260

STAND UP, YE SOCIAL LIONS

Mrs. Peattie Arragins the Sickly Forms That Sin From Nature's Rule.

A Few Clear Cut Expressions Regarding Omaha's Society in Common with That of Everywhere.

The San Francisco Argonaut, the other day, printed a London letter on the subject of the manners of the society young man of London. It was a severe but probably a just arrangement. It says:

The germ of unhappiness to marriage. I believe to consist entirely in their utter laxity not to any the brutality, of modern manners. In fact, they shine by their abusers. Beyond the mechanical fact that a man lifts his hat to a lady in the street, or gets up when she leaves the room, what distressing acts of [roiteness?] is the guilty of the smart nineteenth century young man thinks he confers a favor on his hostess if be accepts her levitation to dinner, generally keeping her waiting for the answer as long as the possibly can, in case something more agreeable might happen to turn up. If he goes to a dance he takes very good care not to arrive till supper time, completely ignoring the smiling faced, nicely gowned young ladies who are anxiously awaiting his advent. He wisely avoids asking the opinion daughters of the house to dance as lie abhors absence of beauty—looks upon it, indeed, as a personal insult—selects a few of the prettiest young married women for the recipients of his favors, lounges away an hour in a sitting room, fakes a couple of turns in a waltz, settles himself down to an excellent supper (for the smart young man never visits a house where he is not quite sure of the excellence of the cook and the wine) and walks home jauntily in the morning air, with overcome thrown around and hat poised at the back of the hand, in the serene confidence that he has passed a well spent evening.

Should some misguided person venture to introduce a young lady to him, however nice or attractive, he promptly after the formality of presentation, turns on his heels and walks away.

"Such check!" he matters under his breath, "to introduce a girl to me when I know such heaps of them already."

As to card-leaving after dinner or parties he considers that an exploded relic of the past. His presence at the entertainment was honor enough, and any further acknowledgment he leaves to the struggling young man who is not yet smart enough to be uncivil. A friend of mine, a mother and hostess herself half-fainting with heat and fatigue once, in her early days of chaperonage, whispered to her daughter, "Tell your partner I should like to go down to tea." To which the well trained damsel promptly responded "Mamma, if I wore to tell him that, he would never ask me to dance again!" So the patient mother had to wait until some grizzly bearded friend of youth, in attendance on his own daughter, took pity on her loneliness and offered her his arm.

Many and bitter are the experiences of chaperons, they must smile and smile ever on the fastidious young men, and tempt them with good dinners and invitations to the theater and opera, content to be relegated into solitude and silence themselves With the matronly robe, an elderly woman puts on utter imperviousness to all the natural sensitiveness of a woman If she is wise and effaces herself utterly and is content with the distant bow from the men she has so generously entertained, she may have the satisfaction of knowing that her pitty daughters dance and enjoy their balls.

It will not do for Americans to set this down as an exclusive definition of London society, and to thank heaven that we are not as they are for, by the most incontestibly correct evidence, our own society is no better. Mr. Ward MC Allister, writing is the Sunday World of New York, says that society is the gay, fashionable element from the upper 10,000. He assures us that it must have larger proportions than mere wealth confers. It must have strife, and contention, and jealousy, and envy to be brilliant. It's motto is, "I go you one better." That is, if a society man gives dinner, all other society men must give a better one if a society woman appears splendidly dressed, all other society women must possess a proper envy and appear yet more richly attired. This is brilliancy—so Mr. Mc Allister says—and society. it is safe to believe that he has not been trying to be satirical. He has, indeed, been historically accurate. Society, which owes its cohesiveness to a love of fashion, is as it has been described above.

When one touches upon Omaha society, one touches a tender point. There are so many persons in it who are there almost by force of circumstances, and whose hearts are warm, and their lives pure and useful in spite of their connection with a body that aspires to be purely fashionable, that one hesitates to relapse into unkind generalizations. Omaha society, for the very reason that it is yet new, flexible, and unformed, it not contained in the version vices of its kind. But it already possesses much of which there is cause to be ashamed.

