CHARACTERISTIC OF HEROISM

The characteristic of heroism is its persistency. All men have
wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have
chosen your part, abide by it, and do not weakly try to reconcile
yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the
common the heroic.

_R. W. Emerson_.




LESSON XVIII

BEHAVIOR

There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to open a
book. Manners are the happy ways of doing things. They form at last a
rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details
adorned. Manners are very communicable; men catch them from each other.

The power of manners is incessant,--an element as unconcealable as
fire. The nobility cannot in any country be disguised, and no more in
a republic or a democracy than in a kingdom. No man can resist their
influence. There are certain manners which are learned in good
society, and if a person have them, he or she must be considered, and
is everywhere welcome, though without beauty, or wealth, or genius.