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Cornell University Library 
 PS 1490.A7 1898 
 
 Ars recte vivendi.being essays contrlbut 
 
 3 1924 022 007 763 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022007763 
 
ARS RECTE VIVENDI 
 
 BEING ESSAYS CONTRIBUTED TO 
 "THE EASY CHAIR" 
 
 BV 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1898 
 
 K 
 
A- ll'iilcl 
 
 By GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 
 
 Literary and Social Essays. &vo, $2 50. 
 Orations and Addresses. Three Volumes. 8vo, 
 
 $3 50 each. 
 From the Easy Chair. With Portrait. i6mo, $1 00. 
 From the Easy Chair. Second Series. i6mo, $1 00. 
 From the Easy Chair. Third Series, i6mo, $1 00. 
 Prue and I. Illustrated Edition. Svo, $3 50. Also 
 
 izmo, $1 50. 
 Lotus-Eating. Illustrated, izmo, $1 50. 
 Nile Notes of a Howadji. i2mo, $1 50. 
 The Howadji in Syria. i2mo, $1 50. 
 The Potiphar Papers. Illustrated, izmo, $1 50. 
 Trumps. A Novel. Illustrated. i2mo, $1 50. 
 James Russell Lowell. Illustrated. 32mo, 50 cents. 
 Wendell Phillkps. A Eulogy. Svo, 25 cents. 
 
 new YORK AND LONDON: 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS. 
 
 Copyright, 1897, by Harper & Brothers. 
 
 ^/i rights reserved. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The publication of this collection of 
 Essays was suggested by some remarks 
 of a college professor, in the course of 7^. /5. G Vl/()( 
 which he said that about a dozen of 
 the " Easy Chair " Essays in Harper's 
 Magazine so nearly cover the more 
 vital questions of hygiene, courtesy, 
 and morality that they might be gath- 
 ered into a volume entitled " Ars Recta 
 Vivendi," and as such they are offered 
 to the public. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Extravagance at College t 
 
 Brains and Brawn ii 
 
 Hazing .20 
 
 The Soul of the Gentleman .30 
 
 Theatre Manners 36 
 
 Woman's Dress 47 
 
 Secret Societies 52 
 
 Tobacco and Health 65 
 
 Tobacco and Manners ... ... 69 
 
 Duelling. 85 
 
 Newspaper Ethics 93 
 
EXTRAVAGANCE AT COLLEGE 
 
 Young Sardanapalus recently remark- 
 ed that the only trouble with his life in 
 college was that the societies and clubs, 
 the boating and balling, and music and 
 acting, and social occupations of many 
 kinds, left him no time for study. He 
 had the best disposition to treat the 
 faculty fairly, and to devote a proper at- 
 tention to various branches of learning, 
 and he was sincerely sorry that his other 
 college engagements made it quite im- 
 possible. Before coming to college he 
 thought that it might be practicable to 
 mingle a little Latin and Greek, and 
 possibly a touch of history and mathe- 
 matics, with the more pressing duties 
 
2 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 of college life; but unless you could 
 put more hours into the day, or more 
 days into the week, he really did not 
 see how it could be done. 
 
 It was the life of Sardanapalus in 
 college which was the text of some 
 sober speeches at Commencement din- 
 ners during the summer, and of many 
 excellent articles in the newspapers. 
 They all expressed a feeling which has 
 been growing very rapidly and becom- 
 ing very strong among old graduates, 
 that college is now a very different 
 place from the college which they re- 
 membered, and that young men now 
 spend in a college year what young 
 men in college formerly thought would 
 be a very handsome sum for them to 
 spend annually when they were estab- 
 lished in the world. If any reader 
 should chance to recall a little book of 
 reminiscences by Dr. Tomes, which was 
 
Extravagance at College 3 
 
 published a few years ago, he will have 
 a vivid picture of the life of forty and 
 more years ago at a small New Eng- 
 land college ; and the similar records 
 of other colleges at that time show 
 how it was possible for a poor clergy- 
 man starving upon a meagre salary to 
 send son after son to college. The col- 
 legian lived in a plain room, and upon 
 very plain fare ; he had no " extras," and 
 the decorative expense of Sardanapalus 
 was unknown. In the vacations he 
 taught school or worked upon the farm. 
 He knew that his father had paid by 
 his own hard work for every dollar that 
 he spent^ and the relaxation of the sense 
 of the duty of economy which always 
 accompanies great riches had not yet 
 begun. Sixty years ago the number 
 of Americans who did not feel that 
 they must live by their own labor 
 was so small that it was not a class. 
 
4 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 But there is now a class of rich men's 
 sons. 
 
 The average rate of living at college 
 differs. One of the newspapers, in dis- 
 cussing the question, said that in most 
 of the New England colleges a steady 
 and sturdy young man need not spend 
 more than six hundred dollars during 
 the four years. This is obviously too 
 low an estimate. Another thinks that 
 the average rate at Harvard is proba- 
 bly from six hundred to ten hundred a 
 year. Another computes a fair liberal 
 average in the smaller New England 
 colleges to be from twenty-four to twen- 
 ty-six hundred dollars for the four years, 
 and the last class at Williams is report- 
 ed to have ranged from an average of 
 six hundred and fifty dollars in the first 
 year to seven hundred and twenty-eight 
 dollars in the Senior. But the trouble 
 lies in Sardanapalus. The mischief that 
 
Extravagance at College 5 
 
 he does is quite disproportioned to the 
 number of him. In a class of one hun- 
 dred the number of rich youth may be 
 very small. But a college class is an 
 American community in which every 
 member is necessarily strongly affected 
 by all social influences. 
 
 A few " fellows " living in princely ex- 
 travagance in superbly furnished rooms, 
 with every device of luxury, entertain- 
 ing profusely, elected into all the de- 
 sirable clubs and societies, conforming 
 to another taste and another fashion 
 than that of the college, form a class 
 which is separate and exclusive, and 
 which looks down on those who cannot 
 enter the charmed circle. This is gall- 
 ing to the pride of the young man who 
 cannot compete. The sense of the in- 
 equality is constantly refreshed. He 
 may, indeed, attend closely to his stud- 
 ies. He may " scorn delights, and live 
 
6 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 laborious days." He may hug his thread- 
 bare coat and gloat over his unrugged 
 floor as the fitting circumstance of 
 " plain living and high thinking." It 
 is always open to character and intel- 
 lect to perceive and to assert their es- 
 sential superiority. Why should Soc- 
 rates heed Sardanapalus ? Why in- 
 deed.? But the average young man at 
 college is not an ascetic, nor a devotee, 
 nor an absorbed student unmindful of 
 cold and heat, and disdainful of ele- 
 gance and ease and the nameless magic 
 of social accomplishment and grace. 
 He is a youth peculiarly susceptible to 
 the very influence that Sardanapalus 
 typifies, and the wise parent will hesi- 
 tate before sending his son to Sybaris 
 rather than to 'Sparta. 
 
 When the presence of Sardanapalus 
 at Harvard was criticised as dangerous 
 and lamentable, the President prompt- 
 
Extravagance at College 7 
 
 ly denied that the youth abounded at 
 the university, or that his influence was 
 wide-spread. He was there undoubted- 
 ly, and he sometimes misused his riches. 
 But he had not estabhshed a standard, 
 and he had not afFected the Ufe of the 
 university, whose moral character could 
 be favorably compared with that of any 
 college. But even if the case were 
 worse, it is not evident that a remedy 
 is at hand. As the President suggest- 
 ed, there are two kinds of rich youth at 
 college. There are the sons of those 
 who have been always accustomed to 
 riches, and who are generally neither 
 vulgar nor extravagant, neither osten- 
 tatious nor profuse ; and the sons of the 
 "new rich," who are like men drunk 
 with new wine, and who act accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 The " new rich " parent will naturally 
 send his son to Harvard, because it is 
 
8 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 the oldest of our colleges and of great 
 renown, and because he supposes that 
 through his college associations his son 
 may pave a path with gold into " socie- 
 ty." Harvard, on her part, opens her 
 doors upon the same conditions to rich 
 and poor, and gives her instruction 
 equally, and requires only obedience to 
 her rules of order and discipline. If 
 Sardanapalus fails in his examination 
 he will be dropped, and that he is Sar- 
 danapalus will not save him. If his rev- 
 els disturb the college peace, he will 
 be warned and dismissed. All that can 
 be asked of the college is that it shall 
 grant no grace to the golden youth in 
 the hope of endowment from his father, 
 and that it shall keep its own peace. 
 
 This last condition includes more 
 than keeping technical order. To re- 
 move for cause in the civil service really 
 means not only to remove for a penal 
 
Extravagance at College 9 
 
 offence, but for habits and methods 
 that destroy discipline and efficiency. 
 So to keep the peace in a college 
 means to remove the necessary causes 
 of disturbance and disorder. If young 
 Sardanapalus, by his extravagance and 
 riotous profusion and dissipation, con- 
 stantly thwarts the essential purpose of 
 the college, demoralizing the students 
 and obstructing the peaceful course of 
 its instruction, he ought to be dis- 
 missed. The college must judge the 
 conditions under which its work may 
 be most properly and efficiently accom- 
 plished, and to achieve its purpose it 
 may justly limit the liberty of its stu- 
 dents. 
 
 The solution of the difficulty lies 
 more in the power of the students than 
 of the college. If the young men who 
 are the natural social leaders make sim- 
 plicity the unwritten law of college so- 
 
lo Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 cial life, young Sardanapalus will spend 
 his money and heap up luxury in vain. 
 The simplicity and good sense of wealth 
 will conquer its ostentation and reck- 
 less waste. 
 
 (October, 1886) 
 
BRAINS AND BRAWN 
 
 It is towards the end of June and in 
 the first days of July that the great col- 
 lege aquatic contests occur, and it is 
 about that time, as the soldiers at Mon- 
 mouth knew in 1778, that Sirius is lord 
 of the ascendant. This year it was the 
 hottest day of the summer, as mark- 
 ed by the mercury in New York, when 
 the Harvard and Yale men drew out 
 at New London for their race. Fifty 
 years ago the crowd at Commencement 
 filled the town green and streets, and 
 the meeting-house in which -the gradu- 
 ating class were the heroes of the hour. 
 The valedictorian, the salutatorian, the 
 philosophical orator, walked on air, and 
 
12 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 the halo of after - triumphs of many 
 kinds was not brighter or more intox- 
 icating than the brief glory of the mo- 
 ment on which they took the gradu- 
 ating stage, under the beaming eyes of 
 maiden beauty and the profound ad- 
 miration of college comrades. 
 
 Willis, as Phil Slingsby, has told the 
 story of that college life fifty and sixty 
 years ago. The collegian danced and 
 drove and flirted and dined and sang 
 the night away. Robert Tomes echoed 
 the strain in his tale of college life a 
 little later, under stricter social and ec- 
 clesiastical conditions. There was a 
 more serious vein also. In 1827 the 
 Kappa Alpha Society was the first of 
 the younger brood of the Greek alphabet 
 — descendants of the Phi Beta Kappa 
 of 1 78 1 — and in 1832 Father Eells, 
 as he is affectionately called, founded 
 Alpha Delta Phi, a brotherhood based 
 
Brains and Brawn 13 
 
 upon other aims and sympathies than 
 those of Mr. Philip Slingsby, but one 
 which appealed instantly to clever men 
 in college, and has not ceased to attract 
 them to this happy hour, as the Easy 
 Chair has just now commemorated. 
 
 But neither in the sketches of Slings- 
 by nor in the memories of those Com- 
 mencement triumphs is there any record 
 of an absorbing and universal and over- 
 powering enthusiasm such as attends 
 the modern college boat-race. The race 
 of this year between the two great New 
 England universities, Harvard and Yale 
 — the Crimson and the Blue — was a 
 twilight contest, for " high water," says 
 the careful chronicler, " did not occur 
 until seven o'clock." At half- past six 
 he describes the coming of the grand 
 armada and the expectant scene in 
 these words : " The Block Island came 
 down from Norwich with every square 
 
14 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 foot of her three decks occupied, the 
 Elm City brought a mass of Yale sym- 
 pathizers from New Haven, and the big 
 City of New York filled her long saloon- 
 deck with New London spectators. A 
 special train of eighteen cars came up 
 from New Haven, a blue flag fluttering 
 from every window. The striking con- 
 trast to the life and bustle of the lower 
 end of the course was the quiet river 
 at the starting - point. The college 
 launches, the huge tug America, the 
 press -boat Manhasset, loaded with cor- 
 respondents, the tug Burnside, swathed 
 in crimson by her charter party of Har- 
 vard men, and the steam-yacht Norma, 
 gay with party-colored bunting, floated 
 idly up-stream, waiting for the start. 
 The long train of twenty-five observa- 
 tion-cars stood quietly by the river-side, 
 its occupants closely watching the boat- 
 houses across the river." 
 
Brains and Brawn 15 
 
 Did any fleet of steamers solid with 
 eager spectators, or special train of 
 eighteen cars, or long train of twenty- 
 five observation-cars, a vast, enthusiastic 
 multitude, ever arrive at any college 
 upon any Commencement Day in Philip 
 Slingsby's time to greet with prolonged 
 roars of cheers and frenzied excitement 
 the surpassing eloquence of Salutato- 
 rian Smith, or the melting pathos of 
 Valedictorian Jones ? Did ever — ^for so 
 we read in the veracious history of a day, 
 the newspaper — did ever a college town 
 resound with "a perfect babel of noises" 
 from eight in the summer evening until 
 three in the summer morning, the town 
 lighted with burning tar-barrels and blaz- 
 ing with fireworks, the chimes ringing, 
 and ten thousand people hastening to 
 the illuminated station to receive the 
 victors in triumph — because Brown had 
 vanquished the calculus, or Jones discov- 
 
1 6 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 ered a comet, or Robinson translated the 
 Daily Gong and Gas Blower into the 
 purest Choctaw? In a word, was such 
 tumult of acclamation — even the Pres- 
 ident himself swinging his reverend hat, 
 and the illustrious alumni, far and near, 
 when the glad tidings were told, beam- 
 ing with joyful complacency, like Mr. 
 Pickwick going down the slide, while 
 Samivel Weller adjured him and the 
 company to keep the pot a-bilin' — ever 
 produced by any scholastic performance 
 or success or triumph whatever? 
 
