trouble and self-sacrifice that she prepared the meal. Two of the boys did not reply at all to her note, the other four accepted her invitation, but only two showed up at the dinner. Not one has called on her or in any way acknowledged her courtesy since, and yet they had all come from excellent high schools and some of them had been brought up in families who admitted they were above the middle classes. It was annoying to the hostess, but, of course, the person who really suffered the most was the boy himself whose training had been so inadequate.
Every autumn I watch the long line of freshmen just out of the academy or the high school as they go through the preliminary steps to enter college. The registrar's office is just across the hall from my own. Half the boys do business with their hats on, though most of the registrar's clerks are young women, and other attractive young women are standing about them—standing sometimes even when the young men are sitting. Taking the hat off is, of course, only a convention meaningless in itself, but it has come to suggest respect for women, respect for authority, respect for the house that shelters us, and no gentleman can afford to ignore it. I see these same boys later smoking at parties or as they walk down the street with young women, unconscious of the fact that by so doing they are proclaiming their lack of good breeding.
There are a thousand courtesies and conventions to be