The manners of many of the young men here are no better than those described in the London letter quoted above, it is a well known fact, and one hears it whispered everywhere, that hardly echo of the parties and balls of the winter has been a success, owing the facing the young men would not dance, nor talk, nor pay attention to the young ladies, nor do anything that a gentleman is expected to do on a gala occasion. They have stood around the doors in stupid groups, looking cynical—or trying to do so— and discussing without much interest, the relative charms of the young ladies who, arrayed for their approval, and launched out into society for their allurement, have endeavored in vain to make themselves attractive.

Perhaps it is not the young men, so much as society, that is wrong. There has always been, and always will be, something almost shameless in the cold-blooded putting up of a young girl into the matrimonial market. The coarseness of it is disguised to be sure. It is an immemorial custom, to begin with, and most folks are apt to think a thing venerable because it is old. It is surrounded by a glamour of elegance, happiness and youth. But if the facts are plainly presented they show that the entrance of a young girl into society is the formal admission of her readiness for marriage. The young men certainly think of it so. They have the arrogance of sultans, the cynicism of [roues?]--although they are not such--they know they are expected to compare, examine and select. They know that the money so prodigally spent, the dinners, balls, costumes, carriages, flowers, wines, ceremonies and all the nameless elaborations of society are for their benefit in a way. And it is little wonder that they do not show proper respect for the mothers who thus flaunt their daughters, or the daughters who prink and pose for their benefit.

It would seem as if any woman who possessed so beautiful and dear a charge as a daughter--a girl woman--would spend her best efforts in trying to protect her daughter from the inquisitorial glances, the degrading frivolity, the envy, malice, treachery and contentions of society. One would think that pride would insist that the daughter should be sought and not that she should be set up in the public place [?] view. One would imagine that the more a mother had traveled, studied and possessed, the more refined would be her heart, and the more desirous she would be of teaching her daughter to put humanity before society, the delights of learning before those of flirting, and the preservation of health before gayety. Think what a pitiful exchange all this is for happy home life. I do not want to be sour and absurd. I would not think of denying any wholesome pleasure to the young. I think young men and women should be much together. But when society interferes with them, when it introduces the [?] in the peculiar way that it does, when it throws young men and women together under such conditions that both are forced to think of the materialistic side of a matrimonial union, then it seems to me that the sweetness of youth, and love, and life is deliberately taken from them.

No one supposes for a moment that these young men and women want to be competitors in expenditures, or that they desire to be meanly critical, or to give up the last things of life for the tiresome proud of noisy gatherings where people clamor like peacocks and eat half melted ices and oily salads. Not at all. They are forced into it all, and only now and then is there one who, having the money and position which enables him or her to enter society, has the [?] and popularity to renounce it all, and to live the unselfish instead f the selfish life.

The idea that society polishes the manners of the young is only true to a very limited extent. I have seen it replace modesty with bravado, truth the deception, kindness with pertness, gentleness with bluster, and politeness with arrogance. Society, so far as I know, does not teach veneration for the aged, love of parents, love of learning, love of humanity, sympathy for the unfortunate, beauty of thought, or the brotherhood of man. I have seen all the graces of manner possessed by the home brought-up boy to an equal extent with the society-developed manners of the home have a much more formative effect than society upon the manners of the young, so far as the improving of them goes.

