re offended if you give them a commoner sort than they
think their due. But the Americans, who pretend to a manlier
self-respect, had once pretty generally decided upon Mr. Smythe Johnes
as the right direction for his letters. They argued that Esquire was the
proper address for lawyers, apparently because lawyers are so commonly
called Squire in the simpler life. In the disuse of the older form of
Armiger they forgot that _inter arma silent leges_, and that Esquire was
logically as unfit for lawyers as for civil doctors, divines, or
mediciners. He of the Easy Chair, when an editor long ago, yielded to
the prevalent American misrendering for a time, and indiscriminately
addressed all his contributors as "Mr." One of them, the most liberal of
them in principle, bore the ignominy for about a year, and then he
protested. After that the young editor (he was then almost as young as
any one now writing deathless fiction) indiscriminately addressed his
contributors as Esq. Yet he had an abiding sense of the absurdity in
directing letters to John G. Whittier, Esq., for if the poet was truly a
Friend and an abhorrer of war, he could not be hailed Armiger without
something like insult.

With doctors of divinity the question is not so vexing or vexed; but it
is said that of late a lion is rising in the way of rightly addressing
doctors of medicine. If you wish to be attended by a physician who pays
all visits after nightfall in evening dress, it is said that you are now
to write Smythe Johnes, M.D., Esq., and not Dr. Smythe Johnes, as
formerly. In England, the source of all our ceremonial woes, you cannot
call a surgeon "doctor" without offence; he is Mr. Smythe Johnes when
spoken to, but whether he is Mr. Smythe Johnes through the post, Heaven
knows.

It is a thousand pities that when we cut ourselves off from that
troubled source politically, we did not dam it up in all the things of
etiquette. We indeed struck for freedom and sense at the very highest
point, and began at once to write George Washington, President, as we
still write William H. Taft, President. The Chief Magistrate is offered
no taffy in our nation, or perhaps the word President is held to be
taffy enough and to spare; for only the Governor of Massachusetts is
legally even so much as Excellency. Yet by usage you are expected to
address all ambassadors and ministers as Excellencies, and all persons
in public office from members of Congress and of the Cabinet down