 Echo undoubtedly answers No ; and 
 she asks, also, whether in such a com- 
 petition, when the appeal is to youth, 
 eager, strong, combative, full of physical 
 impulse and prowess, in the time of 
 romantic enjoyment and heroic sus- 
 ceptibility, study is not heavily han- 
 dicapped, and books at a sorry disad- 
 vantage with boats. This is what Echo 
 
Brains and Brawn 17 
 
 distinctly inquiries; and what answer 
 shall be made to Echo ? Who is the 
 real hero to young Slingsby, who has 
 just fitted himself to enter coUege^ — the 
 victor in the boat-race or the noblest 
 scholar of them all? The answer seems 
 to be given unconsciously in the state- 
 ment that the number of students ap- 
 plying for entrance is notably larger 
 when the college has scored an athletic 
 victory. But this answer is not wholly 
 satisfactory. There may be an observa- 
 ble coincidence, but young men usually 
 prepare themselves to enter a particular 
 college, and do not await the result of 
 boat-races. 
 
 But the fact remains that the true 
 college hero of to-day is the victor in 
 games and sports, not in studies; and 
 it is not unnatural that it should be so. 
 It is partly a reaction of feeling against 
 the old notion that a scholar is an in- 
 
1 8 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 valid, and that a boy must be down in 
 his muscle because he is up in his math- 
 ematics. But, as Lincoln said in his 
 debate with Douglas, it does not fol- 
 low, because I think that innocent men 
 should have equal rights, that I wish my 
 daughter to marry a negro. It does not 
 follow, because the sound mind should 
 be lodged in a sound body, that the care 
 of the body should become the main, 
 and virtually the exclusive, interest. 
 
 Yet that this is now somewhat the 
 prevailing tendency of average feeling 
 is undeniable, and it is a tendency to 
 be considered by intelligent collegians 
 themselves. For the true academic 
 prizes are spiritual, not material; and 
 the heroes for college emulation are 
 not the gladiators, but the sages and 
 poets of the ancient day and of all time. 
 The men that the college remembers 
 and cherishes are not ball-players, and 
 
Brains and Brawn 19 
 
 boat-racers, and high-jumpers, and box- 
 ers, and fencers, and ' heroes of single- 
 stick, good fellows as they are, but the 
 patriots and scholars and poets and ora- 
 tors and philosophers. Three cheers for 
 brawn, but three times three for brain ! 
 
 (September, 1887) 
 
HAZING 
 
 As if a bell had rung, and the venera- 
 ble dormitories and halls upon the green 
 were pouring forth a crowd of youth loi- 
 tering towards the recitation -room, the 
 Easy Chair, like a college professor, 
 meditating serious themes, and with a 
 grave purpose, steps to the lecture-desk. 
 It begins by asking the young gentle- 
 men who have loitered into the room, 
 and are now seated, [what they think 
 of bullying boys and hunting cats and 
 tying kettles to a dog's tail, and seat- 
 ing a comrade upon tacks with the 
 point upward. Undoubtedly they reply, 
 with dignified nonchalance, that it is 
 all child's play and contemptible. Un- 
 
Hazing 21 
 
 doubtedly, young gentlemen, answers 
 the professor, and, to multiply Na- 
 than's remark to David, You are the 
 men ! 
 
 As American youth you cherish 
 wrathful scorn for the English boy who 
 makes another boy his fag, and you ex- 
 press a sneering pity for the boy who 
 consents to fag^ You have read Dr. 
 Birch and His Young Friends, and you 
 would like to break the head of Master 
 Hewlett, who shies his shoe at the poor 
 shivering, craven Nightingale, and you 
 justly remark that close observation of 
 John Bull seems to warrant the conclu- 
 sion that the nature of his bovine an- 
 cestor is still far from eliminated from 
 his descendant. |And what is the secret 
 of your feeling ? Simply that you hate 
 bullying. Why, then, young gentlemen, 
 do you bully? 
 
 You retort perhaps that fagging is 
 
22 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 unknown in America, and that high- 
 spirited youth would not tolerate it. 
 But permit the professor to tell you 
 what is not unknown in America: a 
 crowd of older young gentlemen sur- 
 rounding one younger fellow, forcing 
 him to do disagreeable and disgusting 
 things, pouring cold water down his 
 back, making a fool of him to his per- 
 sonal injury, he being solitary, helpless, 
 and abused — all this is not unknown in 
 America, young gentlemen. But it is 
 all very different from what we have 
 been accustomed to consider American. 
 If we would morally define or para- 
 phrase the word America, I think we 
 should say fair- play. That is what it 
 means. That is what the Brownist 
 Puritans, the precursors of the Plymouth 
 Pilgrims, left England to secure. They 
 did not bring it indeed, at least in all its 
 fulness, across the sea. Let us say, young 
 
Hazing 23 
 
 gentlemen, that its potentiality, its possi- 
 bility, rather than its actuality, stepped 
 out of the Mayflower upon Plymouth 
 Rock. But from the moment of its 
 landing it has been asserting itself. You 
 need not say "Baptist" and "Quaker." 
 I Understand it and allow for it all. But 
 fair -play has prevailed over ecclesias- 
 tical hatred and over personal slavery, 
 and what are called the new questions — 
 corporate power, monopoly, capital, and 
 labor — are only new forms of the old 
 effort to secure fair-play. 
 
 Now the petty bullying of hazing and 
 the whole system of college tyranny is 
 a most contemptible denial of fair-play. 
 It is a disgrace to the American name, 
 and when you stop in the wretched busi- 
 ness to sneer at English fagging you 
 merely advertise the beam in your own 
 eyes. It is not possible, surely, that any 
 honorable young gentleman now attend- 
 
24 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 ing to the lecture of the professor really 
 supposes that there is any fun or humor 
 or joke in this form of college bullying. 
 Turn to your Evelina and see what was 
 accounted humorous, what passed for 
 practical joking, in Miss Bu'rney's time, 
 at the end of the last century. It is not 
 difficult to imagine Dr. Johnson, who 
 greatly delighted in Evelina, supposing 
 the intentional upsetting into the ditch 
 of the old French lady in the carriage 
 to be a joke. For a man who uncon- 
 sciously has made so much fun for 
 others as " the great lexicographer," Dr. 
 Johnson seems to have been curiously 
 devoid of a sense of humor. But he 
 was a genuine Englishman of his time, 
 a true John Bull, and the fun of the 
 John Bull of that time, recorded in 
 the novels and traditions, was entirely 
 bovine. 
 
 The bovine or brutal quality is by no 
 
Hazing 25 
 
 means wholly worked out of the blood 
 even yet. The taste for pugilism, or 
 the pummelling of the human frame 
 into a jelly by the fore? of fisticuffs, as 
 a form of enjoyment or entertainment, is 
 a relapse into barbarism. It is the in- 
 stinct of the tiger still surviving in the 
 white cat transformed into the princess. 
 I will not call it, young gentlemen, the 
 fond return of Melusina to the gambols 
 of the mermaid, or Undine's momentary 
 unconsciousness of a soul, because these 
 are poetic and pathetic suggestions. 
 The prize-ring is disgusting and in- 
 human, but at least it is a voluntary en- 
 counter of two individuals. But college 
 bullying is unredeemed brutality. It is 
 the extinction of Dr. Jekyll in Mr. Hyde. 
 It is not humorous, nor manly, nor gen- 
 erous, nor decent. It is bald and vul- 
 gar cruelty, and no class in college 
 should feel itself worthy of the respect 
 
26 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 of others, or respect itself, until it has 
 searched out all offenders of this kind 
 who disgrace it, and banished them to 
 the remotest Coventry. 
 
 The meanest and most cowardly fel- 
 lows in college may shine most in haz- 
 ing. The generous and manly men 
 despise it. There are noble and inspir- 
 ing ways for working off the high spirits 
 of youth : games which are rich in poetic 
 tradition; athletic exercises which mould 
 the young Apollo. To drive a young 
 fellow upon the thin ice, through which 
 he breaks, and by the icy submersion 
 becomes at last a cripple, helpless with 
 inflammatory rheumatism — surely no 
 young man in his senses thinks this to 
 be funny, or anything but an unspeaka- 
 ble outrage. Or to overwhelm with 
 terror a comrade of sensitive tempera- 
 ment until his mind reels — imps of 
 Satan might delight in such a revel; 
 
Hazing 27 
 
 but young Americans ! — never, young 
 gentlemen, never! 
 
 The hazers in college are the men 
 who have been bred upon dime novels 
 and the prize-ring — in spirit, at least, if 
 not in fact — to whom the training and 
 instincts of the gentleman are unknown. 
 That word is one of the most precious 
 among English words. The man who is 
 justly entitled to it wears a diamond of 
 the purest lustre. Tennyson, in sweep- 
 ing the whole range of tender praise 
 for his dead friend Arthur Hallam, says 
 that he bore without abuse the grand old 
 name of gentleman. " Without abuse " 
 — that is the wise qualification. The 
 name may be foully abused. I read in 
 the morning's paper, young gentlemen, a 
 pitiful story of a woman trying to throw 
 herself from the bridge. You may re- 
 call one like it in Hood's " Bridge of 
 Sighs." The report was headed : " To 
 
28 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 hide her shame." "Her shame?" Why, 
 gentlemen, at that very moment, in 
 bright and bewildering rooms, the arms 
 of Lothario and Lovelace were encir- 
 cling your sisters' waists in the intoxi- 
 cating waltz. These men go unwhipped 
 of an epithet. They are even enticed 
 and flattered by the mothers of the girls. 
 But, for all that, they do not bear with- 
 out abuse the name of gentleman, and 
 Sidney and Bayard and Hallam would 
 scorn their profanation and betrayal of 
 the name. 
 
 The soul of the gentleman, what is it ? 
 Is it anything but kindly and thoughtful 
 respect for others, helping the helpless, 
 succoring the needy, befriending the 
 friendless and forlorn, doing justice, re- 
 quiring fair-play, and withstanding with 
 every honorable means the bully of the 
 church and caucus, of the drawing-room, 
 the street, the college ? Respect, young 
 
Hazing 29 
 
 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 an- 
 other. 
 
 There will be no further recitation to- 
 day. The class is dismissed. 
 
 {March, 1 888) 
 
THE SOUL OF THE GENTLEMAN 
 
 To find a satisfactory definition of 
 gentleman is as difiicult 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 acknowl- 
 edged, if he behave selfishly, coarsely, 
 and indecently, is not a gentleman. 
 " From which, young gentlemen, it fol- 
 lows," as the good professor used to say 
 at college, as he emerged from a hope- 
 less labyrinth of postulates and prelimi- 
 naries an hour long, that the guests 
 who abused the courtesy of their hosts, 
 
The Soul of the Gentleman 31 
 
 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 that 
 fact shows that there is a distinct stand- 
 ard in every intelligent mind by which 
 behavior is measured. To say that a 
 man was born a gentleman means not 
 at all that he is courteous, refined, and 
 intelligent, but only that he was born of 
 a family whose circumstances at some 
 time had been easy and agreeable, and 
 which belonged to a traditionally " good 
 society." But such a man may be false 
 and mean, and ignorant and coarse. Is 
 he a gentleman because he was born 
 such.? On the other hand, the child 
 of long generations of ignorant and la- 
 
32 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 borious boors may be humane, honora- 
 ble, and modest, but with total ignor- 
 ance of the usages of good society. He 
 may be as upright as Washington, as 
 unselfish as Sidney, as brave as Bay- 
 ard, as modest as Falkland. But he 
 may also outrage all the little social 
 proprieties. Is he a gentleman because 
 he is honest and modest and humane ? 
 In describing Lovelace, should we not 
 say that he was a gentleman ? Should 
 we naturally say so of Burns? But, 
 again, is it not a joke to describe 
 George IV. as a gentleman, while it 
 would be impossible to deny the name 
 to Major Dobbin ? 
 
 The catch, however, is simple. Us- 
 ing the same word, we interchange its 
 different meanings. To say that a man 
 is born a gentleman is to say that he 
 was born under certain social condi- 
 tions. To say in commendation or de- 
 
The Soul of the Gentleman 33 
 
 scription of a man that he is a gentle- 
 man, or gentlemanly, is to say that he 
 has certain qualities of character or 
 manner which are wholly independent 
 of the circumstances of his family or 
 training. In the latter case, we speak 
 of individual and personal qualities ; in 
 the former, we speak of external con- 
 ditions. In the one case we refer to 
 the man himself; in the other, to cer- 
 tain circumstances around him. The 
 quality which is called gentlemanly is 
 that which, theoretically, and often act- 
 ually, distinguishes the person who is 
 born in a certain social position. It de- 
 scribes the manner in which such a per- 
 son ought to behave. 
 