A large part of Omaha naturally felt a good deal of wonder the other day that the more fashionable part of our community should have turned out in its very best others, spent an enormous amount of money and exerted itself in every way, to listen to the bad playing and worse singing of the Yale Glee club. It seems to me that there can be little doubt that the reason was the opportunity offered to the young ladies, for once, to have partners in the dance, and admirers who might by some remote chance, become suitors. Certainly, the enthusiasm about those well dressed but very inartistic young men needs an explanation. When Omaha has had the opportunity of listening to one music it has frequently refused to take advantage of it. By the expenditure of a small amount of money it might now keep in the city a band of excellent musicians, who would like to settle here if there is any chance of their earning a living. But so far as known no one has bidden a welcome to these talented music students. These men who have studied under the best masters of Germany remain here without a cordial hand being extended to them, although they have it in their power to make our evenings beautiful with music such as we have never had here. We neglect them and spend thousands on these somewhat impertinent young Yale men who travel around the country under the false pretense of being musicians. At a tie when our honest and industrious working men, are, with their families, undergoing the cruelest privations, we let all of that money go out of the town. I must say that it looks bad for society--it shows a low average of intellect in that body, and a disregard of the sacred responsibilities of citizenship.

I do not feel inclined to mitigate these remarks by looking for the excuses which might be discovered for such foolishness. It seems to me that these mitigating facts are too feeble to be mentioned.

Society must, if it would show a reason for existence, have some dignity about it, and some brains. It must have other things in common besides champagne and jack pots. It must not ask guests to its houses to fleece them out of their money at the beginning poker table. It can never lay claim to hospitality while it does this . It must not permit its young girls to drink so much champagne that they have to be cared for by their friends. There is no use in pretending that society has elegant ladies while some of them disgrace is like that. It must not have in it persons who owe their grocers while they buy diamonds, and who freeze the grocer's collectors with frigid stares and rebuking voice till the poor man cringingly apologizes for existence.

All this sort of thing may do over in Europe, but it isn't what we want here, in the country we all love, and would beautify with fine acts. We do not complain because society is elegant, or rich, or refined, or well dressed, or curtly. So far as it is these things it is to be commended. Would we all possessed these good things. But in so far as it is coarse, stupid, dishonest, of low taste, mercenary, selfish and ill-bed, we do condemn it. We condemn the young men here who do not even thank their hostesses for the money and effort they expend in entertaining them, and warn them that the edict has already gone forth from some of the really best houses in town that they will be punished for their boorish manners by not being entertained there any more. We condemn the young girls for their ridiculous affections, their utterly inane exchange of flatteries, and their belittling conversation. We condemn the men for their pretension--which they cannot afford, and for which the tradesmen suffer. We condemn the women for the rivalries to which they incite their daughters, and the coarse ideas they implant in those young minds. We condemn them for not impressing upon their daughters any of the responsibilities and duties of life--for not looking after their hearts and minds as well as their bodies.

Society--the more leisurely part of us--could help us all if it would. WHy is it false to its trust? Why does it set us poor examples? Why are its manners bad and its tongue sharp, and its acts selfish?
ELIA W. Peattie.

STAND UP, YE SOCIAL LIONS

Mrs. Peattie Arragins the Sickly Forms That Sin From Nature's Rule.

A Few Clear Cut Expressions Regarding Omaha's Society in Common with That of Everywhere.

The San Francisco Argonaut, the other day, printed a London letter on the subject of the manners of the society young man of London. It was a severe but probably a just arrangement. It says:

The germ of unhappiness to marriage. I believe to consist entirely in their utter laxity not to any the brutality, of modern manners. In fact, they shine by their abusers. Beyond the mechanical fact that a man lifts his hat to a lady in the street, or gets up when she leaves the room, what distressing acts of [roiteness?] is the guilty of the smart nineteenth century young man thinks he confers a favor on his hostess if be accepts her levitation to dinner, generally keeping her waiting for the answer as long as the possibly can, in case something more agreeable might happen to turn up. If he goes to a dance he takes very good care not to arrive till supper time, completely ignoring the smiling faced, nicely gowned young ladies who are anxiously awaiting his advent. He wisely avoids asking the opinion daughters of the house to dance as lie abhors absence of beauty—looks upon it, indeed, as a personal insult—selects a few of the prettiest young married women for the recipients of his favors, lounges away an hour in a sitting room, fakes a couple of turns in a waltz, settles himself down to an excellent supper (for the smart young man never visits a house where he is not quite sure of the excellence of the cook and the wine) and walks home jauntily in the morning air, with overcome thrown around and hat poised at the back of the hand, in the serene confidence that he has passed a well spent evening.

