Thus good taste, associated with kindliness, sympathy, and intelligence, may elevate and adorn even the lowliest lot.
The first and best school of manners, as of character, is always the Home, where woman is the teacher.

The manners of society at large are but the reflex of the manners of our collective homes, neither better nor worse.

Yet, with all the disadvantages of ungenial homes, men may practise self-culture of manner as of intellect, and learn by good examples to cultivate a graceful and agreeable behaviour towards others.
Most men are like so many gems in the rough, which need polishing by contact with other and better natures, to bring out their full beauty and lustre.

Some have but one side polished, sufficient only to show the delicate graining of the interior; but to bring out the full qualities of the gem needs the discipline of experience, and contact with the best examples of character in the intercourse of daily life.
A good deal of the success of manner consists in tact, and it is because women, on the whole, have greater tact than men, that they prove its most influential teachers.

They have more self-restraint than men, and are naturally more gracious and polite.