| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 17 |
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It has been remarked by a careful observer that almost any one can be courteous, patient, and forbearing in a neighbour’s house. “If anything goes wrong, or is out of tune, or disagreeable there, it is made the best of, not the worst. Efforts are made even to excuse it, and to show that it is not any one’s fault; or if it is manifestly somebody’s fault, it is attributed to accident, not design. All this is not only easy, but natural in the house of a friend.”
Will any one say that what is easy and natural in the house of another is impossible in one’s own home? It certainly is possible to have just as sweet courtesy, just as unvarying kindness, just as earnest efforts to please, just as tender care not to hurt or give pain, in the inner life of our own homes as it is in outside social relations. That is a part of what St. John means when he says, “Beloved, let us love one another.” “One another” certainly includes our home loved ones. It is not intended that we should treat our neighbours in a kindly Christian way, and then treat our own rudely, discourteously, and in an irritating, unkindly fashion.
An English paper recently had an article on Home Manners. A young girl boarded with an elderly woman, who took a maternal interest in her. One evening the young girl had been out rather late, and a fine young man brought her home. The boarding house woman asked the girl who the young man was. “He is my brother,” replied the young woman. “Your brother!” exclaimed the somewhat cynical old lady, in a rather doubting tone. “Why, I saw him raise his hat to you as he went away.” The courtesy seemed to be to the older woman impossible in a girl’s own brother. Is it so? Do brothers not usually practice good manners toward their sister? Every young man with even the smallest pretensions to gentlemanliness will take off his hat to any other young man’s sister. Does he not also to his own?
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