Not at all. These modern, downright, shirt-sleeved ways of ours, open-air, golf-playing ways, man-and-woman, give-and-take ways--making up the jocose and slangy warfare we call friendship, nowadays--they’re well enough, so long as the thought beneath is honest. But mere words, words, words--aren’t you, too, sick of them? Don’t you want deeds or nothing? Actions speak louder. . . . FOR the fact is that such thoughtfulness, such consideration as I desire is not merely decorative. It is the very essence and evidence of sincerity. Without it all so-called kindness is merely titular and perfunctory. Tact is what makes kindness real, makes it effective; just as the perfume proves which is the genuine, and which is the artificial violet. Suppose I propose your name for membership in my club. Have I done you (or my club) any real service, unless I also do my best to see that you are elected? So then, if I go to every member of the committee, if I urge all my friends to endorse you, is that a quixotic feeling for punctilio? I think not. It is merely the completion of my regard for you. It is like salt--“it’s what makes potatoes taste bad, if you don’t put it on.” It is a guarantee of my true feeling. It is the hug without which the kiss means nothing. NEITHER do I insist on obedience to custom. You may violate any of the folk-ways, for all I care. If you refuse to take off your hat to ladies, I shall think only that you do not feel yourself bound by the elaborate rules of romantic love concocted by the lazy troubadours and sentimental chatelaines of the Middle Ages. Offer your left hand to me, if you like, I care not. We carry no daggers now. I know that most of us would prefer to dine with a polite murderer than with an honest tinsmith who eats with his knife. But, by that same token, I know that all such artificial distinctions are not based upon kindness. They are merely the unwritten laws of society. But if you, however brilliantly, make fun of your wife, if you humiliate an inferior, insult a debtor, if you promise and keep not your word, if you fail to flavor your kindness with sincerity, if you give only the counterfeit money of politeness--then I perceive that you have not the Educated Heart. Indeed, the Educated Heart is rare enough anywhere; but it is found quite as often among those who know not your artificial social code, as it is with those of the six-fork dinner. AHA! Now you think you have me in the old conventional corner by the altruistic what-not, and the goody-goody seashells, eh? Copybook stuff. Mass morality. Herd-minded optimism that finds good in everything and why find fault--“it’s not constructive.’’ But, no--I’m not trying to prove “’Tis only noble to be good,” but only that to be good, or even pleasing, is a severe aesthetic problem. Well, I know that _“Hearts just as pure and fair_ _May beat in Belgrave Square_ _As in the lowly air_ _Of Seven Dials,”_