 Behavior, however, can be imitated. 
 Therefore, neither the fact of birth un- 
 der certain conditions, nor a certain 
 ease and grace and charm of manner, 
 certify the essential character of gentle- 
 
34 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 man. Lovelace had the air and breed- 
 ing of a gentleman like Don Giovanni ; 
 he was familiar with polite society ; he 
 was refined and pleasing and fascinat- 
 ing in manner. Even the severe As- 
 tai'te could not call him a boor. She 
 does not know a gentleman, probably, 
 more gentlemanly than Lovelace. She 
 must, then, admit that she can not arbi- 
 trarily deny Lovelace to be a gentle- 
 man because he is a libertine, or be- 
 cause he is false, or mean, or of a coarse 
 mind. She may, indeed, insist that only 
 upright and honorable men of refined 
 mind and manner are gentlemen, and 
 she may also maintain that only men 
 of truly lofty and royal souls are prin- 
 ces; but there will still remain crowds 
 of immoral gentlemen and unworthy 
 kings. 
 
 The persons who abused the gener- 
 ous courtesy of the Northern Pacific 
 
The Soul of the Gentleman 35 
 
 trip were gentlemen in one sense, and 
 not in the other. They were gentlemen 
 so far as they could not help themselves, 
 but they were not gentlemen in what 
 depended upon their own will. Ac- 
 cording to the story, they did not even 
 imitate the conduct of gentlemen, and 
 Astarte must admit that they belonged 
 to the large class of ungentlemanly gen- 
 tlemen. 
 
 (December, 1883) 
 
THEATRE MANNERS 
 
 An admirable actress said the other 
 day that the audience in the theatre was 
 probably little aware how much its con- 
 duct affected the performance. A list- 
 less, whispering, uneasy house makes a 
 distracted and ineffective play. To an 
 orator, or an actor, or an artist of any 
 kind who appeals personally to the pub- 
 lic, nothing is so fatal as indifference. 
 In the original Wallack's Theatre, many 
 years ago, the Easy Chair was one of a 
 party in a stage-box during a fine per- 
 formance of one of the plays in which 
 the acting of the manager was most ef- 
 fective. It was a gay party, and with 
 the carelessness of youth it made merry 
 
Theatre Manners 37 
 
 while the play went on. As the box 
 was directly upon the stage, the merri- 
 ment was a gross discourtesy, although 
 unintentional, both to the actors and to 
 the audience; and at last the old Wal- 
 lack, still gayly playing his part, moved 
 towards the box, and without turning his 
 head, in a voice audible to the offend- 
 ers but not to the rest of the audience, 
 politely reminded the thoughtless group 
 that they were seriously disturbing the 
 play. There was some indignation in 
 the box, but the rebuke was courteous 
 and richly deserved. Nothing is more 
 unpardonable than such disturbance. 
 
 During this winter a gentleman at 
 one of the theatres commented severely 
 upon the loud talking of a party of la- 
 dies, which prevented his enjoyment of 
 the play, and when the gentleman at- 
 tending the ladies retorted warmly, the 
 disturbed gentleman resorted to the 
 
38 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 wild justice of a blow. There was an 
 altercation, a publication in the newspa- 
 pers, and finally an apology and a rec- 
 onciliation. But it is to be hoped that 
 there was some good result from the in- 
 cident. A waggish clergyman once saw 
 a pompous clerical brother march quite 
 to the head of the aisle of a crowded 
 church to find a seat, with an air of ex- 
 pectation that all pew- doors would fly 
 open at his approach. But as every 
 seat was full, and nobody stirred, the 
 crestfallen brother was obliged to re- 
 trace his steps. As he retreated by the 
 pew, far down the aisle, where the cler- 
 ical wag was sitting, that pleasant man 
 leaned over the door, and greeted his 
 comrade with the sententious whisp- 
 er, " May it be sanctified to you, dear 
 brother !" Every right-minded man will 
 wish the same blessing to the rebuke of 
 the loud -talking maids and youths in 
 
Theatre Manners 39 
 
 theatres and concert-halls, whose conver- 
 sation, however lively, is not the enter- 
 tainment which their neighbors have 
 come to hear. 
 
 Two or three winters ago the Easy 
 Chair applauded the conduct of Mr. 
 Thomas, who, at the head of his orches- 
 tra, was interrupted in the midst of a 
 concert in Washington by the entry of 
 a party, which advanced towards the 
 front of the hall with much chatter- 
 ing and rustling, and seated themselves 
 and continued the disturbance. The or- 
 chestra was in full career, but Thomas 
 rapped sharply upon his stand, and 
 brought the performance to an abrupt 
 pause. Then, turning to the audience, 
 he said — and doubtless with evident 
 and natural feeling : " I am afraid that 
 the music interrupts the conversation." 
 The remark was greeted with warm and 
 general applause ; and, waiting until en- 
 
40 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 tire silence was restored, the conductor 
 raised his baton again, and the perform- 
 ance ended without further interruption. 
 The Easy Chair improved the occa- 
 sion to preach a short sermon upon bad 
 manners in public places. Biit to its 
 great surprise it was severely rebuked 
 some time afterward by Cleopatra her- 
 self, who said, with some feeling, that 
 she had two reasons for complaint. 
 The first was, that her ancient friend 
 the Easy Chair should place her in the 
 pillory of its public animadversion ; and 
 the other was, that the Easy Chair 
 should gravely defend such conduct as 
 that of Mr. Thomas. No remonstrance 
 could be more surprising and nothing 
 more unexpected than that Cleopatra 
 should differ in opinion upon such a 
 point. To the personal aspect of the 
 matter the Easy Chair could say only 
 that it had never heard who the offend- 
 
Theatre Manners 41 
 
 ers were, and that it declined to believe 
 that Cleopatra herself could ever be 
 guilty of such conduct. Her Majesty 
 then explained that she was not guilty. 
 She was not of the party. But it was 
 composed of friends of hers who seated 
 themselves near her, and when the words 
 of Mr. Thomas concentrated the gaze of 
 the audience upon the disturbers of the 
 peace, her Majesty, known to everybody, 
 was supposed to be the ringleader of the 
 emeute. The story at once flew abroad, 
 upon the wings of those swift birds of 
 prey — as she called them — the Wash- 
 ington correspondents, and she was men- 
 tioned by name as the chief offender. 
 
 It was not difificult to persuade the 
 most placable of queens that the Easy 
 Chair could not have intended a per- 
 sonal censure. But the Chair could not 
 agree that Thomas's conduct was un- 
 justifiable. Cleopatra urged that the 
 
42 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 conductor of an orchestra at a concert is 
 not responsible for the behavior of the 
 audience. An audience, she said, can 
 take care of itself, and it is an unwar- 
 rantable impertinence for a conductor 
 to arrest the performance because he is 
 irritated by a noise of whispering voices 
 or of slamming doors. " I saw you, Mr. 
 Easy Chair," she said, " on the evening 
 of Rachel's first performance in this 
 country. What would you have thought 
 if she had stopped short in the play — it 
 was Corneille's Les Horaces, you remem- 
 ber — because she was annoyed by the 
 rustling of the leaves of a thousand 
 books of the play which the audience 
 turned over at the same moment .?" 
 
 The Easy Chair declined to step into 
 the snare which was plainly set in its 
 sight. It would not accept an illustra- 
 tion as an argument. The enjoyment 
 at a concert, it contended, for which the 
 
Theatre Manners 43 
 
 audience has paid in advance, and to 
 which it is entitled, depends upon con- 
 ditions of silence and order which it can 
 not itself maintain without serious dis- 
 turbance. It may indeed cry " Hush !" 
 and " Put him out !" but not only would 
 that cry be of doubtful effect, but expe- 
 rience proves that a concert audience 
 will not raise it. If the audience were 
 left to itself, it would permit late arri- 
 vals, and all the disturbance of chatter 
 and movement. To twist the line of 
 Goldsmith, those who came to pray 
 would be at the mercy of those who 
 came to scoff; and such mercy is mer- 
 ciless. The conductor stands in loco 
 parentis. He is the advocatus angeli. 
 He does for the audience what it would 
 not do for itself. He protects it against 
 its own fatal good -nature. He insists 
 that it shall receive what it has paid for, 
 and he will deal with disturbers as they 
 
44 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 deserve. The audience, conscious of its 
 own good-humored impotence, recog- 
 nizes at once its protector, and gladly 
 applauds him for doing for it what it 
 has not the nerve to do for itself. No 
 audience whose rights were defended as 
 Thomas defended those of his Washing- 
 ton audience ever resented the defence. 
 
 " No," responded Cleopatra, briskly ; 
 " the same imbecility prevents." 
 
 " Very well ; then such an audience 
 plainly needs a strong and resolute 
 leadership; and that is precisely what 
 Thomas supplied. A crowd is always 
 grateful to the man who will do what 
 everybody in the crowd feels ought to 
 be done, but what no individual is quite 
 ready to undertake." 
 
 When Cleopatra said that an audi- 
 ence is quite competent to take care of 
 itself, her remark was natural, for she 
 instinctively conceived the audience as 
 
Theatre Manners 45 
 
 herself extended into a thousand per- 
 sons. Such an audience would certain- 
 ly be capable of dispensing with any 
 mentor or guide. But when the Easy 
 Chair asked her if she was -annoyed 
 by the chattering interruption which 
 Thomas rebuked, she replied that of 
 course she was annoyed. Yet when she 
 was further asked if she cried " Hush !" 
 or resorted to any means whatever to 
 quell the disturbance, the royal lady 
 could not help smiling as she answered, 
 " I did not," and the Easy Chair retort- 
 ed, " Yet an audience is capable of pro- 
 tecting itself !" 
 
 Meanwhile, whatever the conductor 
 or the audience may or may not do, 
 nothing is more vulgar than audible 
 conversation, or any other kind of dis- 
 turbance, during a concert. Sometimes 
 it may be mere thoughtlessness ; some- 
 times boorishness, the want of the fine 
 
46 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 instinct which avoids occasioning any 
 annoyance; but usually it is due to a 
 desire to attract attention and to affect 
 superiority to the common interest. It 
 is, indeed, mere coarse ostentation, like 
 wearing diamonds at a hotel table or a 
 purple velvet train in the street. If the 
 audience had the courage which Cleo- 
 patra attributed to it, that part which 
 was annoyed by the barbarians who 
 chatter and disturb would at once sup- 
 press the annoyance by an emphatic and 
 unmistakable hiss. If this were the 
 practice in public assemblies, such inci- 
 dents as that at the Washington concert 
 would be unknown. Until it is the 
 practice, even were Cleopatra's self the 
 offender, every self-respecting conductor 
 who has a proper sense of his duties to 
 the audience will do with its sincere ap- 
 proval what Mr. Thomas did. 
 
 {April, 1883) 
 
WOMAN'S DRESS 
 
 The American who sits in a street 
 omnibus or railroad -car and sees a 
 young woman whose waist is pinched 
 to a point that makes her breathing 
 mere panting and puffing, and whose 
 feet are squeezed into shoes with a high 
 heel in the middle of the sole, which 
 compels her to stump and hobble as 
 she tries to walk, should be very wary 
 of praising the superiority of European 
 and American civilization to that of the 
 East. The grade of civilization which 
 squeezes a waist into deformity is not, 
 in that respect at least, superior to that 
 which squeezes a foot into deformity. 
 It is in both instances a barbarous con- 
 
48 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 ception alike of beauty and of the func- 
 tion of woman. The squeezed waist 
 and the squeezed foot equally assume 
 that distortion of the human frame may 
 be beautiful, and that helpless idleness 
 is the highest sphere of woman. 
 
 But the imperfection of our Western 
 civilization shows itself in more serious 
 forms involving women. The promis- 
 cuous herding of men and women pris- 
 oners in jails, the opposition to reforma- 
 tories and penitentiaries exclusively for 
 women, and, in general, the failure to 
 provide, as a matter of course, women 
 attendants and women nurses for all 
 women prisoners and patients, is a sig- 
 nal illustration of a low tone of civiliza- 
 tion. The most revolting instance of 
 this abuse was the discovery during the 
 summer that the patients in a woman's 
 insane hospital in New Orleans were 
 bathed by male attendants. 
 
Woman's Dress 49 
 
 It should not need such outrages to 
 apprise us of the worth of the general 
 principle that humanity and decency 
 require that in all public institutions 
 women should be employed in the care 
 of women. A wise proposition during 
 the year to provide women at the police- 
 stations for the examination of women 
 who are arrested failed to become law. 
 It is hard, upon the merits of the pro- 
 posal, to understand why. Women who 
 are arrested may be criminals, or drunk- 
 ards, or vagabonds, or insane, or wit- 
 less, or sick. But whatever the reason 
 of the arrest, there can be no good rea- 
 son whatever, in a truly civilized com- 
 munity, that a woman taken under such 
 circumstances should be abandoned to 
 personal search and examination by the 
 kind of men to whom that business is 
 usually allotted. The surest sign of the 
 civilization of any community is-its treat- 
 4 
 
50 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 ment of women, and the progress of our 
 civilization is shown by the constant 
 amelioration of that condition. But the 
 unreasonable and even revolting circum- 
 stances of 'much of the public treatment 
 of them may wisely modify ecstasies over 
 our vast superiority. 
 
 The squeezed waists and other tokens 
 of the kind show that our civilization 
 has not yet outgrown the conception of 
 the most meretricious epochs, that wom- 
 an exists for the delight of man, and is 
 meant to be a kind of decorated ap- 
 pendage of his life, while the men at- 
 tendants and men nurses of women 
 prisoners and patients show a most un- 
 civilized disregard of the just instincts 
 of sex. We are far from asserting that 
 therefore the position of women in this 
 country is to be likened to their posi- 
 tion in China, where the contempt of 
 men denied them souls, or to that among 
 
Woman's Dress 51 
 
 savage tribes, where they are treated as 
 beasts of burden. But because we are 
 not wallowing in the Slough of De- 
 spond, it does not follow that we are 
 sitting in the House Beautiful. The 
 traveller who has climbed to the mer de 
 glace at Chamouni, and sees the valley- 
 wide outstretched far below him, sees 
 also far above him the awful sunlit dome 
 of "Sovran Blanc." Whatever point we 
 may have reached, there is still a higher 
 point to gain. Nowhere in the world 
 are women so truly respected as here, 
 nowhere ought they to be more happy 
 than in this country. But that is no 
 reason that the New Orleans outrage 
 should be possible, while the same good 
 sense and love of justice which have re- 
 moved so many barriers to fair-play for 
 women should press on more cheerfully 
 than ever to remove those that remain. 
 
