“Be courteous.”
If you will look at the word Courtesy, you will see that it carries its meaning on its face. It is the grace of Courts. And as we are all sons and daughters of a great King, it is something that all of us have to learn.
The Bible is the book of the great King, our Father, and, as we might have expected, there are many things in it about Courtesy. It tells a story of Moses, which proves that it was not for nothing that he was brought up at a Court. When he was a young man, he was travelling on foot through the land of Midian, and, becoming tired and footsore, he sat down beside a well to rest. While he was there seven girls, who were sisters, came with pitchers, and began to draw water from the well to fill the troughs for their father’s flocks. With ready courtesy, Moses jumped up from his seat, and offered his help. Tired though he was, it was too good a chance to miss. The girls at once accepted his services, and the work was going merrily forward, when up came some discourteous shepherds, who said they were in a hurry, and must have their turn before a lot of girls. Moses hardly thought they were serious, but when they began to catch hold of the draw-rope, and to elbow the girls out of the way, he soon let them know he would stand no nonsense. Seizing the foremost man by the girdle, he hurled him off the well with a suddenness that surprised him. And then he said with a determination that cowed them all, “Stand aside there; the girls are in possession of the well, and I’ll see to it that they have their turn first.”
To give way to a woman with courtesy is always the mark of a gentleman, and to accept the kindness with a courteous word of thanks, the mark of a lady.
I remember going into the beautiful gardens of New College, Oxford, and seeing the words over one of the gates, “Manners makyth man.” And truly, good manners is not only the making of a man, but of a great deal of the pleasure of life. In some letters written by an Englishman, living in Japan, there is a story of good manners which some of you may think rather too good to be true. But I believe it really happened, all the same. A Japanese admiral was dining out at the house of a lady, when he observed a caterpillar crawling among some salad which had been served to him. The hostess happened to be looking down the table at that moment, and she saw the creature too. She was horrified to think that such a thing should happen to one of her guests. But the admiral deliberately took the caterpillar with some salad, and swallowed it. Nothing was said, and no one noticed the incident, but afterwards, when the hostess was apologizing to her guest, he said, “Do you think I was going to spoil your evening for the sake of a miserable caterpillar?”
I expect that you are not always so good but that you have sometimes been told to behave properly. It may have been when you were getting excited, and talking loud, or jumping on the chairs and running the risk of knocking something down, and your father came in and caught you and called out to you sharply, “Now then, Jack, behave yourself” He meant that your energies were running loose like an unruly dog, and that you were to hold yourself in, as it were, with a collar and chain. And that is the general notion of good behavior. But Courtesy is something better than that. You can only learn it by having as great an opinion of others as you have of yourself.
And then, whatever you have to say to them, you say it as if you were a duke addressing a King. And whatever you do for them, you do it as if you had been waiting all your lifetime for that golden moment, and as if you never expected a greater honor. How very few dull times we should have, and what a pleasure it would be to meet one another on the street, if we were all studying to be first in this grace of Courts.
Lord Rosebery once entertained to dinner a number of people, many of whom were quite unaccustomed to the ways of big houses and rich folk. Among them was a plainspoken, honest farmer, who had never seen an ice pudding before, and did not know what it was. When he saw the pretty-looking stuff on his plate, he took a big mouthful of it, and suffered agonies of chill. With a kindly thought for others, the sufferer went to the host, and said that he thought some mistake had been made. Lord Rosebery listened very earnestly, tasted the stuff, and, thanking the farmer, said he would speak to the cook. His lordship came back with a relieved face, as if he had really found out something very important, and said to the farmer, “It’s all right; they tell me it’s a new sort of pudding that’s frozen on purpose.” That was true courtesy: it would have been very easy for Lord Rosebery to make fun of his guest’s ignorance, but, instead of that, he hid his own knowledge, and put himself on a level with the ignorant farmer in order to save his feelings.
I am not so foolish as to suppose that all lords and ladies of high rank understand what it is to be courteous. In this matter we all have to go to school at the court of King Jesus, and it is only as we have a loving and humble heart, which is able to render all honor to others, that we can find the courtly word, and practice the courtly action.
Jesus Christ was the first perfect gentleman that ever walked the earth. He never talked with a poor woman or even with a bad woman, without making her feel that He thought she was a King’s daughter. Men whom others treated as outcasts and of no account, He visited in, their homes, and sat down to dinner with them as if they were King’s sons.
One day, He had healed a great many sick people, and it had taken His strength, and had been talking a long time to great crowds, and felt very tired; as it came towards evening, He put off in a boat with His disciples to get to the other side of the lake into a quiet place where He might rest. When He got there, He found that the crowd had run round the end of the lake, and were on the shore waiting for Him to talk to them again. What would you and I have done in such a case? Most probably we should have been vexed with the people for their want of thought, and we should have said, “Now, you good people, this is carrying it rather too far, I’ve talked and done enough for you today, I should be glad if you would run away home, and let me have a little rest.” The disciples suggested that their Master should say something like that, and send them away. But the Lord Jesus said, “They must be very tired and hungry, make them sit down on the grass; we must not think of sending them home before they have had something to eat, or they would faint by the way.”