LETTERS TO A FRESHMAN.

VII.

DEAR JACK, - I happened to meet the other day a fellow by the name of Robinson, who has lately been in Cambridge, and who told me that he had seen you there. He is related, I believe, to one of your classmates. My fraternal interest got the better of my manners, and I put him in a rather awkward position by asking him what he thought of you. He replied, with apparent sincerity, that you seemed to be a very good fellow, and that you were devilish amusing and impudent Now Robinson himself is a very good sort of a person, but his notions of amusing impudence do not agree with mine. He is an extremely nouveau riche, in fact, of the sort who cannot see the difference between vulgar impertinence and the decent amount of assurance that every gentleman ought to possess. And ever since I met him I have been tormented with the idea that you might possibly be sacrificing your old notions of manners, which I am bound to say were very good, to the theories of good-fellowship which happen to be popular among a certain class of people in Cambridge. So I am going to relieve myself by a lecture on manners, which you had better read if you think you need it, and skip if you don't.

I regret to say that in this part of the world there are very few men who approach my idea of what a gentleman ought to be. There are some bright men, and a great many smart ones; some able men, and an unusually large number of honest ones; but very few who are really well-bred men of the world. This is perfectly natural. We have no families, or if we have, etiquette does not permit us to say much about them; and, in general, our society is composed of two classes of men, - those who are busily engaged in making fortunes, and those who are equally busy in spending the fortunes that their fathers have made.

Neither of these classes have any time to spare to think of their behavior. As long as they do nothing downright indecent they are contented; and I am sorry to say that the world is very apt to be contented too. At the same time, as somebody or other said, there was never a spot on earth so wicked that a man could not live a good life there if he wanted to; and there never was a place where manners were so horribly bad that a man who chose to be well-bred could-not succeed. I have seen one or two very well-behaved people from the far West.

Men are always more or less coarse. If you pass your time for a month or two in their company, and in their company alone, you will be amazed at your own roughness, to say the least, when you mingle once more with the fairer portion of humanity. A man at college, where home and where home friends do not happen to be accessible, is very apt to pass almost all his time with men. And the result is that a college education, which ought to make finished gentlemen, oftener succeeds in roughening than in polishing the diamonds which are confided to its care. I remember that during my Junior year I went to one or two of the assemblies as they called the parties which the students managed, and my observations at once amused and annoyed me. A number of very good fellows were there who had confined their social experiences to college societies, and who were delightfully ill at ease in the company of anybody but men of their own age. Some who, like you, were blest with assurance tried to conceal their diffidence by a sort of familiar impudence that was anything but creditable to their training. Others, of a temperament more like my own, betrayed their confusion by blushing, stammering, talking like idiots, and playing alternately with their gloves and their watch-chains. All this was very entertaining, but at the same time it was so difficult to discover a man whose behavior was not either offensive or intolerably stupid that I confess that I was very much disgusted.

Of course you know, during your first year or two at college, you cannot expect to mingle with the gay world as if you were a grown man. Even the delightful assemblies of which I spoke are, or used to be, closed to you. At the same time you can expect to know a reasonable number of ladies, and if you take advantage of the introductions which I took the trouble to procure for you, you can expect to know ladies whose acquaintance will be not only agreeable, but also useful to you, as you grow to be an older and a greater man. The refining influence of female society is a subject that has been so thoroughly exhausted of late years that I will not bore you by entering upon it. I shall only advise you to avoid what I call gentlemen ladies, - the converse of ladies' men, - fair creatures who are more popular with our sex than with their own. Whether truly or not, it always seems to me that they accommodate themselves to us instead of making us accommodate ourselves to them; and therefore that they are not particularly useful for your purpose.

Good society is something like heaven; its existence is often denied by those who have no hope of getting in. But at the same time it undoubtedly exists, and exercises an influence which is none the less for being unseen. And the more you have of it, the better for you it will be. I find that I am becoming horribly snobbish, so I shall hasten to close my letter. Always behave like a gentleman. If you want to do an impudent thing, do it in such a way that nobody will know that it is impudent till he stops to think; and if you can't do it in that way, don't do it at all.

Take care not to live with men alone. Choose your friends with care; i. e. know people who will be of use to you, and try to make them think that you are of use to them. But don't let your snobbishness take the form of boasting of your own rank. If you are a gentleman, the whole world can see it; and if you are not, you had better not call attention to the fact. We are all snobs, you know. But our snobbishness differs as much as do our noses. The peculiar form of snobbishness which I have condemned is, I regret to say, my own; but your nose is of a better shape than mine, and it is my sincere hope that your snobbishness may take a more attractive form than that of

Your affectionate brother,

PHILIP.