selfishness. If the lady is accompanied by a
gentleman, he, too, should say "Thank you," and lift his hat. He
should also be thoughtful not to take the next vacated seat himself
without first offering it to the polite stranger.

A young woman, strong and well, may properly give up her seat to a
fragile woman, or a mother with a baby, or to an elderly man or woman.

Young ladies of leisure, who are not weary, should not be too ready to
"oust" tired clerks and laboring men whose ride home at six o'clock is
their first chance to sit down, for ten hours. A _gentleman_ is
chivalrous; and there is a corresponsive quality in a _lady_, which
makes her delicately sensitive about unjustly imposing on that
chivalry, or which, in emergencies of sickness or disaster, enables
_her_ to be the _chivalrous in spirit_, and bear on her slender
shoulders the burden that is temporarily dropped when some stroke of
Providence lays the strong man low.

On the other hand, there are women of coarse fibre, who imagine that
they vastly increase their own importance by being selfishly exacting
in the matter of men's self-sacrificing