 (^December, 1882) 
 
SECRET SOCIETIES 
 
 The melancholy death of young Mr. 
 Leggett, a student at the Cornell Uni- 
 versity, has undoubtedly occasioned a 
 great deal of thought in every college 
 in the country upon secret societies. 
 Professor Wilder, of Cornell, has written 
 a very careful and serious letter, in 
 which he strongly opposes them, plainly 
 stating their great disadvantages, and 
 citing the order of Jesuits as the most 
 powerful and thoroughly organized of all 
 secret associations, and therefore the one 
 in which their character and tendency 
 may best be observed. The debate re- 
 calls the history of the Antimasonic 
 excitement in this country, which is, how- 
 
Secret Societies 53 
 
 ever, seldom mentioned in recent years, 
 so that the facts may not be familiar to 
 the reader. 
 
 In the year 1826 William Morgan, 
 living in Batavia, in the western part of 
 New York, near Buffalo, was supposed 
 to intend the publication of a book 
 which would reveal the secrets of Ma- 
 sonry. The Masons in the vicinity were 
 angry, and resolved to prevent the pub- 
 lication, and made several forcible but in- 
 effective attempts for that purpose. On 
 the nth of September, 1826, a party of 
 persons from Canandaigua came to Bata- 
 via and procured the arrest of Morgan 
 upon a criminal charge, and he was car- 
 ried to Canandaigua for examination. 
 He was acquitted, but was immediately 
 arrested upon a civil process, upon 
 which an execution was issued, and he 
 was imprisoned in the jail at Canandai- 
 gua. The next evening he was dis- 
 
54. Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 charged at the instance of those who 
 had caused his arrest, and was taken 
 from the jail after nine o'clock in the 
 evening. Those who had obtained the 
 discharge instantly seized him, gagged 
 and bound him, and throwing him into 
 a carriage, hurried off to Rochester. By 
 relays of horses and by different hands 
 he was borne along, until he was lodged 
 in the magazine of Fort Niagara, at the 
 mouth of the Niagara River. 
 
 The circumstances of his arrest, and 
 those that had preceded it, had aroused 
 and inflamed the minds of the people in 
 Batavia and the neighborhood. A com- 
 mittee was appointed at a public meet- 
 ing to ascertain all the facts, and to 
 bring to justice any criminals that might 
 be found. They could discover only 
 that Morgan had been seized upon his 
 discharge in Canandaigua and hurried 
 off towards Rochester; but beyond that. 
 
Secret Societies 55 
 
 nothing. The excitement deepened and 
 spread. A great crime had apparently- 
 been committed, and it was hidden in 
 absolute secrecy. Other meetings were 
 held in other towns, and other commit- 
 tees were appointed, and both meetings 
 and committees were composed of men 
 of both political parties. Investigation 
 showed that Masons only were implicat- 
 ed in the crime, and that scarcely a 
 Mason aided the inquiry; that many 
 Masons ridiculed and even justified the 
 offence; that the committees were taunt- 
 ed with their inability to procure the 
 punishment of the offenders in courts 
 where judges, sheriffs, juries, and wit- 
 nesses were Masons; that witnesses dis- 
 appeared ; that the committees were re- 
 viled ; and gradually Masonry itself was 
 held responsible for the mysterious 
 doom of Morgan. 
 
 The excitement became a frenzy. The 
 
56 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 Masons were hated and denounced as 
 the Irish were in London aftftr the 
 "Irish night," or the Roman CathoHcs 
 during the Titus Gates fury. In Jan- 
 uary, 1827, some of those who had been 
 arrested were tried, and it was hoped 
 that the evidence at their trials would 
 clear the mystery. But they pleaded 
 guilty, and this hope was baffled. Mean- 
 while a body of delegates from the 
 various committees met at Lewiston to 
 ascertain the fate of Morgan, and they 
 discovered that in or near the magazine 
 in which he had been confined he had 
 been put to death. His book, with its rev- 
 elations, had been published, and what 
 was not told was, of course, declared to 
 be infinitely worse than the actual dis- 
 closures. The excitement now became 
 political. It was alleged that Masonry 
 held itself superior to the laws, and that 
 Masons were more loyal to their Mason- 
 
Secret Societies 57 
 
 ic oaths than to their duty as citizens. 
 Masonry, therefore, was held to be a 
 fatal foe to the government and to the 
 country, which must be destroyed ; and 
 in several town-meetings in Genesee and 
 Monroe counties, in the spring of 1827, 
 Masons, as such, were excluded from 
 office. At the next general election the 
 Antimasons nominated a separate tick- 
 et, and they carried the counties of 
 Genesee, Monroe, Livingston, Orleans, 
 and Niagara against both the great par- 
 ties. A State organization followed, 
 and in the election of 1830 the Anti- 
 masonic candidate, Francis Granger, 
 was adopted by the National Repub- 
 licans, and received one hundred and 
 twenty thousand votes, against one hun- 
 dred and twenty-eight thousand for Mr. 
 Throop. From a State organization the 
 Antimasons became a national party, 
 and in 1832 nominated William Wirt 
 
58 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 for the presidency. The Antimasonic 
 electoral ticket was adopted by the Na- 
 tional Republicans, and the union be- 
 came the Whig party, which, in 1838, 
 elected Mr. Seward Governor of New 
 York, and in 1840 General Harrison 
 President of the United States. 
 
 The spring of this triumphant political 
 movement was hostility to a secret soci- 
 ety. Many of the most distinguished 
 political names of Western New York, 
 including Millard Fillmore, William H. 
 Seward, Thurlow Weed, Francis Gran- 
 ger, James Wadsworth, George W. Pat- 
 terson, were associated with it. And as 
 the larger portion of the Whig party was 
 merged in the Republican, the dominant 
 party of to-day has a certain lineal de- 
 scent from the feelings aroused by the 
 abduction of Morgan from the jail at 
 Canandaigua. And as his disappearance 
 and the odium consequent upon it stig- 
 
Secret Societies 59 
 
 matized Masonry, so that it lay for a long 
 time moribund, and although revived in 
 later years, cannot hope to regain its old 
 importance, so the death of young Leg- 
 gett is likely to wound fatally the system 
 of college secret societies. 
 
 The young man was undergoing initia- 
 tion into a secret society. He was blind- 
 folded, and two companions were leading 
 him along the edg^ of a cliff over a deep 
 ravine, when the earth gave way, or they 
 slipped and fell from the precipice, and 
 Leggett was so injured that he died in 
 two hours. There was no allegation or 
 suspicion of blame. There was, indeed, 
 an attempt of some enemies of the Cor- 
 nell University — a hostility due either 
 to supposed conflict of interests or sec- 
 tarian jealousy — to stigmatize the insti- 
 tution, but it failed instantly and utterly. 
 Indeed, General Leggett, of the Patent- 
 office in Washington, the father of the 
 
6o Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 unfortunate youth, at once wrote a very 
 noble and touching letter to shield the 
 university and the companions of his 
 son from blame or responsibility. He 
 would not allow his grief to keep him 
 silent when a word could avert injustice, 
 and his modest magnanimity won for 
 his sorrow the tender sympathy of all 
 who read his letter. 
 
 Every collegian knows that there is 
 no secrecy whatever in what is called a 
 secret society. Everybody knows, not 
 in particular, but in general, that its ob- 
 ject is really "good-fellowship," with the 
 charm of mystery added. Everybody 
 knows — for the details of such societies 
 in all countries are essentially the same 
 — that there are certain practical jokes 
 of initiation — tossings in blankets, lay- 
 ings in coffins, dippings in cold water, 
 stringent catechisms, moral exhortations, 
 with darkness and sudden light and mys- 
 
Secret Societies 6i 
 
 terious voices from forms invisible, and 
 then mystic signs and clasps and mottoes, 
 "the whole to conclude" with the best 
 supper that the treasury can afford. Lit- 
 erary brotherhood, philosophic fraterni- 
 ty, intellectual emulation, these are the 
 noble names by which the youth deceive 
 themselves and allure the Freshmen; but 
 the real business of the society is to keep 
 the secret, and to get all the members 
 possible from the entering class. 
 
 Each society, of course, gets "the best 
 fellows." Every touter informs the cal- 
 low Freshman that all men of character 
 and talent hasten to join his society, and 
 impresses the fresh imagination with 
 the names of the famous honorary mem- 
 bers. The Freshman, if he be acute — 
 and he is more so every year — naturally 
 wonders how the youth, who are un- 
 deniably commonplace in the daily in- 
 tercourse of college, should become such 
 
62 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 lofty beings in the hall of a secret soci- 
 ety; or, more probably, he thinks of 
 nothing but the sport or the mysterious 
 incentive to a studious and higher life 
 which the society is to furnish. He feels 
 the passionate curiosity of the neophyte. 
 He is smitten with the zeal of the hermet- 
 ical philosophy. He would learn more 
 than Rosicrucian lore. That is a vision 
 soon dispelled. But the earnest curios- 
 ity changes into esprit du corps, and the 
 mischief is that the secrecy and the soci- 
 ety feeling are likely to take precedence 
 of the really desirable motives in college. 
 There is a hundredfold greater zeal to 
 obtain members than there is generous 
 rivalry among the societies to carry off 
 the true college honors. And if the pur- 
 pose be admirable, why, as Professor 
 Wilder asks, the secrecy } What more 
 can the secret society do for the intellect- 
 ual or social training of the student than 
 
Secret Societies 6} 
 
 the open society? Has any secret society 
 in an American college done, or can it 
 do, more for the intelligent and ambi- 
 tious young man than the Union Debat- 
 ing Society at the English Cambridge 
 University, or the similar club at Oxford? 
 There Macaulay, Gladstone, the Austins, 
 Charles BuUer, Tooke, Ellis, and the 
 long illustrious list of noted and able 
 Englishmen were trained, and in the 
 only way that manly minds can be train- 
 ed, by open, free, generous rivalry and 
 collision. The member of a secret soci- 
 ety in college is really confined, socially 
 and intellectually, to its membership, 
 for it is found that the secret gradually 
 supplant the open societies. But that 
 membership depends upon luck, not 
 upon merit, while it has the capital dis- 
 advantage of erecting false standards of 
 measurement, so that the Mu Nu man 
 cannot be just to the hero of Zeta Eta. 
 
64 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 The secrecy is a spice that overbears 
 the food. The mystic paraphernalia is 
 a relic of the baby-house, which a gen- 
 erous youth disdains. 
 
 There is, indeed, an agreeable senti- 
 ment in the veiled friendship of the se- 
 cret society which every social nature 
 understands. But as students are now 
 becoming more truly " men " as they 
 enter college, because of the higher 
 standard of requirement, it is probable 
 that the glory of the secret society is 
 already waning, and that the allegiance 
 of the older universities to the open 
 arenas of frank and manly intellectual 
 contests, involving no expense, no dis- 
 sipation, and no perilous temptation, is 
 returning. At least there will now be 
 an urgent question among many of the 
 best men in college whether it ought 
 not to return. 
 
 (^January, 1874) 
 
TOBACCO AND HEALTH 
 
 We do not know if readers upon your 
 side of the water have watched with any 
 interest the present violent onslaught in 
 both England and France upon the use 
 of tobacco. Sir Benjamin Brodie (of 
 London) has declared strongly against 
 its use; and at a recent meeting at 
 Edinburgh of the British Anti- Tobacco 
 Society, Professor Miller, moving the 
 first resolution, as follows : " That as 
 the constituent principles which tobacco 
 contains are highly poisonous, the prac- 
 tices of smoking and snuffing tend in 
 a variety of ways to injure the physical 
 and mental constitution," continued: 
 " No man who was a hard smoker had 
 
66 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 a steady hand. But not only had it a 
 debiHtating and paralyzing effect ; but 
 he could tell of patients who were com- 
 pletely paralyzed in their limbs by in- 
 veterate smoking. He might tell of a 
 patient of his who brought on an at- 
 tack of paralysis by smoking ; who was 
 cured, indeed, by simple means enough, 
 accompanied with the complete discon- 
 tinuance of the practice ; but who after- 
 wards took to it again, and got a new 
 attack of paralysis ; and who could now 
 play with himself, as it were, because 
 when he wanted a day's paralysis or an 
 approach to it, he had nothing to do 
 but to indulge more or less freely with 
 the weed. Only the other day, the 
 French — among whom the practice was 
 carried even to a greater extent than 
 with us — made an estimate of its effects 
 in their schools, and academies, and 
 colleges. They took the young men 
 
Tobacco and Health 67 
 
 attending these institutions, classified 
 them into those who smoked habitually 
 and those who did not, and estimated 
 . their physical and intellectual standing, 
 perhaps their moral standing too, but 
 he could not say. The result was, that 
 they found that those who did not smoke 
 were the stronger lads and better schol- 
 ars, were altogether more reputable peo- 
 ple, and more useful members of society 
 than those who habitually used the drug. 
 What was the consequence ? Louis Na- 
 poleon — one of the good things which 
 he had done — instantly issued an edict 
 that no smoking should be permitted 
 in any school, college, or academy. In 
 one day he put out about 30,000 pipes 
 in Paris alone. Let our young smokers 
 put that in their pipe and smoke it." 
 The resolution was agreed to. 
 
 Is it possible to entertain the idea 
 that Louis Napoleon has increased the 
 
68 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 tax on tobacco, latterly, very largely, in 
 the hope of discouraging its use, and so 
 contributing to -the weal of the nation ? 
 If so, it would illustrate one of the beau- 
 tiful uses of despotic privilege. 
 
 {February, 1861) 
 
TOBACCO AND MANNERS 
 
 The "old school" of manners has fall- 
 en into disrepute. Sir Charles Grandi- 
 son is a comical rather than a courtly 
 figure to this generation ; and the man 
 whose manners may be described as 
 Grandisonian is usually called a pom- 
 pous and grandiloquent old prig. Cer- 
 tainly the elaborately dressed gentleman 
 speaking to a lady only with polished 
 courtesy of phrase, and avoiding in her 
 presence all coarse words and acts, 
 handing her in the minuet with inex- 
 pressible grace and deference, and show- 
 ing an exquisite homage in every mo- 
 tion, was a very different figure from 
 
70 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 the gentleman in a shooting-jacket or 
 morning sack " chaffing " a lady with 
 the freshest slang, and smoking in her 
 face. They are undeniably different, 
 and the later figure is wholly free from 
 Grandisonian elegance and elaboration. 
 But is he much more truly a gentleman? 
 Is he our Sidney, our Chevalier Bayard, 
 our Admirable Crichton ? Is that re- 
 fined consideration and gentle defer- 
 ence, which is the flower of courtesy, an 
 old-fashioned folly ? 
 
 The overwrought politeness is made 
 very ridiculous upon the stage, and 
 Richardson is undoubtedly hard read- 
 ing for the general consumer of novels. 
 It is true, also, that fine morals do not 
 always go with fine manners, and that 
 Lovelace had a fascination of address 
 which John Knox lacked. The chaff 
 and slang of the Bayard of to-day are 
 at least decent, and his morals probably 
 
Tobacco and Manners 71 
 
 purer than those of the courtly and 
 punctilious old Sir Roger de Coverleys. 
 Possibly; but it has been wisely said 
 that hypocrisy is the homage paid by 
 vice to virtue. The good manners of a 
 bad man are a rich dress upon a dis- 
 eased body. They are the graceful form 
 of a vase full of dirty water. The liq- 
 uid may be poisonous, but the vessel is 
 beautiful. Some of the worst Lotharios 
 in the world have a personal charm 
 which is irresistible. Many a stately 
 compliment was paid by a graciously 
 bowing satyr in laced velvet coat and 
 periwig, at the court of Louis the Great, 
 and paid for the basest purpose ; but 
 the grace and the courtesy were bor- 
 rowed, like plumage of living hues to 
 deck carrion. They were not a part of 
 the baseness, and you do not escape 
 dirty water by breaking the vase. If 
 the older morals were worse than the 
 
72 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 new, and the older manners were better, 
 cannot we who live to-day, and who 
 may have everything, combine the new 
 morals and the old manners ? 
 
 We can spare some elaboration of 
 form, but we cannot safely spare the 
 substance of refined deference. If Ro- 
 meo be permitted to treat Juliet as hos- 
 tlers are supposed to treat barmaids, 
 and as the heroes of Fielding and Smol- 
 lett treat Abigails upon a journey, they 
 will both lose self-respect and mutual 
 respect. It was a wise father who said 
 to his son, " Beware of the woman who 
 allows you to kiss her." The woman who 
 does not require of a man the form of 
 respect invites him to discard the sub- 
 stance. And there is one violation of 
 the form which is recent and gross, and 
 might be well cited as a striking illus- 
 tration of the decay of manners. It is 
 the practice of smoking in the society 
 
Tobacco and Manners 73 
 
 of ladies in public places, whether driv- 
 ing, or walking, or sailing, or sitting. 
 There are preux chevaliers who would 
 be honestly amazed if they were told 
 they did not behave like gentlemen, who, 
 sitting with a lady on a hotel piazza, or 
 strolling on a public park, whip out a 
 cigarette, light it, and puff as tranquilly 
 as if they were alone in their rooms. 
 Or a young man comes alone upon the 
 deck of a steamer, where throngs of 
 ladies are sitting, and blows clouds of 
 tobacco smoke in their faces, without 
 even remarking that tobacco is disa- 
 greeable to some people. This is not, 
 indeed, one of the seven deadly sins, but 
 a man who unconcernedly sings false 
 betrays that he has no ear for music, 
 and the man who smokes in this way 
 shows that he is not quite a gentleman. 
 But some ladies smoke? Yes, and 
 some ladies drink liquor. Does that 
 
74 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 mend the matter ? The Easy Chair has 
 seen a lady at the head of her own table 
 smoking a fine cigar. You will see a 
 great many highly dressed women in 
 Paris smoking cigarettes. Does all this 
 change the situation ? Does this make 
 it more gentlemanly to smoke with a 
 lady beside you in a carriage, or upon a 
 bench on the piazza ? But some ladies 
 like the odor of a cigar ? Not many ; 
 and the taste of those who sincerely do so 
 cannot justify the habit of promiscuous 
 puffing in their presence. The intima- 
 cy of domesticity is governed by other 
 rules ; but a gentleman smoking would 
 hardly enter his own drawing-room, 
 where other ladies sat with his wife, 
 without a word of apology. The Easy 
 Chair is no King James, and is more 
 likely to issue blasts of tobacco than 
 blasts against it. But King James be- 
 longed to a very selfish sex — a sex which 
 
Tobacco and Manners 75 
 
 seems often to suppose that its indul- 
 gences and habits are to be tenderly tol- 
 erated, for no other reason than that 
 they are its habits. Therefore the young 
 wornan must defend herself by showing 
 plainly that she prohibits the intrusion of 
 which, if suffered, she is really the victim. 
 In other times the Easy Chair has seen 
 the lovely Laura Matilda unwilling to 
 refuse to dance with the partner who 
 had bespoken her hand for the german, 
 although when he presented himself he 
 was plainly flown with wine. The Easy 
 Chair has seen the hapless, foolish maid 
 encircled by those Bacchic arms, and 
 then a headlong whirl and dash down 
 the room, ending in the promiscuous 
 overthrow and downfall of maid, Bac- 
 chus, and musicians. 
 
 If in the Grandisonian day the morals 
 were wanting, it was something to have 
 the manners. They at least were to the 
 
76 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 imagination a memory and a prophecy. 
 They recalled the idyllic age when fine 
 manners expressed fine feelings, and they 
 foretold the return of Astraea to her an- 
 cient haunts. Here is young Adonis 
 dreaming of a four-in-hand and a yacht, 
 like any other gentleman. Let us hope 
 that he knows the test of a gentleman 
 not to be the ownership of blood-horses 
 and a unique drag, but perfect courtesy 
 founded upon fine human feeling — that 
 rare and indescribable gentleness and 
 consideration which rests upon manner 
 as lightly as the bloom upon a fruit. It 
 may be imitated, as gold and diamonds 
 are. But no counterfeit can harm it; 
 and, Adonis, it is incompatible with 
 smoking in a lady's face, even if she 
 acquiesces. 
 
 {^September, 1879) 
 
Tobacco and Manners 77 
 
 ApoUodorus came in the other morn- 
 ing and announced to the Easy Chair 
 that it had been made by common con- 
 sent arbiter of a dispute in a circle of 
 young men, " The question," said he, 
 "is not a new one in itself, but it con- 
 stantly recurs, for it is the inquiry under 
 what conditions a gentleman may smoke 
 in the presence of ladies." 
 
 The Easy Chair replied that it could 
 not answer more pertinently than in the 
 words of the famous Princess Emilia, 
 who, upon being asked by a youth 
 who was attending her in a promenade 
 around the garden, " What should you 
 say if a gentleman asked to smoke as 
 he walked with you ?" replied, " It is not 
 supposable, for no gentleman would pro- 
 pose it." 
 
78 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 Naturally that youth did not venture 
 to light even a cigarette. Emilia had 
 parried his question so dexterously that, 
 although the rebuke was stinging, he 
 could not even pretend to be offended. 
 His question was merely a form of say- 
 ing, " I am about to smoke, and what have 
 you to say ?" That he asked the ques- 
 tion was evidence of a lingering persua- 
 sion, inherited from an ancestry of gen- 
 tlemen, that it was not seemly to puff 
 tobacco smoke around a lady with whom 
 he was walking. 
 
 ApoUodorus was silent for a moment, 
 as if reflecting whether this anecdote 
 was to be regarded as a general judg- 
 ment of the arbiter that a gentleman 
 will never smoke in the presence of a 
 lady. But the Easy Chair broke in 
 upon his meditation with a question, 
 " If you had a son, should you wish to 
 meet him smoking as he accompanied 
 
Tobacco and Manners 79 
 
 a lady upon the avenue? or, were you 
 the father of a daughter, should you 
 wish to see her cavalier smoking as he 
 walked by. her side ? Upon your own 
 theory of what is gentlemanly and cour- 
 teous and respectful and becoming in 
 the manner of a man towards a woman, 
 should you regard the spectacle with 
 satisfaction ?" 
 
 "Well," replied Apollodorus, "isn't 
 that rather a high-flying view ? When 
 can a man smoke — " 
 
 " But you are not answering," inter- 
 rupted the Easy Chair. " Of two youths 
 walking with your daughter, one of 
 whom was smoking a cigarette, or a 
 cigar, or a pipe, as he attended her, and 
 the other was not smoking, which would 
 seem to you the more gentlemanly ?" 
 
 " The latter," said Apollodorus, prompt- 
 ly and frankly. 
 
 " It appears, then," returned the Easy 
 
8o Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 Chair, assuming the Socratic manner, 
 " that there are circumstances under 
 which a gentleman will not smoke in 
 the presence of a lady. But to answer 
 your question directly, it is not possible 
 to prescribe an exact code, although cer- 
 tain conditions may be definitely stated. 
 For instance, a gentleman will not smoke 
 while walking with a lady in the street. 
 He will not smoke while paying her an 
 evening visit in her drawing-room. He 
 will not smoke while driving with her 
 in the Park." 
 
 It is significant of a radical change in 
 manners that such rules can be laid 
 down, because formerly the question 
 could not have arisen. The grandfa- 
 ther of Apollodorus, who was the flower 
 of courtesy, could no more have smoked 
 with a lady with whom he was walking 
 or driving than he could have attended 
 her without a coat or collar. Yet man- 
 
Tobacco and Manners 8i 
 
 ners change, and the grandfather must 
 not insist that those of his time were 
 best because they were those of his time. 
 It is but a little while since that a gen- 
 tleman who appeared at a party without 
 gloves would have been a " queer " fig- 
 ure. But now should he wear gloves he 
 would be remarked as unfamiliar with 
 good usage. 
 
 It does not argue a decline of cour- 
 tesy that the Grandisonian compliment 
 and the ineffable bending over a lady's 
 hand and respectful kissing of the fin- 
 ger-tips have yielded to a simpler and 
 less stately manner. The woman of the 
 minuet was not really more respected 
 than the woman of the waltz. How- 
 ever the word gentlemanly may be de- 
 fined, it will not be questioned that the 
 quality which it describes is sympa- 
 thetic regard for the feelings of others 
 and the manner which evinces it. The 
 
 6 
 
82 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 manner, of course, may be counterfeited 
 and put to base uses. To say that 
 Lovelace has a gentlemanly manner is 
 not to say that he is a gentleman, but 
 only that he has caught the trick of a 
 gentleman. To call him or Robert Ma- 
 caire or Richard Turpin a gentleman is 
 to say only that he behaves as a gentle- 
 man behaves. But he is not a gentle- 
 man, unless that word describes man- 
 ners and nothing more. 
 
 This is the key to the question of 
 ApoUodorus. It is not easy to define 
 a gentleman, but it is perfectly easy to 
 see that in his pleasures and in the lit- 
 tle indifferent practices of society the 
 gentleman will do nothing which is dis- 
 agreeable to others. He certainly will 
 not assume that a personal gratification 
 or indulgence must necessarily be pleas- 
 ant to others, nor will he make the self- 
 ish habits of others a plea for his own. 
 
Tobacco and Manners 83 
 
 Apollodorus listened patiently, and 
 then said slowly that he understood the 
 judgment to be that a gentleman would 
 smoke in the presence of ladies only 
 when he knew that it was agreeable to 
 them, but that, as the infinite grace and 
 courtesy of women often led them, as an 
 act of self-denial, to persuade themselves 
 that what others 'wish to do ought not 
 to annoy them, it was very difficult to 
 know whether the practice was or was 
 not offensive to any particular lady, and 
 therefore — therefore — 
 
 The youth seemed to be unable to 
 draw the conclusion. 
 
 " Therefore," said the mentor, " it is 
 well to remember the old rule in 
 whist." 
 
 " Which is — .?" asked Apollodorus. 
 
 " When in doubt, trump the trick." 
 
 " But what is the special application 
 of that rule to this case ?" 
 
84 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 " Precisely this, that the doubting 
 smoker should follow the advice of 
 Punch to those about to marry." 
 
 " Which is — ?" asked Apollodorus. 
 
 " Don-'t." 
 
 {September, 1883) 
 
DUELLING 
 
 Twenty-five years ago, at the table 
 of a gentleman whose father had fallen 
 in a duel, the conversation fell upon 
 duelling, and after it had proceeded for 
 some time the host remarked, emphati- 
 cally, that there were occasions when it 
 was a man's solemn duty to fight. The 
 personal reference was too significant 
 to permit further insistence at that table 
 that duelling was criminal folly, and the 
 subject of conversation was changed. 
 
