Teach your boys and girls this principle of deference to their elders, by example, as well as precept. Bring them up to practise it, with every other expression of cultivated manners, among themselves as brothers and sisters. The elder ones should, of course, never demand deference; that would be the worst of all bad forms. No true lady or gentleman will ever notice any disregard of personal rights. To demand this recognition, or to manifest resentment at its omission, is to forfeit one’s claim to it; but let each be ready to recognize the right of seniority, and that it is at least graceful for the younger ones to yield place and position to their elder brothers, sisters, and friends. A well-bred girl or woman will open and hold the door for an old, elderly, or feeble man; will enter after him, and close the door herself, although he, if he has been trained in the habits of the “old school” of gentlemen, might insist on rendering to her the courtesy due her sex, and wait for her to pass, even if she should be young enough to be his granddaughter; but it will be a gracious act for her to unobtrusively hold the humbler place which properly belongs to her, and wait until he passes in, unless, as might sometimes happen, she would be in danger of attracting undue attention by making longer effort to thwart his courteous designs, as well as possibly cause delay to others. In such a case she should quietly thank him, and pass on as quickly as she can without haste, so as to get out of the way. Among men and women of the same generation it is expected that a man will be always ready to perform all those little chivalric courtesies for women everywhere which he would like other men to tender to his own mother, sister, wife, or special friend, and _no more_. For a boy or man to treat any other woman of the same age better than he treats his own mother, sister, or wife, reveals the bad, disloyal heart which will taint the very best social “good form” with corruption. To demand from others for one’s personal friends better treatment than he himself gives, is to at once publish that he is guilty of the most contemptible form of selfishness. “I let no man abuse my folks but myself,” was the frank confession of a young man who was always ready to fight any one who would treat his “folks” with anything like the neglect and disrespect that was his constant habit.