Word: gentlemanly
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Dates: during 1870-1879
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...gentleman of leisure, in the true sense of the word, to one of those elegant ornaments which beautify and perfect society as a good binding beautifies and perfects a book, two things are indispensable, - money and culture. Let either be wanting, and your fine gentleman is an elegant adventurer, or a boorish millionnaire of the class which the experiences of our last war have led us to call shoddy. Neither of these characters is either admirable or respectable; and before any man determines that his life shall be that of a gentleman of leisure, he should assure himself that...
...possible, however, that your expectations, or your natural advantages, or both, may assure you of ample means for life; that you can, without a preliminary struggle for fortune, become the independent gentleman of your dreams. But, if this be, you must not imagine that your duty to society is at an end. The privilege of an independent gentleman is, not to disregard and hold himself aloof from the affairs of his fellow-men, but to mingle in them in the way which his tastes and acquirements lead him to choose. In literature, in politics, in science...
...finished gentleman, by the very influence of his presence and his manners, cannot fail to excite the admiration and emulation of his inferiors, no matter how much the jealousy of those inferiors may lead them to decry him. He is a fitting head for the great social body beneath him; and if his fortune will permit him to abstain from work, - by work I mean daily exertion whose ultimate object is bread-making, - he may be far more useful to the world than if his tastes and inclinations were fettered by business. But he must never be idle. Noblesse oblige...
Letter-Writing III. would probably be a much more difficult course than either of the others, and would require a thorough knowledge of rhetoric, and of Bain's mental science. The text-book should be Smith's "Epistolary Communication between a Gentleman and his Trades-people." A student having taken this course would be prepared to write such a charming note to any one of his creditors, that he (the creditor) would not only cease asking him for the money, but would offer to pay up the sum in question on the receipt of another letter of a like nature...
...high-bred* dames," besides being quite neat, is exceedingly flattering to Mrs. M., and although I have known of Mrs. Morrissey only as the wife of a former notorious rough, still I suppose if Mr. Buckham chooses to call her a "high-bred dame" it is perfectly correct. The gentleman, however, need have no fear that the high-bred dames, Mrs. Morrissey included, would ever so far forget themselves as to be induced, by the entrance of his crew, to do such an utterly rash and absurd thing as to bet on them...