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Show AMERICAN MANNERS OF TODAY Prevailing Bearing in Thoroughfares and Street Cars Indicates That :' Courtesy Is on the Decline. As for manners, we are kindhenrted as a people and civil when appealed to, but no one would suspect it if our bearing bear-ing in thoroughfares and street cars be a criterion. The spirit of the age Is first come, first served; to be waived only in favor of the crippled and the positively Infirm. Courtesy in the old-fashioned old-fashioned sense the deference of the young for the seniors, of the stronger for the weaker sex, of the vigorous for the frail if not extinct is so sporadic spor-adic as to be noticeable when manifested, mani-fested, Robert Grant writes in the Yale Review. The young men who push their way forward In public conveyances con-veyances retain without compunction the seats for which they have struggled. strug-gled. Here again we have the philosophy of the tired business man : "I got there first ; we are all equals in the United States, and I want to read my newspaper." news-paper." The apotheosis of naturalness, and in self-defense we all more or less subscribe to It; but after all, it is natural nat-ural for pigs to struggle for places at a trough. Well may we ask ourselves if it is impossible to safeguard independence, inde-pendence, initiative and equality except ex-cept at the cost of all the social graces that prevailed wThen society was more artificial. |