CHAPTER XI

I

N ancient days in England, manners and cour

tesy, manly exercises, music and singing, knowl

edge of precedency and rank, heraldry and ability to carve, were much more important elements in education than Latin and philosophy. Children were sent to school, and placed in great men's houses. to learn courtesy and the formalities of high life.

Of all the accomplishments and studies of the Squire as recounted by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales, but one would now be taught in English college-music. Of all which were taught, courtesy was deemed the most important.

"Aristotle the Philosopher

this worthye sayinge writ That manners in a chylde

are more requisit

211

Than

Than playinge on instrumentes.

and other vayne pleasure; For virtuous manners

is a most precious treasure."

The importance given to outward forms of courtesy was a natural result of the domination for centuries of the laws of chivalry and rules of heraldry. But they were something more than outward show. Emerson says, "The forms of politeness universally express benevolence in a superlative degree." They certainly developed a regard for others which is evinced in its highest and best type in the character of what we term a gentleman and gentlewoman.

It is impossible to overestimate the value these laws of etiquette, these conventions of customs had at a time when neighborhood life was the whole outside world. Without them life would have proved unendurable. Even savage nations and tribes have felt in their isolated lives the need of some conventions, which with them assume the form of taboos, superstitious observances, and religious restrictions.

The laws of courtesy had much influence upon the development of the character of the colonial child. Domestic life lacked many of the comforts of to-day, but save in formality it did not differ in essential elements from our own home life. Every

thing in the community was made to tend to the preservation of relations of civility; this is plainly shown by the laws. Modern historians have been wont to wax jocose over the accounts of law-suits for slander, scandal-monging, name-calling, lying, etc., which may be found in colonial court records. Astonishingly petty seem many of the charges; even the calling of degrading nicknames, making of wry faces, jeering, and "finger-sticking" were fined and punished. But all this rigidity tended to a preservation of peace. The child who saw a man fined for lying, who beheld another set in the stocks for calling his neighbor ill names, or repeating scandalous assertions, grew up with a definite knowledge of the wickedness and danger of lying, and a wholesome regard for the proprieties of life. These sentiments may not have made him a better man, but they certainly made him a more endurable one.

The child of colonial days had but little connection with, little knowledge of, the world at large. He probably never had seen a map of the world, and if he had, he didn't understand it. Foreign news there was none, in our present sense. Of special English events he might occasionally learn, months after they had happened; but never any details nor any ordinary happenings. European information was of the scantiest and rarest kind; knowledge of

the

the result of a war or a vast disaster, like the Lisbon

earthquake, might come.

continents came nothing.

From the other great

Nor was his knowledge of his own land extended. There was nothing to interest him in the newsletter, even if he read it. He cared nothing for the other colonies, he knew little of other towns. If he lived in a seaport, he doubtless heard from the sailors on the wharves tales of adventure and romantic interest, and he heard from his elders details of trade, both of foreign and native ports.

The boy, therefore, grew up with his life revolving in a small circle; the girl's was still smaller. It had its advantages and its serious disadvantages. It developed an extraordinarily noble and pure type of neighborliness, but it did not foster a general broad love of humanity. Perhaps those conditions developed types which were fitted to receive and absorb gradually the more extended views of life which came through the wider extent of vision, which has been brought to us by newspapers, by steam, and by electricity. At any rate children. were serenely content, for they were unconscious.

Among early printed English books are many containing rules of courtesy and behavior. Many of these and manuscripts on kindred topics were carefully reprinted in 1868 by the Early English