The value of a pleasant manner it is impossible to estimate. It is like sunshine, it gladdens; you feel it and are at once attracted to the person without knowing why. When you entertain, do it in an easy, natural way, as if it was an everyday occurrence, not the event of your life; but do it well. Learn how to do it; never be ashamed to learn. The American people have a _greater_ power of “catching hold,” and adapting themselves to new surroundings than any other people in the world. A distinguished diplomatist once said to me, “The best wife for a Diplomat is an American; for take her to any quarter of the globe and she adapts herself to the place and people.” If women should cultivate pleasant manners, should not men do the same? Are not manners as important to men as to women? The word “gentleman” may have its derivation from gentle descent, but my understanding of a gentleman has always been that he is a person free from arrogance, and anything like self-assertion; considerate of the feelings of others; so satisfied and secure in his own position, that he is always unpretentious, feeling he could not do an ungentlemanly act; as courteous and kind in manner to his inferiors as to his equals. The best bred men I have ever met have always been the least pretentious. Natural and simple in manner, modest in apparel, never wearing anything too _voyant_, or conspicuous; but always so well dressed that you could never discover what made them so,--the good, quiet taste of the whole producing the result. Here, all men are more or less in business. We hardly have a class who are not. They are, of necessity, daily brought in contact with all sorts and conditions of men, and in self-defense oftentimes have to acquire and adopt an abrupt, a brusque manner of address, which, as a rule, they generally leave in their offices when they quit them. If they do not, they certainly should. When such rough manners become by practice a second nature, they unfit one to go into society. It pays well for young and old to cultivate politeness and courtesy. Nothing is gained by trying roughly to elbow yourself into society, and push your way through into the inner circle; for when such a one has reached it, he will find its atmosphere uncongenial and be only too glad to escape from it.