 The host, however, had only reiter- 
 ated the familiar view of General Ham- 
 ilton. His plea was, that in the state 
 of public opinion at the time when 
 Burr challenged him, to refuse to fight 
 
86 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 under circumstances which by the " code 
 of honor" authorized a challenge, was 
 to accept a brand of cowardice and of 
 a want of gentlemanly feeling, which 
 would banish him to a moral and social 
 Coventry, and throw a cloud of discredit 
 upon his family. So Hamilton, one of 
 the bravest men and one of the acutest 
 intellects of his time, permitted a worth- 
 less fellow to murder him. Yet there 
 is no doubt that he stated accurately 
 the general feeling of the social circle 
 in which he lived. There was probably 
 not a conspicuous member of that so- 
 ciety who was of military antecedents 
 who would not have challenged any 
 man who had said of him what Hamil- 
 ton had said of Burr. Hamilton dis- 
 dained explanation or recantation, and 
 the result was accepted as tragical, but 
 in a certain sense inevitable. 
 
 Yet that result aroused public senti- 
 
Duelling 87 
 
 ment to the atrocity of this barbarous 
 survival of the ordeal of private battle. 
 That one of the most justly renowned 
 of public men, of unsurpassed ability, 
 should be shot to death like a mad dog, 
 because he had expressed the general 
 feeling about an unprincipled schemer, 
 was an exasperating public misfortune. 
 But that he should have been murdered 
 in deference to a practice which was 
 approved in the best society, yet which 
 placed every other valuable life at the 
 mercy of any wily vagabond, was a pub- 
 lic peril. From that day to this there 
 has been no duel which could be said 
 to have commanded public sympathy 
 or approval. From the bright June 
 morning, eighty years ago, when Ham- 
 ilton fell at Weehawken, to the June of 
 this year, when two foolish men shot at 
 each other in Virginia, there has been 
 a steady and complete change of public 
 
88 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 opinion, and the performance of this 
 year was received with almost universal 
 contempt, and with indignant censure 
 of a dilatory police. 
 
 The most celebrated duel in this 
 country since that of Hamilton and 
 Burr was the encounter between Com- 
 modores Decatur and Barron, in 1820, 
 near Washington, in which Decatur, 
 like Hamilton, was mortally wounded, 
 and likewise lived but a few hours. 
 The quarrel was one of professional, as 
 Burr's of political, jealousy. But as the 
 only conceivable advantage of the Ham- 
 ilton duel lay in its arousing the public 
 mind to the barbarity of duelling, the 
 only gain from the Decatur duel was 
 that it confirmed this conviction. In 
 both instances there was an unspeaka- 
 ble shock to the country and infinite 
 domestic anguish. Nothing else was 
 achieved. Neither general manners 
 
Duelling 89 
 
 nor morals were improved, nor was the 
 fame of either combatant heightened, 
 nor pubHc confidence in the men or 
 admiration of their public services in- 
 creased. In both cases it was a calam- 
 ity alleviated solely by the resolution 
 which it awakened that such calamities 
 should not occur again. 
 
 Such a resolution, indeed, could not 
 at once prevail, and eighteen years after 
 Decatur was killed, Jonathan Cilley, of 
 Maine, was killed in a duel at Washing- 
 ton by William J. Graves, of Kentucky. 
 This event occurred forty-five years ago, 
 but the outcry with which it was re- 
 ceived even at that time — one of the 
 newspaper moralists lapsing into rhyme 
 as he deplored the cruel custom which 
 led excellent men to the fatal field, 
 
 "where Cilleys meet their Graves" — 
 
 and the practical disappearance of Mr. 
 
90 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 Graves from public life, showed how 
 deep and strong was the public con- 
 demnation, and how radically the gen- 
 eral view of the duel was changed. 
 
 Even in the burning height of the 
 political and sectional animosity of 1856, 
 when Brooks had assaulted Charles 
 Sumner, the challenge of Brooks by 
 some of Sumner's friends met with lit- 
 tle public sympathy. During the ex- 
 citement the Easy Chair met the late 
 Count Gurowski, who was a constant 
 and devoted friend of Mr. Sumner, but 
 an old-world man, with all the heredi- 
 tary social prejudices of the old world. 
 The count was furious that such a 
 dastardly blow had not been avenged. 
 " Has he no friends ?" he exclaimed. 
 " Is there no honor left in your coun- 
 try?" And, as if he would burst with 
 indignant impatience, he shook both 
 his fists in the air, and thundered out, 
 
Duelling 91 
 
 " Good God ! will not somebody chal- 
 lenge anybody ?" 
 
 No, that time is passed. The elderly 
 club dude may lament the decay of the 
 good old code of honor — a word of 
 which he has a very ludicrous concep- 
 tion — as Major Pendennis, when he 
 pulled off his wig, and took out his 
 false teeth, and removed the padded 
 calves of his legs, used to hope that the 
 world was not sinking into shams in its 
 old age. Quarrelling editors may win 
 a morning's notoriety by stealing to the 
 field, furnishing a paragraph for the re- 
 porters, and running away from the 
 police. But they gain only the unsa- 
 vory notoriety of the man in a curled 
 wig and flowered waistcoat and huge 
 flapped coat of the last century who 
 used to parade Broadway. The cos- 
 tume was merely an advertisement, and 
 of very contemptible wares. The man 
 
92 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 who fights a duel to-day excites but 
 one comment. Should he escape, he 
 is ridiculous. Should he fall, the com- 
 mon opinion of enlightened mankind, 
 writes upon his head - stone, " He died 
 as the fool dieth." 
 
 {^September, 1883) 
 
NEWSPAPER ETHICS 
 
 Newspaper manners and morals hard- 
 ly fall into the category of minor man- 
 ners and morals, which are supposed to 
 be the especial care of the Easy Chair, 
 but there are frequent texts upon which 
 the preacher might dilate, and push a 
 discourse upon the subject even to the 
 fifteenthly. Indeed, in this hot time 
 of an opening election campaign, the 
 stress of the contest is so severe that 
 the first condition of a good newspa- 
 per is sometimes frightfully maltreat- 
 ed. The first duty of a newspaper is 
 to tell the news ; to tell it fairly, hon- 
 estly, and accurately, which are here 
 
94 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 only differing aspects of the same ad- 
 verb. "Cooking the news" is the worst 
 use to which cooking and news can be 
 put. The old divine spoke truly, if 
 with exceeding care, in saying, " It has 
 been sometimes observed that men will 
 lie." So it has been sometimes suspect- 
 ed that newspapers will cook the news. 
 A courteous interviewer called upon 
 a gentleman to obtain his opinions, let 
 us say, upon the smelt fishery. After 
 the usual civilites upon such occasions, 
 the interviewer remarked, with conscious 
 pride : " The paper that I represent and 
 you, sir, do not agree upon the great 
 smelt question. But it is a newspaper. 
 It prints the facts. It does not pervert 
 them for its own purpose, and it finds 
 its account in it. You may be sure that 
 whatever you may say will be reproduced 
 exactly as you say it. This is the news 
 department. Meanwhile the editorial 
 
Newspaper Ethics 95 
 
 department will make such comments 
 upon the news as it chooses." This was 
 fair, and the interviewer kept his word. 
 The opinions might be editorially ridi- 
 culed from the other smelt point of view, 
 and they probably were so. But the 
 reader of the paper could judge between 
 the opinion and the comment. 
 
 Now an interview is no more news 
 than much else that is printed in a pa- 
 per, and it is no more pardonable to 
 misrepresent other facts than to distort 
 the opinions of the victim of an inter- 
 view. Yet it has been possible at times 
 to read in the newspapers of the same 
 day accounts of the same proceedings 
 of — of — let us say, as this is election 
 time — of a political convention. The 
 Banner informs us that the spirit was 
 unmistakable, and the opinion most de- 
 cided in favor of Jones. True, the con- 
 vention voted, by nine hundred to four, 
 
()6 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 for Smith, but there is no doubt that 
 Jones is the name written on the popu- 
 lar heart. The Standard, on the other 
 hand, proclaims that the popular heart 
 is engraved all over with the inspiring 
 name of Smith, and that it is impossi- 
 ble to find any trace of feeling for Jones, 
 except, possibly, in the case of one del- 
 egate, who is probably an idiot or a 
 lunatic. This is gravely served up as 
 news, and the papers pay for it. They 
 even hire men to write this, and pay 
 them for it. How Ude and Careme 
 would have disdained this kind of cook- 
 ery! It is questionable whether hang- 
 ing is not a better use to put a man to 
 than cooking news. Sir Henry Wotton 
 defined an ambassador as an honest man 
 sent to lie abroad for the commonwealth. 
 This kind of purveyor, however, does 
 not lie for his country, but for a party 
 or a person. 
 
Newspaper Ethics 97 
 
 It is done with a purpose, the purpose 
 of influencing other action. It is in- 
 tended to swell the psean for Jones or 
 for Smith, and to procure results under 
 false pretences. Procuring goods un- 
 der false pretences is a crime, but every- 
 body is supposed to read the newspapers 
 at his own risk. Has the reader yet to 
 learn that newspapers are very human ? 
 A paper, for instance, takes a position 
 upon the Jones or Smith question. It 
 decides, upon all the information it can 
 obtain, and by its own deliberate judg- 
 ment, that Jones is the coming man, or 
 (" it has been observed that men will 
 sometimes lie ") it has illicit reasons for 
 the success of Smith. Having thus 
 taken its course, it cooks all the news 
 upon the Smith and Jones controversy, 
 in order that by encouraging the Jones- 
 ites or the Smithians, according to the 
 color that it wears, it may promote the 
 7 
 
98 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 success of the side upon which its opin- 
 ion has been staked. It is a ludicrous 
 and desperate game, but it is certainly 
 not the honest collection and diffusion 
 of news. It is a losing game also, be- 
 cause, whatever the sympathies of the 
 reader, he does not care to be foolishly 
 deceived about the situation. If he is 
 told day after day that Smith is im- 
 mensely ahead and has a clear field, he 
 is terribly shaken by the shock of learn- 
 ing at the final moment that he has 
 been cheated from the beginning, and 
 that poor Smith is dead upon the field 
 of dishonor. 
 
 Everybody is willing to undertake 
 everybody else's business, and an Easy 
 Chair naturally supposes, therefore, that 
 it could show the able editor a plan of 
 securing and retaining a large audience. 
 The plan would be that described by 
 the urbane reporter as the plan of his 
 
Newspaper Ethics 99 
 
 own paper. It is nothing else than 
 truth-telling in the news column, and 
 the peremptory punishment of all crim- 
 inals who cook the news, and "write up" 
 the situation, not as it is, but as the pa- 
 per wishes it to be. This is more than 
 an affair of the private wishes or prefer- 
 ences of the paper. To cook the news 
 is a public wrong, and a violation of the 
 moral contract which the newspaper 
 makes with the public to supply the 
 news, and to use every reasonable effort 
 to obtain it, not to manufacture it, either 
 in the office or by correspondence. 
 
 {July, 1880) 
 
 If, as a New York paper recently 
 said, the journalist is superseding the 
 orator, it is full time for the work upon 
 Journals and Journalism, which has 
 
loo Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 been lately issued in London. The 
 New York writer holds that in our polit- 
 ical contests the " campaign speech " is 
 not intended or adapted to persuade or 
 convert opponents, but merely to stimu- 
 late and encourage friends. The party 
 meetings on each side, he thinks, are 
 composed of partisans, and the more ex- 
 travagant the assertion and the more 
 unsparing the denunciation of " the en- 
 emy," the more rapturous the enthusi- 
 asm of the audience. In fact, his theory 
 of campaign speeches is that they are 
 merely the addresses of generals to their 
 armies on the eve of battle, which are 
 not arguments, since argument is not 
 needed, but mere urgent appeals to par- 
 ty feeling. " Thirty centuries look down 
 from yonder Pyramid " is the Napoleon- 
 ic tone of the campaign speech. 
 
 As an election is an appeal to the 
 final tribunal of the popular judgment, 
 
Newspaper Ethics loi 
 
 the apparent object of election oratory 
 is to affect the popular decision. But 
 this, the journalist asserts, is not done 
 by the orator, for the reason just stated, 
 but by the journal. The newspaper ad- 
 dresses the voter, not with rhetorical 
 periods and vapid declamation, but with 
 facts and figures and arguments which 
 the voter can verify and ponder at his 
 leisure, and not under the excitement or 
 the tedium of a spoken harangue. The 
 newspaper, also, unless it be a mere 
 party " organ," is candid to the other 
 side, and states the situation fairly. 
 Moreover, the exigencies of a daily is- 
 sue and of great space to fill produce a 
 fulness and variety of information and of 
 argument which are really the source of 
 most of the speeches, so that the orator 
 repeats to his audience an imperfect ab- 
 stract of a complete and ample plea, and 
 the orator, it is asserted, would often 
 
I02 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 serve his cause infinitely better by read- 
 ing a carefully written newspaper arti- 
 cle than by pouring out his loose and 
 illogical declamation. 
 
 But the argument for the newspaper 
 can be pushed still further. Since pho- 
 nographic reporting has become univer- 
 sal, and the speaker is conscious that 
 his very words will be spread the next 
 morning before hundreds of thousands 
 of readers, it is of those readers, and not 
 of the thousand hearers before him, of 
 whom he thinks, and for whom his ad- 
 dress is really prepared. Formerly a 
 single charge was all that was needed 
 for the fusillade of a whole political 
 campaign. The speech that was origi- 
 nally carefully prepared was known 
 practically only to the audience that 
 heard it. It grew better and brighter 
 with the attrition of repeated delivery, 
 and was fresh and new to every new 
 
Newspaper Ethics 103 
 
 audience. But now, when delivered to 
 an audience, it is spoken to the whole 
 country. It is often in type before it is 
 uttered, so that the orator is in fact re- 
 peating the article of to-morrow morn- 
 ing. The result is good so far as it 
 compels him to precision of statement, 
 but it inevitably suggests the question 
 whether the newspaper is not correct in 
 its assertion that the great object of the 
 oration is accomplished not by the ora- 
 tor, but by the writer. 
 
