Good manners among the various kinds of public and semi-public servants in England would not be considered good manners here. Without disputing the point with those admirers of the English servant, we must insist that it would be ridiculous for a self-respecting American citizen to grovel and scrape and look and act “humble.” We want no servility here, much as we would like to please those persons who constantly feel the need of assurances from others that they are as grand folks as they would like to think themselves. Scraping and cringing, whether in a duke or in a domestic, are as bad manners for a human being as are arrogance and impertinence. The grotesque nature of the snob complaints against the manners of our everyday people is striking when one recognizes a certain criticism that can justly be made against us. It is among so-called well-bred people, a certain brand of them, our snobs, that bad manners are most prevalent. For out of them is left that on which alone good manners can be built--the proud, erect, democratic spirit. It is not difficult to have good manners in a graded social system. It is extremely difficult to have good manners in a Democracy. Any one can easily be a snob, a looker-up and a looker-down. But how very difficult it is to be a simple, unaffected man or woman, considerate, courteous, looking all other men and women straight in the eyes and saying: “You are certainly as good as I am. I hope I am as good as you are.” “I am your equal” is at the basis of democratic bad manners. “You are my equal” is the basis of democratic good manners. Again and again in fashionable society, frequently among those most prone to call their poorer countrymen and women ill-mannered, there are barbarities and repulsive lapses of good taste not merely tolerated, but approved as marks of fashion and refinement. For example: A rich woman gives a cotillon, provides many thousand dollars’ worth of handsome favors. You look about the ballroom--there sits a circle of girls, pretty and ugly and passable, attractive and unattractive. Some are loaded down with favors--you can hardly see their radiant faces for the mass of articles which testify to their popularity. Others have only a few favors, and those of the poorest. Yet there they must sit, acting as foils for the pretty and lucky girls who are emphasizing their homeliness and bad luck. Their sufferings do not show in their faces--at least not very plainly. But they would not be human if they did not feel the pangs of humiliated and wounded vanity at this most conspicuous advertisement of their inferiority in charm. Yet the cotillon is regarded as the very highest kind of refined social entertainment. And hostesses will beam upon this sorry scene with never a thought for the sufferings of their slighted and wounded girl guests. In a truly refined society would any one ever give any form of entertainment at which there would be frank discrimination among the guests?