Courtesy and Neighborly Love

Henry Drummond was a Scottish writer, lecturer, biologist and evangelist who died in 1897 at the age of 45 ––Public domain image of Henry Drummond

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR

Courtesy- this is love in society, love in relation to etiquette. 

"Love doth not behave itself unseemly" 

Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to love.

Love cannot behave itself unseemly. Courtesy is the love of your fellow man. —Henry Drummond in Winters Express, September 1914

🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Timeless Etiquette Advice from 1914

The bearing should be erect, dignified but retiring, free from all boisterous actions. Never do anything to attract attention.

By Way of Reminder

1. The really attractive girl has become so by a process of thoughtful self-culture.

2. The dressing of the hair shows character. Let it be neat and becoming, whatever the style.

3. The clothes should be tidy and appropriate to time and place, with a touch of style which is never extreme.

4. The bearing should be erect, dignified but retiring, free from all boisterous actions. Never do anything to attract attention.

5. A mild tone of voice bespeaks culture. Loud talking, laughing, shouting, screaming or calling across streets are unladylike.

6. The choicest forms of language are none too good for the womanly girl.

7. Silently rebuke all unkind or unchaste conversation by withdrawing your presence.

8. The well-bred girl never makes a jest of the failings, misfortunes or mistakes of others.

9. Read a beautiful poem or look at a beautiful picture every day.

10. Wrong thoughts mar the face, while pure and loving thoughts give it beautiful lines.

11. An even disposition is an enviable virtue. Our kindliness of manner should triumph over our ill moods.

12. Reserve caresses for the privacy of the home. They are but the froth of affection and are in bad taste in public places.

13. Hold your standard high and seek the company of people who can help you raise it.

14. To treat all with courtesy and consideration is a mark of good breeding.

15. Do some kind act every day, you will pass this way but once. – Girls' Literary Club, 1914

 🍽Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Teaching Respect and Courtesy

Children should be helped to discover that loveliness toward others gets for them what they want. In other words they get what they give. They make the discovery that more pleasures and satisfactions accrue to them if they give pleasure and satisfaction to others. We may cultivate in the hearts of our children this feeling or desire, this urge to please others. It is a spiritual asset, caught as well as taught. 

Tuning in with Our Children

YESTERDAY – I had no desire to preach a sermon on the desirability of parents practicing courtesy toward each other because of the effect on their children. It isn’t necessary to sermonize because everyone appreciates the charm and beauty and desirability of such behavior. Courtesy and respect for each other reflect a fine sweet spirit; they are the product of harmony and love. How to produce this inner harmony is the problem for parents and teachers. That inner desire, that feeling of harmony and love and desire to be courteous to the other fellow is a product of stimulation. The discovery that courtesy pays big dividends stimulates one to feel that way.

CHILDREN PAID IN KIND – Children should be helped to discover that loveliness toward others gets for them what they want. In other words they get what they give. They make the discovery that more pleasures and satisfactions accrue to them if they give pleasure and satisfaction to others. We may cultivate in the hearts of our children this feeling or desire, this urge to please others. It is a spiritual asset, caught as well as taught. 

RESERVE OF LOVELINESS – Our children may catch loveliness by exposure to others who practice it. And they build up a great reserve of loveliness by continually practicing thoughtfulness for others. Every parent and teacher should know that it is not enough merely to create a desire in the heart of a child to practice courtesy. Many a child finds it extremely difficult to act the way he should act, or the way he would like to act. The child tries and fails. Becomes discouraged. Our turn is to stand-by and see that his efforts to practice courtesy are crowned with success.

UNDERSTANDING NEEDED – We must help the child to a definite understanding of his problem. He must be aware of the habit he wishes to break and the new habit he wishes to form. We must help the child define these habits in terms of specific behavior situations. We must help him to determine exactly what to do and what not to do. And keep the following admonitions in mind at all times: Treat the child with the same courtesy and respect that you desire from him.

PRAISE FOR COURTESY – When the child does an especially courteous act, remember to make him happy about it. Give him a thrill. Make the good popular; give it a good reputation. In other words advertise goodness in an attractive way. – By James Samuel Lacy, 1933

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Of Courtesy, Cops and Drivers

Not a citation, but a marriage certificate – Imagine the surprise of this couple, George W. Williams and Mrs. Ellen Jones, when a traffic officer appeared in response to their call for a minister to marry them. Traffic cop, William Norton of the Seattle police force, happens to be a regularly ordained minister, so Mrs. Jones became Mrs. Williams in jig time after Officer Norton parked his motorcycle outside and entered with his Bible.

Courtesy Drives Success in Life

• No matter what kind of machine you drive, courtesy will get you farther at the end of the day than anything else. 
• Courtesy does more to smooth out the bad bumps in the road than balloon tires and shock absorbers. 
• Courtesy saves you money in police court. 
• Courtesy is a substitute for almost everything a man can have except brains, and it can even be used as a substitute for brains. 
• If motor-cops and other traffic officers set a better example in courtesy than some of them do, the average motorist would profit by that example.
• Safe motor driving is not promoted by the traffic officer whose ideas and conversation, lumped to consists of  “Hey there, whadya think you’re doin’?” The average man responds a lot faster to kindness than to abuse.
• Traffic officers will find that the habit of courtesy will do more to make them successful in their jobs than any other one factor. 
• Courtesy is not only the most important rule of the road for drivers and policemen. It opens the best way through life for us all—afoot or on horseback. 

“Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy,” said Emerson. 

“A moral, sensible, and well-bred man will not affront me and no other can.” So wrote the poet Cowper. Therein he told the whole story. Fear is the great foe of life. Courtesy disarms even fear. 

