and withstanding with every honorable means the bully of the church and
caucus, of the drawing-room, the street, the college? Respect, young
gentlemen, like charity, begins at home. Only the man who respects himself
can be a gentleman, and no gentleman will willingly annoy, torment, or
injure another.

There will be no further recitation today. The class is dismissed.

(_March_, 1888)




THE SOUL OF THE GENTLEMAN


To find a satisfactory definition of gentleman is as difficult as to
discover the philosopher's stone; and yet if we may not say just what
a gentleman is, we can certainly say what he is not. We may affirm
indisputably that a man, however rich, and of however fine a title in
countries where rank is acknowledged, if he behave selfishly, coarsely, and
indecently, is not a gentleman. "From which, young gentlemen, it follows,"
as the good professor used to say at college, as he emerged from a hopeless
labyrinth of postulates and preliminaries an hour long, that the guests who
abused the courtesy of their hosts, upon the late transcontinental trip to
drive the golden spike, may have been persons of social eminence, but were
in no honorable sense gentlemen.

It is undoubtedly a difficult word to manage. But gentlemanly conduct and
ungentlemanly conduct are expressions which are perfectly intelligible, and