Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/130

 which is in process of formation for the revival of the Art of Intelligent Conversation and the Cultivation of Good Manners. Ladies who dress with a becoming simplicity, and who are not liable to the accusation of walking about with clothes unpaid for, will be eligible for membership,—and young men who are not ashamed to emphatically decline playing cards on Sunday will be equally welcome in the select coterie. Limited means will be considered more of a recommendation than a drawback, and visits will be interchanged among the members on the lines of unaffected hospitality, offered with unassuming friendship and sincerity. Kindness towards each other, punctilious attention to the smallest courtesies of life, unfailing chivalry towards women, and honour to men, will be the prevailing "rules" of the community, and every attempt at "show," either in manners or entertainment, will be rigorously forbidden and excluded. The aim of the Society will be to prove the truth of the adage that "Manners makyth the man," as opposed to the modern reading, "Money makyth the nobleman." Bearing in mind that the greatest reformers and teachers of the world were seldom destitute of the grace of Poverty, it will be deemed good and necessary to make a stand for this ancient and becoming Virtue, which as a learned writer says, "doth sit on a wise man more becomingly than royal robes on a king." Many who entertain this view are prepared to unite their forces in making well-born and well-bred Poverty the fashion. For in such a scheme, singular as it may appear, there is just a faint chance of putting up a barrier against boorish Plutocracy (which is a more un