James T. Fields wrote beautifully of courtesy. He said:  

“How sweet and gracious, even in common speech is that fine sense which men call Courtesy! Wholesome as air and genial as the light, welcome in every clime as breath of flowers. It transmutes aliens into trusting friends. And gives its owner passport round the globe.” 

                              – John Carlyle for San Pedro News, 1927 

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Manners Spring from the Heart

Courtesy to older people and to women is of great importance. The absence of haste or noise in the partaking of food and the avoidance of lounging attitudes at the table, are also important.

Good Manners Leave Impression Upon Observers 

Learning Courtesy and Avoiding Rudeness in Manners is Quite Essential

A well-modulated voice in men or women and a clear-cut, distinct enunciation in speech are important facts in an agreeable personality. These can be acquired by a little practice. Courtesy to older people and to women is of great importance. The absence of haste or noise in the partaking of food and the avoidance of lounging attitudes at the table, are also important. In conversation with our fellow beings there are two well-known quotations which may be serviceable. One is: “Three things observe with care: Of whom you speak, to whom you speak, And how and when and where.” 

The other is—before repeating any unpleasant news or disagreeable gossip about any one, to ask one’s self, “Is it true, is it kind, is it necessary?” Sometimes an important statement may be true, but it is neither kind nor necessary to repeat. Sometimes it is true and not kind, and yet necessary to repeat. It is necessary to tell a woman with a baby in her arms if she is about to call at a house where there is an infectious disease, that such a condition exists within. But it is only where there is necessity to warn or where there is a possibility of helping and changing the existing conditions, that one is really justified in repeating and commenting upon the disagreeable and painful things of life. 

People who possess the refinement of good manners always leave a pleasant and stimulating impression upon those with whom they converse. Even in a brief interview in which only the ordinary events or happenings of health and weather are touched upon, the really good mannered individual whose manners spring from a good heart will find an opportunity to leave an agreeable and brightening effect. Dig deep in your heart first, young man, then call your brains, your memory, your powers of observation to bear upon life, and you will need no book of etiquette to direct you, although it may not harm you to read one. – Los Angeles Herald, 1915

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Courtesy is Contagious, By Jupiter!

At the urging of Juno, Jupiter gives a cranky human, Thornton J. Poindexter, a chance to re-do one particular bad day. The message was to be “wisely selfish” and that “courtesy is contagious.”

Veteran actor, Chick Chandler, plays a man who reacts to every rudeness, supposed slight, or mishap around him all day, with rudeness. 

With the help of Jupiter during his do-over, Thornton J. Poindexter has nicely and politely changed his thinking, changed the ways he deals with others, and has made everyone around him happier, and more polite, as well. Oh... and he also got a nice steak instead of “boiled beef,” his newspaper slipped under his doormat as requested, the new bank loan he wanted, and earned some bonus points at the office.

Personnel Head Addresses Future Business Leaders of America

M. Garnett, Manager of the Alpha Beta Markets in the La Habra area, was the speaker at the Future Business Leaders of America meeting last Wednesday at the La Habra High School. Mr. Garnett showed a movie entitled "By Jupiter” which gave students hints on poise, manners and courtesy. After the movie cookies and punch were provided by FBLA members. –LaHabra Star, 1956

1947’s “By Jupiter!” was produced by Marshall Field’s as a way of “showing how all of us can make this world a much more pleasant place to live.”

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Some Thanksgiving Courtesy

“Courtesy goes far beyond the dictates of etiquette, for the generous, perceptive heart has its own codes. The man who never saw a salad fork or held a tea cup may be more instinctively courteous than a nobleman. Courtesy is a facile tool that can smooth the most difficult situations, as I discovered one Thanksgiving.” 

More Than Etiquette 

Often people think of courtesy as a synonym for etiquette. Yet courtesy goes far beyond the dictates of etiquette, for the generous, perceptive heart has its own codes. The man who never saw a salad fork or held a tea cup may be more instinctively courteous than a nobleman. Courtesy is a facile tool that can smooth the most difficult situations, as I discovered one Thanksgiving. 

I had been invited to dinner by a friend who lived in a mountain village in New Hampshire. There was all the nostalgia of the season, even to a horsedrawn sleigh from the station and a ride through snowy woods to the farmhouse. As the family gathered around the fireplace before dinner we heard a car pull up, then a knock at the door. But it wasn’t an expected guest. It was Uncle Jonathan, whom no one had seen for eight years and no one wanted to see. His arrogance and selfishness had estranged him from everyone in town, including his family. 

Some of the family bridled and there were exchanges of angry glances. His sudden appearance could have been tensely embarrassing, but no one was so rude as to question his presence there or make him feel awkward or unwelcome. After dinner as we sat in the firelight, he offered a pathetic little excuse for his coming. “I was just passing by (on a wooded path that led nowhere) and since it was Thanksgiving, I . . . I . . “We're so glad you came,” his sister said. “Really?” The bravado suddenly left him. “I was so lonely,” he admitted humbly. Then, embarrassed, he rose, a big man forlorn as a lost child. As he started toward the door, I begged the family silently, “Do something, say something. This calls for more than etiquette or he'll be lost forever.” 

He was putting on his coat when his eldest brother detained him. “No rush, Jonathan. Why don’t you stay on at least through Christmas?” Courtesy had saved the day. The traditions of graciousness had kept open the lines of communication so that the family’s problems were smoothed out, and eventually solved. Empathy, imagination, tact, are all ingredients of courtesy which the dictionary defines as “gracious politeness . . . a considerate act or remark.” But Ralph Waldo Emerson penetrated to the very heart of the word when he wrote, “Love is the basis of courtesy.” – By Elizabeth Byrd, in The Madera Tribune, 1965

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia