How we might, all of us, be Gentlemen.

“Dear Mr. Fashionable Novelist (or should it be Miss?),—Before going to my tailor, I venture to write to you on a subject of some importance.  I am fairly well educated, of good family and address, and, so my friends tell me, of passable appearance.  I yearn to become a gentleman.  If it is not troubling you too much, would you mind telling me how to set about the business?  What socks and ties ought I to wear?  Do I wear a flower in my button-hole, or is that a sign of a coarse mind?  How many buttons on a morning coat show a beautiful nature?  Does a stand-up collar with a tennis shirt prove that you are of noble descent, or, on the contrary, stamp you as a parvenu?  If answering these questions imposes too great a tax on your time, perhaps you would not mind telling me how you yourself know these things.  Who is your authority, and when is he at home?  I should apologize for writing to you but that I feel you will sympathize with my appeal.  It seems a pity there should be so many vulgar, ill-bred people in the world when a little knowledge on these trivial points would enable us all to become gentlemen.  Thanking you in anticipation, I remain . . . ”

Would he or she tell us?  Or would the fashionable novelist reply as I once overheard a harassed mother retort upon one of her inquiring children.  Most of the afternoon she had been rushing out into the garden, where games were in progress, to tell the children what they must not do:—“Tommy, you know you must not do that.  Haven’t you got any sense at all?”  “Johnny, you wicked boy, how dare you do that; how many more times do you want me to tell you?”  “Jane, if you do that again you will go straight to bed, my girl!” and so on.

At length the door was opened from without, and a little face peeped in: “Mother!”

“Now, what is it? can’t I ever get a moment’s peace?”

“Mother, please would you mind telling us something we might do?”

The lady almost fell back on the floor in her astonishment.  The idea had never occurred to her.

“What may you do!  Don’t ask me.  I am tired enough of telling you what not to do.”