Advice from Long Ago

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When I was writing Of Manners and Elevators last week, I found the book, American Etiquette and Rules of Politeness, written by Walter R. Houghton and published in 1883. Today I would like to share some encouraging and insightful passages from this advice published 140 years ago. Spelling and punctuation are from the original. Following each passage from American Etiquette and Rules of Politeness is a passage from God’s Word, written many centuries ago, that I believe support Mr. Houghton’s advice.

“As disciples of the great Master we would naturally expect the best manners to be found among Christians.”

. . . and keep a good conscience
so that in the thing in which you are slandered,
those who revile your good behavior in Christ
will be put to shame.
1 Peter 3:16

“It will be accepted as a truism that the heart should be educated as well as the mind and body. Good behavior, a pleasing carriage, civility, decent and respectful deportment, are the products of an educated heart. The cultivation of these traits, called, in a word, good manners, is a very important part in the education of every person . . . . So it is as essential that our children and young people should be carefully instructed in the principles of good manners, as it is that they should be developed intellectually, or encouraged to become intelligent, to improve . . . . Politeness is a virtue. Like character, it has a great deal to do with what a man is. If it does not rank with the virtues of truth, honesty and love for fellow men, it is the outgrowth of them, and at the same time the index to them. True politeness is a heart product.”

When I was a son to my father,
Tender and the only son in the sight of my mother,
Then he taught me and said to me,
“Let your heart hold fast my words;
Keep my commandments and live;
Acquire wisdom! Acquire understanding!”
Proverbs 4:3-5a

“A graceful bearing and pleasing ways are not picked up in a day; they are not assumed and thrown aside as occasion may demand, but come to us as the result of careful attention and long practice.”

But solid food is for the mature,
who because of practice
have their senses trained to discern good and evil . . .
Hebrews 5:14

Mr. Twichell and sons, November 19, 1925.
Photograph by Arnold Genthe. Courtesy Library of Congress.

“All education begins at home. The home is the most powerful and really the most effective institution on earth for training the rising generation. Home influence is the truest character moulder . . . . For this influence is early, coming with the first possibilities of man, and therefore most impressive; it is constant, continuing through all the formative period of life. The child who never learns anything at home will never know much, whether in science, morals or religion. Here he forms his habits—either habits of idleness, ignorance and vice, or habits of industry, intelligence and virtue—and as the twig is bent the tree will grow. Then “good manners, like charity, must begin at home.” . . . Let our children be trained in an atmosphere of gentleness and kindness from the nursery upwards . . . Parents should be what they wish their children to be.”

“You shall therefore impress these words of mine
on your heart and on your soul;
and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand,
and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. 
You shall teach them to your sons,
talking of them when you sit in your house
and when you walk along the road
and when you lie down and when you rise up.”
Deuteronomy 11:18-19

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