Should some misguided person venture to introduce a young lady to him, however nice or attractive, he promptly after the formality of presentation, turns on his heels and walks away.

"Such check!" he matters under his breath, "to introduce a girl to me when I know such heaps of them already."

As to card-leaving after dinner or parties he considers that an exploded relic of the past. His presence at the entertainment was honor enough, and any further acknowledgment he leaves to the struggling young man who is not yet smart enough to be uncivil. A friend of mine, a mother and hostess herself half-fainting with heat and fatigue once, in her early days of chaperonage, whispered to her daughter, "Tell your partner I should like to go down to tea." To which the well trained damsel promptly responded "Mamma, if I wore to tell him that, he would never ask me to dance again!" So the patient mother had to wait until some grizzly bearded friend of youth, in attendance on his own daughter, took pity on her loneliness and offered her his arm.

Many and bitter are the experiences of chaperons, they must smile and smile ever on the fastidious young men, and tempt them with good dinners and invitations to the theater and opera, content to be relegated into solitude and silence themselves With the matronly robe, an elderly woman puts on utter imperviousness to all the natural sensitiveness of a woman If she is wise and effaces herself utterly and is content with the distant bow from the men she has so generously entertained, she may have the satisfaction of knowing that her pitty daughters dance and enjoy their balls.

It will not do for Americans to set this down as an exclusive definition of London society, and to thank heaven that we are not as they are for, by the most incontestibly correct evidence, our own society is no better. Mr. Ward MC Allister, writing is the Sunday World of New York, says that society is the gay, fashionable element from the upper 10,000. He assures us that it must have larger proportions than mere wealth confers. It must have strife, and contention, and jealousy, and envy to be brilliant. It's motto is, "I go you one better." That is, if a society man gives dinner, all other society men must give a better one if a society woman appears splendidly dressed, all other society women must possess a proper envy and appear yet more richly attired. This is brilliancy—so Mr. Mc Allister says—and society. it is safe to believe that he has not been trying to be satirical. He has, indeed, been historically accurate. Society, which owes its cohesiveness to a love of fashion, is as it has been described above.

When one touches upon Omaha society, one touches a tender point. There are so many persons in it who are there almost by force of circumstances, and whose hearts are warm, and their lives pure and useful in spite of their connection with a body that aspires to be purely fashionable, that one hesitates to relapse into unkind generalizations. Omaha society, for the very reason that it is yet new, flexible, and unformed, it not contained in the version vices of its kind. But it already possesses much of which there is cause to be ashamed.

The manners of many of the young men here are no better than those described in the London letter quoted above, it is a well known fact, and one hears it whispered everywhere, that hardly echo of the parties and balls of the winter has been a success, owing the facing the young men would not dance, nor talk, nor pay attention to the young ladies, nor do anything that a gentleman is expected to do on a gala occasion. They have stood around the doors in stupid groups, looking cynical—or trying to do so— and discussing without much interest, the relative charms of the young ladies who, arrayed for their approval, and launched out into society for their allurement, have endeavored in vain to make themselves attractive.

Perhaps it is not the young men, so much as society, that is wrong. There has always been, and always will be, something almost shameless in the cold-blooded putting up of a young girl into the matrimonial market. The coarseness of it is disguised to be sure. It is an immemorial custom, to begin with, and most folks are apt to think a thing venerable because it is old. It is surrounded by a glamour of elegance, happiness and youth. But if the facts are plainly presented they show that the entrance of a young girl into society is the formal admission of her readiness for marriage. The young men certainly think of it so. They have the arrogance of sultans, the cynicism of [roues?]--although they are not such--they know they are expected to compare, examine and select. They know that the money so prodigally spent, the dinners, balls, costumes, carriages, flowers, wines, ceremonies and all the nameless elaborations of society are for their benefit in a way. And it is little wonder that they do not show proper respect for the mothers who thus flaunt their daughters, or the daughters who prink and pose for their benefit.