 But this, after all, is like asking 
 whether a chromo copy of a great pict- 
 ure does not supersede painting, and 
 prove it to be an antiquated or obsolete 
 art. Oratory is an art, and its peculiar 
 charm and power cannot be superseded 
 by any other art. Great orations are 
 now prepared with care, and may be 
 printed word for word. But the reading 
 cannot produce the impression of the 
 
104 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 hearing. We can all read the words 
 that Webster spoke on Bunker Hill at 
 the laying of the corner-stone of the 
 monument fifty years after the battle. 
 But those who saw him standing there, 
 in his majestic prime, and speaking to 
 that vast throng, heard and saw and felt 
 something that we cannot know. The 
 ordinary stump speech which imperfect- 
 ly echoes a leading article can well be 
 spared. But the speech of an orator 
 still remains a work of art, the words of 
 which may be accurately lithographed, 
 while the spirit and glow and inspira- 
 tion of utterance which made it a work 
 of art cannot be reproduced. 
 
 The general statement of the critic, 
 however, remains true, and the effective 
 work of a political campaign is certainly 
 done by the newspaper. The newspa- 
 per is of two kinds, again — that which 
 shows exclusively the virtue and advan- 
 
Newspaper Ethics 105 
 
 tage of the party it favors, and that 
 which aims to be judicial and impartial. 
 The tendency of the first kind is obvi- 
 ous enough, but that of the last is not 
 less positive if less obvious. The ten- 
 dency of the independent newspaper is 
 to good-natured indifference. The very 
 ardor, often intemperate and indiscreet, 
 with which a side is advocated, preju- 
 dices such a paper against the cause it- 
 self. Because the hot orator exclaims 
 that the success of the adversary would 
 ruin the country, the independent Men- 
 tor gayly suggests that the country is 
 not so easily ruined, and that such an 
 argument is a reason for voting against 
 the orator. The position that in a party 
 contest it is six on one side and half a 
 dozen on the other is too much akin to 
 the doctrine that naught is everything 
 and everything is naught to be very 
 persuasive with men who are really in 
 
io6 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 earnest. Such a position in public af- 
 fairs inevitably, and often very unjustly 
 to them, produces an impression of want 
 of hearty conviction, which paralyzes 
 influence as effectually as the evident 
 prejudice and partiality of the party 
 advocate. Thorough independence is 
 perfectly compatible with the strongest 
 conviction that the public welfare will 
 be best promoted by the success of this 
 or that party. Such independence crit- 
 icises its own party and partisans, but it 
 would not have wavered in the support 
 of the Revolution because Gates and 
 Conway were intriguers, and Charles 
 Lee an adventurer, and it would have 
 sustained Sir Robert Walpole although 
 he would not repeal the Corporation 
 and Test laws, and withdrew his excise 
 act. 
 
 Journalism, if it be true that it really 
 shapes the policy of nations, well de- 
 
Newspaper Ethics 107 
 
 serves to be treated as thoughtfully as 
 Mr. " John Oldcastle " apparently treats 
 it in the book we have mentioned, for it 
 is the most exacting of professions in 
 the ready use of various knowledge. 
 Mr. Anthony Trollope says that any- 
 body can set up the business or profes- 
 sion of literature who can command a 
 room, a table, and pen, ink, and paper. 
 Would he also say that any man may 
 set up the trade of an artist who can 
 buy an easel, a palette, a few brushes, 
 and some colors.? It can be done, in- 
 deed, but only as a man who can hire a 
 boat may set up for an East India mer- 
 chant. 
 
 (December, 1880) 
 
io8 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 III 
 
 " If you find that you have no case," 
 the old lawyer is reported to have said 
 to the young, "abuse the plaintiff's at- 
 torney," and Judge Martin Grover, of 
 New York, used to say that it was ap- 
 parently a great relief to a lawyer who 
 had lost a case to betake himself to the 
 nearest tavern and swear at the court. 
 Abuse, in any event, seems to have been 
 regarded by both of these authorities as 
 a consolation in defeat. It is but car- 
 rying the theory a step further to resort 
 to abuse in argument. Timon, who is 
 a club cynic — which is perhaps the most 
 useless specimen of humanity — says 
 that 'pon his honor nothing entertains 
 him more than to see how little argu- 
 ment goes to the discussion of any ques- 
 tion, and how immediate is the recourse 
 
Newspaper Ethics 109 
 
 to blackguardism. " The other day," he 
 said, recently, " I was sitting in the 
 smoking-room, and Blunt and Sharp be- 
 gan to talk about yachts. Sharp thinks 
 that he knows all that can be known of 
 yachts, and Blunt thinks that what he 
 thinks is unqualified truth. Sharp made 
 a strong assertion, and Blunt smiled. 
 It was that lofty smile of amused pity 
 and superiority, which is, I suppose, very 
 exasperating. Sharp was evidently sur- 
 prised, but he continued, and at another 
 observation Blunt looked at him, and 
 said, simply, ' Ridiculous !' As it seemed 
 to me," said Timon, " the stronger and 
 truer were the remarks of Sharp, the 
 more Blunt's tone changed from con- 
 tempt to anger, until he came to a tor- 
 rent of vituperation, under which Sharp 
 retired from the room with dignity. 
 
 " I presume," said the cynic, " that 
 Sharp was correct upon every point. 
 
I lo Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 But the more correct Sharp was, the 
 more angry Blunt became. It was very 
 entertaining, and it seems to me very 
 much the way of more serious dis- 
 cussion." Timon was certainly right, 
 and those who heard his remarks, and 
 have since then seen him chuckling 
 over the newspapers, are confident it is 
 because he observes in them the same 
 method of carrying on discussion. Much 
 public debate recalls the two barbaric 
 methods of warfare, which consist in 
 making a loud noise and in emitting 
 vile odors. A member of Congress 
 pours out a flood of denunciatory words 
 in the utmost rhetorical confusion, and 
 seems to suppose that he has dismayed 
 his opponent because he has made a 
 tremendous noise. He is only an over- 
 grown boy, who, like some other boys, 
 imagines that he is very heroic when 
 he shakes his head, and pouts his lip, 
 
Newspaper Ethics 1 1 1 
 
 and clinches his fist, and " calls names " 
 in a shrill and rasping tone. Other 
 members, who ought to know better, 
 pretend to regard his performances as 
 worthy of applause, and metaphorically 
 pat him on the back and cry, "'St, boy!" 
 They only share — and in a greater 
 degree, because they know better — the 
 contempt with which he is regarded. 
 
 In the same way a newspaper writer 
 attacks views which are not acceptable 
 to him, not with argument, or satire, or 
 wit, or direct refutation, but by meta- 
 phorically emptying slops, and directing 
 whirlwinds of bad smells upon their sup- 
 porters. The intention seems to be, not 
 to confute the arguments, but to disgust 
 the advocates. The proceeding is a con- 
 fession that the views are so evidently 
 correct that they will inevitably prevail 
 unless their supporters can be driven 
 away. This is an ingenious policy, for 
 
112 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 guns certainly cannot be served if the 
 gunners are dispersed. Men shrink from 
 ridicule and ludicrous publicity. How- 
 ever conscious of rectitude a man may 
 be, it is exceedingly disagreeable for him 
 to see the dead -walls and pavements 
 covered with posters proclaiming that 
 he is a liar and a fool. If he recoils, the 
 enemy laughs in triumph; if he is in- 
 different, there is a fresh whirlwind. 
 
 A public man wrote recently to a 
 friend that he had seen an attack upon 
 his conduct in a great journal, and had 
 asked his lawyer to take the necessary 
 legal steps to bring the offender to jus- 
 tice. His friend replied that he had 
 seen the attack, but that it had no more 
 effect upon him than the smells from 
 Newtown Creek. They were very dis- 
 gusting, but that was all. This is the 
 inevitable result of blackguardism. The 
 newspaper reader, as he sees that one 
 
Newspaper Ethics 113 
 
 man supports one measure because his 
 wife's uncle is interested in it, and an- 
 other man another measure to gratify 
 his grudge against a rival, gradually 
 learns from his daily morning mentor 
 that there is no such thing as honor, 
 decency, or public spirit in public af- 
 fairs ; he chuckles with the club cynic, 
 although for a very different reason, and 
 forgets the contents of one column as 
 he begins upon' the riext. If a man 
 covers his milk toast, his breakfast, his 
 lunch, dinner, and supper with a coat- 
 ing of Cayenne pepper, the pepper be- 
 comes as things in general became to 
 Mr. Toots — of no consequence. 
 
 This kind of fury in personal denun- 
 ciation is not force, as young writers 
 suppose ; it is feebleness. Wit, satire, 
 brilliant sarcasm, are, indeed, legitimate 
 weapons. It was these which Sydney 
 Smith wielded in the early Edinburgh 
 
1 14 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 Review. But " calling names," and echo- 
 ing the commonplaces of affected con- 
 tempt, that is too weak even for Timon 
 to chuckle over, except as evidence of 
 mental vacuity. The real object in hon- 
 est controversy is to defeat your oppo- 
 nent and leave him a friend. But the 
 Newtown Creek method is fatal to such 
 a result. Of course that method often 
 apparently wins. But it always fails 
 when directed against a resolute and 
 earnest purpose. The great causes per- 
 sist through seeming defeat to victory. 
 But to oppose them with sneers and 
 blackguardism is to affect to dam Ni- 
 agara with a piece of paper. The crafty 
 old lawyer advised the younger to re- 
 serve his abuse until he felt that he had 
 no case. Judge Grover remarked that 
 it was when the case was lost that the 
 profanity began. 
 
 {^September, 1882) 
 
Newspaper Ethics 115 
 
 IV 
 
 There is a delicate question in news- 
 paper ethics which is sometimes widely 
 discussed, namely, whether "journalism " 
 may be regarded as a distinct profession 
 which has a moral standard of its own. 
 The question arises when an editorial 
 writer transfers his services from one 
 journal to another of different political 
 opinions. Is a man justified in arguing 
 strenuously for free trade to-day and for 
 protection to-morrow.? Are political 
 questions and measures of public policy 
 merely points of law upon which an ed- 
 itor is an advocate to be retained indif- 
 ferently and with equal morality upon 
 either side ? 
 
 This question may be illuminated by 
 another. Would John Bright be a man 
 of equal renown, character, and weight 
 
ii6 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 of influence if, being an adherent of 
 peace principles, he had remained in an 
 administration whose poHcy was war? 
 This question will be thought to beg 
 the whole question. But does it ? Must 
 it not be assumed that a man of adequate 
 ability for the proper discussion of polit- 
 ical questions must have positive polit- 
 ical convictions, and can a man who has 
 such convictions honorably devote him- 
 self to discrediting them, and to defeat- 
 ing the policy which they demand, un- 
 der the plea that he has professionally 
 accepted a retainer or a salary to do so ? 
 Would his arguments have any moral 
 weight if they were known to be those 
 of a man who was not himself convinced 
 by them ? And is not the concealment 
 of the fact indispensable to the value of 
 his services? 
 
 To continue this interrogation : is not 
 the parallel sought to be established 
 
Newspaper Ethics 117 
 
 between the editorial writer and the law- 
 yer vitiated by the fact that it is univer- 
 sally understood that a lawyer's service is 
 perfunctory and official ; that he takes 
 one side rather than another because he 
 is paid for it, and because that is the 
 condition of his profession, and that 
 that condition springs from the nature 
 of legal procedure, society not choosing 
 to take life or to inflict punishment of 
 any kind until the whole case has been 
 stated according to certain stipulated 
 forms? For this reason the advocate 
 who defends a criminal is not supposed 
 necessarily to believe him to be in- 
 nocent. But no such reason existing in 
 the case of the editor, is it not an equal- 
 ly universal understanding that an edi- 
 tor does honestly and personally hold 
 the view that he presents and defends ? 
 For instance, the Times in New York is 
 a Republican and free-trade journal. If 
 
ii8 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 it should suddenly appear some morning 
 as a Democratic and protectionist paper, 
 would not the general conclusion be 
 that it had changed hands ? But if it 
 should be announced that it was in the 
 same hands, and had changed its views 
 because of a pecuniary arrangement, 
 could the Times continue to have the 
 same standing and influence which it 
 has now ? 
 
