Word: gentlemanly
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...removed as possible from what is found in the vulgar American whom we all find so disagreeable. And as their manners are easily copied, and their mode of thought is easily burlesqued, nothing is more common than for an American, who is convinced that he is a gentleman, and therefore a different being from the vulgar herd, to transform himself into a burlesque imitation of the blase European. Harvard men are particularly liable to this temptation. Their education is more cosmopolitan - if I may use the word - than any other on this continent, and the name and prestige of their...
...regret to say that in this part of the world there are very few men who approach my idea of what a gentleman ought to be. There are some bright men, and a great many smart ones; some able men, and an unusually large number of honest ones; but very few who are really well-bred men of the world. This is perfectly natural. We have no families, or if we have, etiquette does not permit us to say much about them; and, in general, our society is composed of two classes of men, - those who are busily engaged...
...undoubtedly exists, and exercises an influence which is none the less for being unseen. And the more you have of it, the better for you it will be. I find that I am becoming horribly snobbish, so I shall hasten to close my letter. Always behave like a gentleman. If you want to do an impudent thing, do it in such a way that nobody will know that it is impudent till he stops to think; and if you can't do it in that...
...alone. Choose your friends with care; i. e. know people who will be of use to you, and try to make them think that you are of use to them. But don't let your snobbishness take the form of boasting of your own rank. If you are a gentleman, the whole world can see it; and if you are not, you had better not call attention to the fact. We are all snobs, you know. But our snobbishness differs as much as do our noses. The peculiar form of snobbishness which I have condemned is, I regret...
...then, how I trembled when I entered Harvard Hall, and how my knees shook together at the sight of some figures on the blackboard which looked to me like all the diagrams in my geometry crammed into one. How nervously I laughed when a then unknown gentleman, while explaining the programme of the unhappy days, made a joke. How I rushed on the first opportunity to the fresh air, and sought for consolation in discussing the point of the joke with a friend in misery, until a live Sophomore whom we had the honor of knowing came up and gave...