The same may be said, too, of the curtsy, or courtesy, as it is otherwise written. Its derivation from _courtoisie_, courteousness, that is, behaviour like that at court, at once {19} shows that it was primarily the reverence paid to a monarch. And if we call to mind that falling on the knees, or on one knee, has been a common obeisance of subjects to rulers; that in ancient manuscripts and tapestries, servants are depicted as assuming this attitude while offering the dishes to their masters at table; and that this same attitude is assumed towards our own queen at every presentation; we may infer, what the character of the curtsy itself suggests, that it is an abridged act of kneeling. As the word has been contracted from _courtoisie_ into curtsy; so the motion has been contracted from a placing of the knee on the floor, to a lowering of the knee towards the floor. Moreover, when we compare the curtsy of a lady with the awkward one a peasant girl makes, which, if continued, would bring her down on both knees, we may see in this last a remnant of that greater reverence required of serfs. And when, from considering that simple kneeling of the West, still represented by the curtsy, we pass Eastward, and note the attitude of the Mahommedan worshipper, who not only kneels but bows his head to the ground, we may infer that the curtsy also, is an evanescent form of the aboriginal prostration. In further evidence of this it may be remarked, that there has but recently disappeared from the salutations of men, an action having the same proximate derivation with the curtsy. That backward sweep of the right foot with which the conventional stage-sailor accompanies his bow—a movement which prevailed generally in past generations, when “a bow and a scrape” went together, and which, within the memory of living persons, was made by boys to their master when entering school, with the effect of wearing a hole in the floor—is pretty clearly a preliminary to going on one knee. A motion so ungainly could never have been intentionally introduced; even if the artificial introduction of obeisances were possible. Hence we must regard it as the remnant of something antecedent: and {20} that this something antecedent was humiliating may be inferred from the phrase, “scraping an acquaintance;” which, being used to denote the gaining of favour by obsequiousness, implies that the scrape was considered a mark of servility—that is, of servile position.