Bacon says: "If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them." If you wish to be known as a courteous man, begin at once to do little acts of kindness to others. Acts of kindness form the basis of true Courtesy. Lord Chesterfield said: "The desire to please is, at least, half the art of doing it." If we wish to learn how to get a reputation for Courtesy, we must make an effort to do what others like, though we may not care about it ourselves. Many a man owes his success in life to doing pleasant things in a pleasant way. The headmaster of one of the greatest public schools in England said: "Courtesy begets Courtesy; it is a passport to popularity. The way in which things are done is often more important than the things themselves." Another writer has said: "A good deed is never lost. He who sows Courtesy reaps friendship." To be Courteous, we must not only do kindnesses; we must do them in a pleasing manner. "Manner will do everything. Give a young fellow on setting out in life a good manner, and he will want neither meat, drink, nor clothes. 'I like that lad,' some one says, 'he has such nice off-hand manners.'" "Sir Walter Raleigh was every inch a man, a brave soldier, a brilliant courtier, and yet a mirror of Courtesy. Nobody would accuse Sir Philip Sidney of having been deficient in manliness, yet his fine manners were proverbial. It is the Courtesy of Bayard, the knight, _sans peur et sans reproche_, which has immortalized him quite as much as his valour." Burke said: "Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. Manners are what vex, soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in." Dr. Johnson once said: "Sir, a man has no more right to _say_ an uncivil thing than to act one--no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down." We should be especially courteous to servants and those below us in the world. A great man returned the salute of a negro who had bowed to him. Some one told him that what he had done was very unusual. "Perhaps so," said he, "but I would not be outdone in good manners by a negro."