It would seem as if any woman who possessed so beautiful and dear a charge as a daughter--a girl woman--would spend her best efforts in trying to protect her daughter from the inquisitorial glances, the degrading frivolity, the envy, malice, treachery and contentions of society. One would think that pride would insist that the daughter should be sought and not that she should be set up in the public place [?] view. One would imagine that the more a mother had traveled, studied and possessed, the more refined would be her heart, and the more desirous she would be of teaching her daughter to put humanity before society, the delights of learning before those of flirting, and the preservation of health before gayety. Think what a pitiful exchange all this is for happy home life. I do not want to be sour and absurd. I would not think of denying any wholesome pleasure to the young. I think young men and women should be much together. But when society interferes with them, when it introduces the [?] in the peculiar way that it does, when it throws young men and women together under such conditions that both are forced to think of the materialistic side of a matrimonial union, then it seems to me that the sweetness of youth, and love, and life is deliberately taken from them.

No one supposes for a moment that these young men and women want to be competitors in expenditures, or that they desire to be meanly critical, or to give up the last things of life for the tiresome proud of noisy gatherings where people clamor like peacocks and eat half melted ices and oily salads. Not at all. They are forced into it all, and only now and then is there one who, having the money and position which enables him or her to enter society, has the [?] and popularity to renounce it all, and to live the unselfish instead f the selfish life.

The idea that society polishes the manners of the young is only true to a very limited extent. I have seen it replace modesty with bravado, truth the deception, kindness with pertness, gentleness with bluster, and politeness with arrogance. Society, so far as I know, does not teach veneration for the aged, love of parents, love of learning, love of humanity, sympathy for the unfortunate, beauty of thought, or the brotherhood of man. I have seen all the graces of manner possessed by the home brought-up boy to an equal extent with the society-developed manners of the home have a much more formative effect than society upon the manners of the young, so far as the improving of them goes.

A large part of Omaha naturally felt a good deal of wonder the other day that the more fashionable part of our community should have turned out in its very best others, spent an enormous amount of money and exerted itself in every way, to listen to the bad playing and worse singing of the Yale Glee club. It seems to me that there can be little doubt that the reason was the opportunity offered to the young ladies, for once, to have partners in the dance, and admirers who might by some remote chance, become suitors. Certainly, the enthusiasm about those well dressed but very inartistic young men needs an explanation. When Omaha has had the opportunity of listening to one music it has frequently refused to take advantage of it. By the expenditure of a small amount of money it might now keep in the city a band of excellent musicians, who would like to settle here if there is any chance of their earning a living. But so far as known no one has bidden a welcome to these talented music students. These men who have studied under the best masters of Germany remain here without a cordial hand being extended to them, although they have it in their power to make our evenings beautiful with music such as we have never had here. We neglect them and spend thousands on these somewhat impertinent young Yale men who travel around the country under the false pretense of being musicians. At a tie when our honest and industrious working men, are, with their families, undergoing the cruelest privations, we let all of that money go out of the town. I must say that it looks bad for society--it shows a low average of intellect in that body, and a disregard of the sacred responsibilities of citizenship.

I do not feel inclined to mitigate these remarks by looking for the excuses which might be discovered for such foolishness. It seems to me that these mitigating facts are too feeble to be mentioned.

Society must, if it would show a reason for existence, have some dignity about it, and some brains. It must have other things in common besides champagne and jack pots. It must not ask guests to its houses to fleece them out of their money at the beginning poker table. It can never lay claim to hospitality while it does this . It must not permit its young girls to drink so much champagne that they have to be cared for by their friends. There is no use in pretending that society has elegant ladies while some of them disgrace is like that. It must not have in it persons who owe their grocers while they buy diamonds, and who freeze the grocer's collectors with frigid stares and rebuking voice till the poor man cringingly apologizes for existence.

All this sort of thing may do over in Europe