What effect have our Manners upon our usefulness as social beings? Conversation is in general the expression of our thoughts; much more seldom do we express our affections in words. Manners, on the contrary, are the direct expression of our affections. They are to Action what tone is to Conversation. Many persons may be found who make use of falsehood in their Conversation, but very few who can lie in the tones of their voice. So many persons can act hypocritically, but there are comparatively few whose Manners are habitually deceitful. Our words and actions are more easily under our control than our tones and manners; because the former are more the result of Thought, while the latter are almost entirely the result of Affection. Although few persons are distinctly aware of this difference, every one is powerfully affected by it. There is no physical quality more powerful to attract or to repel than the tones of the voice; and this power is all the stronger because both parties are usually unconscious of it; and so mutually act and are acted upon, simply and naturally, without effort or resistance. Thus conversation often owes its effect less to the words used than to the tones in which they are uttered. An unpalatable truth may come without exciting any feeling of irritation or opposition from one who speaks with a tone of voice expressive of the benevolent affections, and produce much good; while the very same words, uttered in a tone of asperity or bitterness, may exasperate the hearer, and be productive only of harm. It has already been said, that Manners bear the same relation to life that tone bears to conversation; and a good life loses great portion of the power it might exert over those who come within the influence of its sphere if it ultimate itself in ungracious or repulsive Manners. In the old English writers we often find persons characterized as Christian gentlemen or Christian ladies; and courtesy seems formerly to have been clearly understood to be a Christian virtue. Our conflict with, and our escape from, the aristocracy and privileges of rank of older nations has caused a reaction, not only against them, but also against the external politeness which was connected with them, and which was, and is too often, though certainly not always, false and hypocritical; and thus the growth of republican principles has had the effect to diminish the respect once entertained for good Manners, and the mass of our countrymen seem to look upon politeness as an antiquated remnant of a past age, which the present has outgrown as entirely as wigs and hoop-petticoats. It is, however, a curious feature in the change, that at no previous time have the titles of gentleman and lady been so universally and pertinaciously assumed as at the present. The rudest even are resentful at being called simply men or women, while they unconsciously show the weakness of their claim to a higher title by denying it to those who they assume are no better than themselves. The often-repeated anecdote of the Yankee stage-driver who asked of the Duke of Saxe Weimer, "Are you the man that wants an extra coach?" and on being answered in the affirmative, said, "Then I am the gentleman to drive you," is an illustration of what is going on continually around us. A large proportion of the members of one half of society stands in perpetual fear that those in the other half do not esteem them gentlemen and ladies; and yet it seldom seems to occur to them to substantiate their claim to the coveted title by that cultivation of good Manners, which can alone make it theirs of right.