Читать книгу How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of Republican Etiquette, and Guide to Correct Personal Habits - Wells Samuel Roberts - Страница 4

If you wish to commence aright the study of manners, you must make your own person the first lesson. If you neglect this you will apply yourself to those which follow with very little profit. Omit, therefore, any other chapter in the book rather than this.

The proper care and adornment of the person is a social as well as an individual duty. You have a right to go about with unwashed hands and face, and to wear soiled and untidy garments, perhaps, but you have no right to offend the senses of others by displaying such hands, face, and garments in society. Other people have rights as well as yourself, and no right of yours can extend so far as to infringe theirs.

But we may safely assume that no reader of these pages wishes to render himself disgusting or even disagreeable or to cut himself off from the society of his fellow-men. We address those who seek social intercourse and desire to please. They will not think our words amiss, even though they may seem rather "personal;" since we have their highest good in view, and speak in the most friendly spirit. Those who do not need our hints and suggestions under this head, and to whom none of our remarks may apply, will certainly have the courtesy to excuse them for the sake of those to whom they will be useful.