some appeal to his humanity. I have seen a gatekeeper at Jersey City
take by the shoulders a poor German, whose ticket called for another
train, and shove him roughly out of the way, without a word of
explanation. The man, too bewildered for resentment, rejoined his
wife to whom he had said good-bye, and the two anxious, puzzled
creatures stood whispering together as the throng swept callously
past them. It was a painful spectacle, a lapse from the well-ordered
decencies of civilization.

For to be civilized is to be incapable of giving unnecessary offence,
it is to have some quality of consideration for all who cross our
path. An Englishwoman once said to Mr. Whistler that the politeness
of the French was "all on the surface," to which the artist made
reply: "And a very good place for it to be." It is this sweet surface
politeness, costing so little, counting for so much, which smooths
the roughness out of life. "The classic quality of the French
nation," says Mr. Henry James, "is sociability; a sociability which
operates in France, as it never does in England, from below upward.
Your waiter utters a greeting because, after all, something human
within him prompts him. His instinct bids him say something, and his
taste recommends that it should be agreeable."

This combination of instinct and taste--which happily is not
confined to the French, nor to waiters--produces some admirable
results, results out of all proportion to the slightness of the means
employed. It often takes but a word, a gesture, to indicate the
delicate process of adjustment. A few summers ago I was drinking tea
with friends in the gardens of the Hotel Faloria, at Cortina. At a
table near us sat two Englishmen, three Englishwomen, and an Austrian,
the wife of a Viennese councillor. They talked with animation and