A Question of Politeness
again, why should not my friend, in whom social constraint was unpardonable, have placed his finer instincts at the service of a fellow creature? We must probe to the depths of our civilization before we can understand and deplore the limitations which make it difficult for us to approach one another with mental ease and security. We have yet to learn that the amenities of life stand for its responsibilities, and translate them into action. They express externally the fundamental relations which ought to exist between men. "All the distinctions, so delicate and sometimes so complicated, which belong to good breeding," says M. Rondalet in "La Réforme Sociale," "answer to a profound unconscious analysis of the duties we owe to one another."
There are people who balk at small civilities on account of their manifest insincerity. They cannot be brought to believe that the expressions of unfelt
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