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[Illustration: Photo of Julia Ward Howe

Signed,

Yours very cordially,

Julia Ward Howe.]




Is Polite Society Polite?

And Other Essays

BY

[Illustration: colophon]

MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE

BOSTON & NEW YORK

Lamson, Wolffe, & Company

1895

Copyright, 1895, By Lamson, Wolffe, & Co.

All rights reserved




Preface


I REMEMBER that, quite late in the fifties, I mentioned to Theodore
Parker the desire which I began to feel to give living expression to my
thoughts, and to lend to my written words the interpretation of my
voice.

Parker, who had taken a friendly interest in the publication of my first
volumes, "Passion Flowers" and "Words for the Hour," gave his approval
also to this new project of mine. "The great desire of the age," he
said, "is for vocal expression. People are scarcely satisfied with the
printed page alone: they crave for their instruction the living voice
and the living presence."

At the time of which I write, no names of women were found in the lists
of lecture courses. Lucy Stone had graduated from Oberlin, and was
beginning to be known as an advocate of temperance, and as an
antislavery speaker. Lucretia Mott had carried her eloquent pleading
outside the limits of her Quaker belonging. Antoinette Brown Blackwell
occupied the pulpit of a Congregational church, while Abby Kelly Foster
and the Grimke Sisters stood forth as strenuous pleaders for the
abolition of slavery. Of these ladies I knew little at the time of which
I speak, and my studies and endeavors occupied a field remote from that
in which they fought the good fight of faith. My thoughts ran upon the
importance of a helpful philosophy of life, and my heart's desire was to
assist the efforts of those who sought for this philosophy.

Gradually these wishes took shape in some essays, which I read to
companies of invited friends. Somewhat later, I entered the lecture
field, and journeyed hither and yon, as I was invited.

The papers collected in the present volume have been heard in many parts
of our vast country. As is evident, they have been written for popular
audiences, with a sense of the limitations which such audiences
necessarily impose. With the burthen of increasing years, the freedom of
locomotion naturally tends to diminish, and I must be thankful to be
read where I have in other days been heard. I shall be glad indeed if it
may be granted to these pages to carry the message which I myself have
been glad to bear,--the message of the good hope of humanity, despite
the faults and limitations of individuals.

That hope casts its light over the efforts of years that are past, and
gilds for me, with ineffaceable glow, the future of our race.

The lecture, "Is Polite Society Polite?" was written for a course of
lectures given some years ago by the New England Women's Club of Boston.
"Greece Revisited" was first read before the Town and Country Club of
Newport, R.I. "Aristophanes" and "Dante and Beatrice" were written for
the Summer School of Philosophy at Concord, Mass. "The Halfness of
Nature" was first read before the Boston Radical Club. "The Salon in
America" was written for the Contemporary Club in Philadelphia.




Contents


Preface

Is Polite Society Polite      Page 3

Paris      37

Greece Revisited      77

The Salon in America      113

Aristophanes      133

The Halfness of Nature      161

Dante and Beatrice      181




Is Polite Society Polite?


WHY do we ask this question? For reasons which I shall endeavor to make
evident.

The life in great cities awakens a multitude of ambitions. Some people
are very unscrupulous in following these ambitions, attaining their
object either by open force and pushing, or by artful and cunning
manoeuvres. And so it will happen that in the society which considers
itself entitled to rank above all other circles one may meet with people
whose behavior is guided by no sincere and sufficient rule of conduct.
Observing their shortcomings, we may stand still and ask, Are these
people what they should be? Is polite society polite?

For this society, which is supposed to be nothing if not polite, does
assume, in every place, to set up the standard of taste and to regulate
the tone of manners. It aims to be what Hamlet once was in Ophelia's
eyes--"the glass of fashion and the mould of form." Its forms and
fashions change, of course, from age to age, and yet it is a steadfast
institution in the development of human civilization.

I should be sorry to overstate its shortcomings, but I wish I might help
it to feel its obligations and to fulfil them.

What shall we accept in the ordinary sense of men as politeness? Shall
we consider it a mere surface polish--