Graces be cultivated for their own sweet sake.

The difficulty is how to begin. The mothers of the rising generation
were brought up in the unregenerate way. Their scraps of oral tradition
will need to be supplemented by much research. I advise them to start
their quest by reading The Young Lady's Book. Exactly the right spirit
is therein enshrined, though of the substance there is much that could
not be well applied to our own day. That chapter on 'The Escrutoire,'
for example, belongs to a day that cannot be recalled. We can get rid
of bad manners, but we cannot substitute the Sedan-chair for the
motor-car; and the penny post, with telephones and telegrams, has, in
our own beautiful phrase, 'come to stay,' and has elbowed the art of
letter-writing irrevocably from among us. But notes are still written;
and there is no reason why they should not be written well. Has the
mantle of those anonymous gentlewomen who wrote The Young Lady's Book
fallen on no one? Will no one revise that 'Manual of Elegant
Recreations, Exercises, and Pursuits,' adapting it to present needs?...
A few hints as to Deportment in the Motor-Car; the exact Angle whereat
to hold the Receiver of a Telephone, and the exact Key wherein to pitch
the Voice; the Conduct of a Cigarette... I see a wide and golden vista.

WHISTLER'S WRITING

No book-lover, I. Give me an uninterrupted view of my fellow-creatures.
The most tedious of them pleases me better than the best book. You see,
I admit that some of them are tedious. I do not deem alien from myself
nothing that is human: I discriminate my fellow-creatures according to
their contents. And in that respect I am not more different in my way
from the true humanitarian than from the true bibliophile in his. To
him the content of a book matters not at all. He loves books because
they are books, and discriminates them only by the irrelevant standard
of their rarity. A rare book is not less dear to him because it is
unreadable, even as to the snob a dull duke is as good as a bright one.
Indeed, why should he bother about readableness? He doesn't want to
read. 'Uncut edges' for him, when he can get them; and, even when he
can't, the notion of reading a rare edition would seem to him quite
uncouth and preposterous The aforesaid snob would as soon question His
Grace about the state of His Grace's soul. I, on the other hand,
whenever human company is denied me, have often a desire to read.
Reading, I prefer cut