Neighborliness does not, of necessity, imply familiarity of manner and speech that may become offensive, or a continuous performance of visits, calls and “droppings-in” that must inevitably become a bore, however congenial may be the association. Those friendships last longest where certain decorous forms are always observed, no matter how close the mutual affection may be. Mrs. Stowe, in one of her New England stories, describes the intercourse between two families as “a sort of undress intimacy.” Reading further, we find that this dishabille companionship involves visits by way of the back door and at all sorts of unconventional hours.
Such abandonment of the reserves that etiquette enjoins on every household is a dangerous experiment. The back porch is for family use. Your next-door neighbor may not meddle therewith. Personally, I do not want my own son, or my married daughters, to enter my house through the kitchen. If you, dear reader, would retain your footing in the house of the friend best-loved by you, come in by the front door, and never without announcing your presence as any other visitor would. Steady persistence in this rule will avoid the chances of divers unpleasant possibilities. Your hostess—or her husband—or grown son—may be as much in dishabille as the intimacy which, in your opinion, warrants you in running in and up, without knock or ring. You may happen on a love-scene, or a family quarrel, or a girl may be in the hands of the treasure of a hair-dresser who shampoos her twice a month with pure water that looks like peroxide of hydrogen, and “restores” the subject’s dark brown tresses to the guileless flaxen of her forgotten babyhood; or your clattering heels upon the stairway may break the touchy old grandmother’s best afternoon nap.
There is but one place on earth where it is safe to make yourself “perfectly at home,” and that is your own house—or apartment—or chamber.
THEORETICALLY, the church is a pure democracy, a mighty family. There, if anywhere, the rich and the poor meet together on terms of absolute equality.
In that least poetical of pious jingles,—
“The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above.”
These and other Pietistic platitudes, whether tame or tuneful, are technical, and so nearly meaningless as not to provoke debate. Every reasonable man and woman knows and does not affect to conceal his or her consciousness of the truth that social distinctions are not effaced by the enrolment of rich and poor, educated and illiterate, refined and boorish, in impartial order upon the “church books.” True religion _does_ refine feeling and engender benevolence and charitable judgment of our fellows. In doing this, it creates a common ground of sympathy, as of belief. It elevates the moral and spiritual nature. Of itself, it does not enrich the intellect, or polish manners. One may have a clean heart and dirty flesh-and-blood hands; may be a sincere and earnest Christian, yet double his negatives, shove his food into his mouth with his knife, prefer the corner of a table-cloth to a napkin, and be an alien in the matter of finger-bowls.