The Perfect Gentleman | Page 3

by the abbreviation 'Gent.' appended to their surnames. But
already this was becoming a vermiform appendix, and the nineteenth
century did away with it. This handsome abbreviation created an
invidious distinction between citizens which democracy refused longer
to countenance; and, much as a Lenin would destroy the value of
money in Russia by printing countless rouble notes without financial
backing, so democracy destroyed the distinctive value of the word
'gentleman' by applying it indiscriminately to the entire male
population of the United States.

The gentleman continues in various degrees of perfection. There is no
other name for him, but one hears it rarely; yet the shining virtue of
democratization is that it has produced a kind of tacit agreement with
Chaucer's Parson that 'to have pride in the gentrie of the bodie is right
gret folie; for oft-time the gentrie of the bodie benimeth the gentrie of
the soul; and also we be all of one fader and one moder.' And although
there are few men nowadays who would insist that they are gentlemen,
there is probably no man living in the United States who would admit
that he isn't.
And so I now see that my bright dream of a Correspondence-School
post-graduate course cannot be realized. No bank president, no
corporation director, electrical engineer, advertising expert, architect, or
other distinguished alumnus would confess himself no gentleman by
marking that coupon. The suggestion would be an insult, were it
affectionately made by the good old president of his Alma Mater in a
personal letter. A few decorative cards, to be hung up in the office,
might perhaps be printed and mailed at graduation.
A bath every day Is the Gentleman's way.
Don't break the Ten Commandments-- Moses meant YOU!
Dress Well--Behave Better.
A Perfect Gentleman has a Good Heart, a Good Head, a Good
Wardrobe, and a Good Conscience.

AS A MAN DRESSES
At some time or other, I dare say, it is common experience for a man to
feel indignant at the necessity of dressing himself. He wakes in the
morning. Refreshed with sleep, ready and eager for his daily tasks and
pleasures, he is just about to leap out of bed when the thought confronts
him that he must put on his clothes. His leap is postponed indefinitely,
and he gets up with customary reluctance. One after another, twelve
articles--eleven, if two are joined in union one and inseparable--must be

buttoned, tied, laced, and possibly safety-pinned to his person: a routine
business, dull, wearisome with repetition. His face and hands must be
washed, his hair and teeth brushed: many, indeed, will perform all over
what Keats, thinking of the ocean eternally washing the land, has called
a 'priestlike task of pure ablution'; but others, faithful to tradition and
Saturday night, will dodge this as wasteful. Downstairs in summer is
his hat; in winter, his hat, his overcoat, his muffler, and, if the weather
compels, his galoshes and perhaps his ear-muffs or ear-bobs. Last thing
of all, the Perfect Gentleman will put on his walking-stick; somewhere
in this routine he will have shaved and powdered, buckled his
wrist-watch, and adjusted his spats.
When we think of the shortness of life, and how, even so, we might
improve our minds by study between getting up and breakfast, dressing,
as educators are beginning to say of the long summer vacation, seems a
sheer 'wastage of education'; yet the plain truth is that we wouldn't get
up. Better, if we can, to think while we dress, pausing to jot down our
worth-while thoughts on a handy tablet. Once, I remember,--and
perhaps the pleasant custom continues,--a lady might modestly express
her kindly feeling for a gentleman (and her shy, half-humorous
recognition of the difference between them) by giving him
shaving-paper; why not a somewhat similar tablet, to record his
dressing-thoughts?
'Clothes,' so wrote Master Thomas Fuller,--and likely enough the idea
occurred to him some morning while getting into his hose and
doublet,--'ought to be our remembrancers of our lost innocency.' And
so they are; for Adam must have bounded from bed to breakfast with an
innocency that nowadays we can only envy.
Yet, in sober earnest, the first useful thing that ever this naked fellow
set his hand to was the making of his own apron. The world, as we
know and love it, began--your pardon, Mr. Kipling, but I cannot help
it--when
Cross-legged our Father Adam sat and fastened them one by one, Till,
leaf by leaf, with loving care he got his apron done; The first new suit
the world had seen, and mightily pleased with it, Till the Devil

chuckled behind the Tree, 'It's pretty, but will it fit?'
From that historic moment everything a man does has been preceded
by dressing, and almost immediately the process lost its convenient
simplicity. Not