unpretending manners, there may be some arrogant and
self-sufficient master of ceremonies, some Malvolio whose
pomposity is in strange contrast to the good-breeding of Olivia.
It is the lesser star which twinkles most. The "School for
Scandal" is a lasting picture of the folly and frivolity of a
certain phase of London society in the past, and it repeats itself
in every decade. There is always a Mrs. Candour, a Sir Benjamin
Backbite, and a scandalous college at Newport, in New York,
Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Saratoga,
Long Branch, wherever society congregates. It is the necessary
imperfection, the seamy side. Such is the reverse of the pattern.
Unfortunately, the right side is not so easily described. The
colors of a beautiful bit of brocade are, when seen as a whole, so
judiciously blended that they can hardly be pronounced upon
individually: one only admires the _tout ensemble_, and that
uncritically, perhaps.

That society is bad whose members, however tenacious they be of
forms of etiquette and elaborate ceremonials, have one code of
manners for those whom they deem their equals, and another for
those whom they esteem to be of less importance to them by reason
of age, pecuniary condition, or relative social influence. Bad
manners are apt to prove the concomitant of a mind and disposition
that are none too good, and the fashionable woman who slights and
wounds people because they cannot minister to her ambition,
challenges a merciless criticism of her own moral shortcomings. A
young girl who is impertinent or careless in her demeanor to her
mother or her mother's friends; who goes about without a chaperon
and talks slang; who is careless in her bearing towards young men,
permitting them to treat her as if she were one of themselves;