While you should not be drawn into heated arguments on politics or religion, or any subject on which people thing deeply or differ widely, good breeding does not oblige you to sacrifice your principles. About Politics and Religion A person without opinions is colorless and uninteresting. You should always defend your country and its customs, but without anger. The witty wife of an American diplomat in London thus answered a young lord who remarked, rather superciliously, that there could not be any real society in the United States because America has no leisure class.
"Oh, yes, we have," she said with perfect good humor, "we call them tramps." She was applauded, and no one appreciated the retort more than the victim of it. Another time, on being asked by a countess if an American woman then in London was a lady, or if she was employed on a newspaper: "I understand that she is both," was the quiet answer, and the great lady apologized for applying the British standard of class to an American, who needed only be well educated and well-bred to be a lady.
- There is a courtesy of the heart; it is
- allied to love. From it springs the purest
- courtesy in the outward behavior.
- —GOETHE.
