A generous regard for the public welfare, a willingness to lend a hand in any movement for the improvement of social conditions, a readiness with work and influence and time and money to relieve suffering, improve sanitary conditions, promote education and morality, remove temptation from the weak, open reading-rooms and places of harmless resort for the unoccupied in their evening hours, to bind together persons of similar tastes and pursuits--these are the marks of public spirit; these are the manifestations of social virtue. +Politeness is love in little things.+--Toward individuals whom we meet in social ways this recognition of our common nature and mutual rights takes the form of politeness and courtesy. Politeness is proper respect for human personality. Rudeness results from thinking exclusively about ourselves, and caring nothing for the feelings of anybody else. The sincere and generous desire to bring the greatest pleasure and the least pain to everyone we meet will go a long way toward making our manners polite and courteous. Still, society has agreed upon certain more or less arbitrary ways for facilitating social intercourse; it has established rules for conduct on social occasions, and to a certain extent prescribed the forms of words that shall be used, the modes of salutation that shall be employed, the style of dress that shall be worn, and the like. A due respect for society, and for the persons whom we meet socially, demands that we shall acquaint ourselves with these rules of etiquette, and observe them in our social intercourse. Like all forms, social formalities are easily carried to excess, and frequently kill the spirit they are intended to express. As a basis, however, for the formation of acquaintances, and for large social gatherings, a good deal of formality is necessary. THE REWARD. +The complete expression and outgo of our nature is freedom.+--Since man is by nature social, since sympathy, friendship, co-operation and affection are essential attributes of man, it follows that the exercise of these social virtues is itself the satisfaction of what is essentially ourselves. The man who fulfills his social duties is free, for he finds an open field and an unfettered career for the most essential faculties of his nature. The social man always has friends whom he loves; work which he feels to be worth doing; interests which occupy his highest powers; causes which appeal to his deepest sympathies. Such a life of rounded activity, of arduous endeavor, of full, free self-expression is in itself the highest possible reward. It is the only form of satisfaction worthy of man. It is in the deepest sense of the word success. For as Lowell says: All true whole men succeed, for what is worth Success's name, unless it be the thought, The inward surety to have carried out A noble purpose to a noble end. THE TEMPTATION.