 A distinction may be attempted be- 
 tween the owner of a paper and the edi- 
 tor. But for the public are they not 
 practically the same ? It is not, in fact, 
 the owner or the editor, it is the paper, 
 which is known to the public. If the 
 public considers at all the probable rela- 
 tion of the owner and editor, it necessa- 
 rily assumes their harmony, because it 
 does not suppose that an owner would 
 employ an editor who is injuring the 
 property, and if the paper flourishes un- 
 
Newspaper Ethics 119 
 
 der the editor, it is because the owner 
 yields his private opinion to the editor's, 
 if they happen to differ, so that there is 
 no discord. On the other hand, if the 
 paper flags and fails, and the owner, to 
 rescue his property, employs another 
 editor, who holds other views, and 
 changes the tone of the paper, the result 
 is the same so far as the public is con- 
 cerned. The profit of the paper may in- 
 crease, but its power and influence sure- 
 ly decline. In the illustration that we 
 have supposed, the proprietorship of the 
 Times might decide that a Democrat- 
 ic and protection paper would have 
 a larger sale and greatly increase the 
 profit. But could the change be made 
 without a terrible blow to the character 
 and influence of the paper .? Now why 
 is not an editor in the same position ? 
 He has a certain standing, and he holds 
 certain views, like the paper. The paper 
 
I20 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 changes its tone for a price. He does 
 the same thing. The paper loses char- 
 acter and influence. Why does not he .? 
 JournaHsm is not a profession in the 
 sense claimed. It does not demand a 
 certain course of study, which is finally 
 tested by an examination and certified 
 by a degree. It is a pursuit rather than 
 a profession. Of cgurse special knowl- 
 edge in particular branches of informa- 
 tion is of the highest value, and indeed 
 essential to satisfactory editorial writing, 
 as to all other public exposition. There 
 are also certain details of the collection 
 of news, the organization of correspond- 
 ence, and the " make up " of the paper, 
 the successful management of which 
 depends upon an energetic executive 
 faculty, which is desirable in every pur- 
 suit. It is sometimes said that an editor, 
 like the late Mr. Delane of the London 
 Times, should not write himself, but se- 
 
Newspaper Ethics 121 
 
 lect the topics and procure the writing 
 upon them by others. And so long as a 
 man is merely an anonymous writer for 
 a paper, so long as he writes to sustain 
 the views of the paper,- his actual opin- 
 ions, being unknown to the reader, do 
 not affect the power of the paper. Such 
 a man, indeed, may write at the same 
 time upon both sides of the same ques- 
 tion for different papers. But if he 
 have any convictions or opinions upon 
 the subject, he is with one hand con- 
 sciously injuring what he believes to be 
 the truth, and a man cannot do that 
 without serious harm to himself. If he 
 have no convictions, his influence will 
 vanish the moment that the fact is 
 known. 
 
 Such strictures do not apply to pa- 
 pers which expressly renounce convic- 
 tions, and blow hot or cold as the 
 chances of probable profit and the ap- 
 
122 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 parent tenor of public opinion at the 
 moment invite. Such papers, properly- 
 speaking, have no legitimate influence 
 whatever. They produce a certain ef- 
 fect by mere publicity, and reiteration, 
 and ridicule, and distortion and suppres- 
 sion of facts, and appeals to prejudice. 
 There is a legitimate and an illegitimate 
 power of the press. A lion and a skunk 
 both inspire terror. 
 
 But a paper which represents convic- 
 tions, and promotes a public policy in 
 accordance with them, necessarily im- 
 plies sincerity in its editorial writing. 
 The public assumes that among papers 
 of all opinions the writer attaches him- 
 self to one with which he agrees. The 
 nature of the pursuit is such that he can- 
 not make himself a free lance without 
 running the risk of being thought an 
 adventurer, a soldier without patriotism, 
 a citizen without convictions. If the best 
 
Newspaper Ethics 123 
 
 American press did not represent real 
 convictions, but only the clever ingenu- 
 ity of paid advocates, it would be worth- 
 less as an exponent of public opinion, 
 and could not be the beneficent power 
 that it is. 
 
 (October, 1882) 
 
 One public man in a recent angry al- 
 tercation with another taunted him with 
 elaborately preparing his invective, and 
 some notoriously vituperative speeches 
 are known to have been written out and 
 printed before they were spoken. Such 
 cold venom is undoubtedly as effective 
 in reading as the hot outbreak of the 
 moment, and it may be even more effec- 
 tive in the delivery, since self-command 
 is as useful to the orator as to the actor. 
 But if a man be guilty of a gross of- 
 
124 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 fence who upon a dignified scene vio- 
 lates the self - restraint and respect for 
 the company which are not only becom- 
 ing, but so much assumed that whoever 
 violates the requirement is felt to insult 
 his associates and the public, why do we 
 not consider whether every scene is not 
 too dignified for mature and intelligent 
 men to attempt to i-ival in blackguard- 
 ism the traditional fishwives of Billings- 
 gate? 
 
 If an orator or a newspaper conducts 
 a discussion without discharging the 
 fiercest and foulest epithets at the op- 
 ponent, it is often declared to be tame 
 and feeble and indifferent. But to 
 whom and to what does vituperation 
 appeal? When an advocate upon the 
 platform shouts until he is very hot and 
 very red that the supporter of protec- 
 tion is a thief, a robber, a pampered pet 
 of an atrociously diabolical system, he 
 
Newspaper Ethics 125 
 
 inflames passion and prejudice, indeed, 
 to the highest fury, and he produces a 
 state of mind which is inaccessible to 
 reason, but he does not show in any de- 
 gree whatever either that protection is 
 inexpedient or how it is unjust. In the 
 same way, to assail an opponent who fa- 
 vors revision of the tariff and incidental 
 protection as a rascally scoundrel who 
 is trying to ruin American industry — as 
 if he could have any purpose of injuring 
 himself materially and fatally — is ab- 
 surd. The tirade merely injures the 
 cause which the blackguard intends to 
 help. But the man who carries on dis- 
 cussion in this style is described by 
 other professors of the same art as man- 
 ly and virile and hitting from the shoul- 
 der, and he comes perhaps to think 
 himself a doughty champion of the 
 right. 
 
 The weapon that demolishes an an- 
 
126 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 tagonist and an argument is not rhet- 
 oric, but truth. This accumulation of 
 " bad names " and ingenious combina- 
 tion of scurrility is merely rhetoric. It 
 serves the rhetorical purpose, but it 
 does not convince. It does not show 
 the hearer or reader that one course 
 is more expedient than another, nor 
 give him any reason whatever for any 
 opinion upon the subject. Virility, 
 vigor, masculinity of mind, and es- 
 sential force in debate are revealed 
 in quite another way. If an American 
 were asked to mention the most power- 
 ful speech ever made in the debates of 
 Congress, he would probably mention 
 Mr. Webster's reply to Hayne. It con- 
 tained the great statement of nationality 
 and the argument for the national in- 
 terpretation of the Constitution, and it 
 was spoken in the course of a famous 
 controversy. Let any man read it, and 
 
Newspaper Ethics 127 
 
 ask himself whether it would have 
 gained in power, in effect, in weight, 
 dignity, or character, by personal invec- 
 tive and elaborate vituperation of any 
 kind and any degree whatever. 
 
 The truth is that the fury which is 
 supposed to imply force is the conclu- 
 sive proof of weakness. The familiar 
 advice, " If you have no evidence, abuse 
 the plaintiffs attorney," contains by im- 
 plication the whole philosophy of what 
 is called the manliness and force of the 
 blackguard. He has no reason, there- 
 fore he sneers. He has no argument, 
 therefore he swears. He will get the 
 laugh upon his adversary if he can, for- 
 getting that those who laugh at the 
 clown may also despise him. 
 
 Of wit, humor, satire, sarcasm, we are 
 not speaking. The ordinary blackguard- 
 ism of the political platform and press 
 does not belong to that category. Cari- 
 
128 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 cature, however, easily may. There are 
 certain pictures in American caricature 
 which are wit made visible. They are 
 the satire of instructive truth. Indeed, 
 they tell to the eye the indisputable 
 truth as words cannot easily tell it to 
 the ear. In this way caricature is one 
 of the most powerful agents in public 
 discussion. But, like speech or writing, 
 it may be merely blackguard. The in- 
 cisive wit, the rich humor, the withering 
 satire of speech, gain all their point and 
 effect from the truth. They have no 
 power when they are seen to be false. 
 
 So it is with caricature. Nobody can 
 enjoy it more than its subject when it 
 is merely humorous; nobody perceive 
 so surely its pungent touch of truth; 
 nobody disregard more completely its 
 mere malice and falsehood. True wit 
 and humor, whether in controversial 
 letters or art, whether in the newspaper 
 
Newspaper Ethics 129 
 
 article or the '' cartoon," as we now call 
 it, often reveal to the subject in himself 
 what otherwise he might not have sus- 
 pected. It is very conceivable that an 
 actor, seeing a really clever burlesque 
 of himself, may become aware of ten- 
 dencies or peculiarities or faults which 
 otherwise he would not have known, 
 and quietly address himself to their cor- 
 rection. 
 
 This sanitary service of humor in 
 every form, as well as that of the honest 
 wrath which shakes many a noble sen- 
 tence of sinewy English as a mighty 
 man-of-war is shaken by her own broad- 
 side, is something wholly apart from the 
 billingsgate and blackguardism which 
 are treated as if they were real forces. 
 Publicity itself, as the Easy Chair has 
 often said, has a certain power, and to 
 call a man a rascal to a hundred thou- 
 sand persons at once produces an unde- 
 9 
 
i^o Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 niable effect. But we must not mistake 
 it for what it is not. Being false, it is 
 not an effect which endures, nor does it 
 vex the equal mind. 
 
 It is the fact that the public often 
 seems to demand that kind of titillation, 
 to enjoy fury instead of force, and ridi- 
 cule instead of reason, which suggests 
 the inquiry whether, if self-restraint and 
 wise discipline are desirable for every 
 faculty of the mind and body, the tongue 
 and hand alone should be allowed to 
 riot in wanton excess. If even the le- 
 gitimate superlative must be handled, 
 like dynamite, with extreme caution, 
 blackguardism of every degree is a nui- 
 sance to be summarily discountenanced 
 and abated by those who know the dif- 
 ference between grandeur and bigness, 
 between Mercutio and Tony Lumpkin, 
 between fair-play and foul. 
 
 {Sepember, 1888) 
 
Newspaper Ethics 131 
 
 VI 
 
 The Easy Chair has been asked 
 whether there is any code of newspaper 
 manners. It has no doubt that there 
 is. But it is the universal code of cour- 
 tesy, and not one restricted to newspa- 
 pers. Good manners in civilized society 
 are the same everywhere and in all rela- 
 tions. A newspaper is not a mystery. 
 It is the work of several men and wom- 
 en, and their manners in doing the 
 work are subject to the same principles 
 that govern their manners in society or 
 in any other human relation. If a man 
 is a gentleman, he does not cease to 
 be one because he enters a newspaper 
 office, and it would seem to be equally 
 true that if his work on the paper does 
 not prove to be that of a gentleman, it 
 could not have been a gentleman who 
 did the work. 
 
132 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 A gentleman, we will suppose, does 
 not blackguard his neighbors, nor talk 
 incessantly about himself and his 
 achievements, nor behave elsewhere as 
 he would be ashamed to behave in his 
 club or in his own family. If a gentle- 
 man does not do these things, of course 
 a gentleman does not do them in a 
 newspaper. An,d does it not seem to 
 follow, if , such things are done in a 
 newspaper, and are traced to a hand 
 supposed to be that of a gentleman, that 
 there has been some mistake about the 
 hand? 
 
 Good manners are essentially a dispo- 
 sition which moulds conduct. They 
 can be feigned, indeed, as gilt counter- 
 feits gold, and plate silver. But the 
 clearest glass is not diamond. A man 
 may smile and smile and be a villain. 
 Scoundrels are sometimes described as 
 of gentlemanly manners, and Lothario 
 
Newspaper Ethics 133! 
 
 was not personally a boor. But he was 
 not a gentleman, and he merely affected 
 good manners. A gentleman, indeed, 
 may sometimes lose his temper or his 
 self-control, but no one who habitually 
 does it, and swears and rails vociferous- 
 ly, can be called properly by that name. 
 Here again it is easy to apply the canon 
 to a newspaper. When a newspaper 
 habitually takes an insulting tone, and 
 deliberately falsifies, whether by asser- 
 tion of an untruth or by a distortion and 
 perversion of the truth, it is not the 
 work of a gentleman, and if the writer 
 be responsible for the tone of the paper, 
 the manners of that newspaper are not 
 good manners. 
 
 But there is no uniformity in newspa- 
 per manners, as there is none elsewhere. 
 Therefore it cannot be said that news- 
 papers, as a whole, are either well-man- 
 nered or unmannerly, as you cannot say 
 
134 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 that men, as a body, are courteous or 
 uncouth. Some newspapers are unmis- 
 takably vulgar, like some people. They 
 are not so of themselves, however ; they 
 are made vulgar by vulgar people. 
 There are very able newspapers which 
 have very bad manners, and some which 
 have no other distinction than good 
 manners. A very dull man may be very 
 urbane, and so may a very dull newspa- 
 per. On the other hand, a newspaper 
 which is both brilliant and clever may 
 be sometimes guilty of an injustice, a 
 deliberate and persistent misrepresenta- 
 tion, to attain a particular end — conduct 
 which is sometimes called " journalistic." 
 But the person who is responsible for 
 the performance, for similar conduct 
 would be metaphorically kicked out of 
 a club. But gentlemen are not kicked 
 out of clubs. 
 
 A newspaper gains neither character 
 
Newspaper Ethics 135 
 
 nor influence by abandoning good man- 
 ners. It may indeed make itself disa- 
 greeable and annoying, and so silence 
 opposition, as a polecat may effectually 
 close the wood path which you had de- 
 signed to take. It may be feared, and 
 in the same way as that animal — feared 
 and despised. But this effect must not 
 be confounded with newspaper power 
 and influence. It is exceedingly annoy- 
 ing, undoubtedly, to be placarded all 
 over town as a liar or a donkey, a hypo- 
 crite or a sneak-thief. But although the 
 effect is most unpleasant, very little 
 ability is required to produce it. A lit- 
 tle paper and printing, a little paste, a 
 great deal of malice, and a host of bill- 
 stickers are all that are needed, and even 
 the pecuniary cost is not large. The 
 effect is produced, but it does not show 
 ability or force or influence upon the 
 part of its producer. 
 
136 Ars Recte Vivendi 
 
 The manners of newspapers, as such, 
 cannot be classified any more than the 
 manners of legislatures, or of the profes- 
 sions or trades. This, however, seems 
 to be true, that a well-mannered man 
 will not produce an ill-mannered news- 
 paper. 
 
 (April, 1891) 
 
 THE END 
 
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