The Man Who Is Standing

1895

"Have you ever noticed," asked an observing young woman recently, "how much politer men are standing up in street cars than men who are sitting down?"

I confessed that I had not.

"Well, you watch, and you will find out that I am right. It is comparatively seldom that I enter a crowded car and have a man rise to offer me his seat. Most men settle themselves comfortably, stick their noses more deeply into their newspapers and pretend they don't see me hanging fast to the strap. But if any one should then vacate a scat and a man was standing by it the chances are 50 to 1 that he would beckon me to come over and take it rather than sit down himself.

"Now, this isn't imagination. I've noticed it scores of times. I think men go on the principle that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law,' or rather, I might say, nine-tenths of politeness. What a man has he keeps, and he says, 'Hang politeness!' But if he is already standing it is just as easy for him to keep on standing, and in that case politeness has some show with him.

"I'm not talking nonsense now," she went on, with a merry laugh. "I'm talking fact, and if you don't believe it you can easily get proof for yourself." — New York Herald.

Courtesy to Women

1920

We used to forgive the vaudevillians who coined patter about the gentlemen who occupy the trolley seats while less aggressive female passengers cling to the straps, says the Boston Post. That was because the same vaudevillians also cracked those ancient Brooklyn slanders, which caused us to think that both were part and parcel of the "original" production.

It is getting past that point now. Boston is suffering from the same capitulation to selfishness, to smugness and to irreverence. A woman, in a recent letter to the Post, complaining of the jams in tunnel and subway stations, touched a matter that concerns not only politics and economics, but sociology. For the bitterest lines in her letter are those describing an attempt to force an entrance into an "L" train during the rush hour. "I made three attempts," she writes, "and was hurled back by a mob of males (you couldn't call them men), and finally the fourth train I got in, and was almost crushed doing so."

This indicates that, for what reason philosophers will, we have got farther away than is good for us from the simple, honest acceptance of courtesy and comity.

Listen, World! — "Chivalry and Equality"

1922

By Elsie Robinson

And right now we're going to talk about this business of taking off hats in elevators or giving up seats to ladies on the street cars. It is generally conceded that such acts indicate a chivalrous attitude toward the ladies and the Advocates of Chivalry bitterly deplore the hatted head and the seated seat. My opinion is that the Advocates of Chivalry had better take a cold shower and snap out of it.

I too believe in chivalrous attitudes and marks of honor. But the highest mark of honor, to my mind, which a man can give a woman is to treat her as an equal. None of this pedestal stuff. I would feel much more honored if a tired man would ask me to help him carry his bundles than if he should take off his hat in the elevator in which we are rising. There's infinitely more freedom, dignity and true comradeship for me in sharing 50-50 with a man on amusement expenses than in all the knightly jousts that ever kicked up the dust in honor of some fair lady's glove. I would much rather stand while a busy man tells me of his work though he does it with a cigar in his mouth and his coat off than have him honor me by giving me his chair while he inwardly curses at the interruption.

And why, in the name of common sense and fairness, should the average man give his seat to a woman in the street car — provided she be neither old nor infirm? Does a man not grow tired as well as a woman? He does. Doesn't he have back aches and headaches and heartaches and fallen arches just as frequently? He does. Can't the average Young Person to whom he is supposed to give that seat out dance him and outrun him? She can. Can't the average Dowager out eat him and out-window shop him? She can. Then that's that.

What I want are the tokens of Equality. I don't give two hoots for the politeness that's handed out to me because I'm a Woman. But beautiful to me as a sunrise and as full of golden promises are the indifferences and rudenesses which I encounter as a FELLOW WORKER.

Courtesy All Too Scarce

Ohio, 1914

Cleveland Man Set Fine Example of the Duty of a Gentleman to the Fair Sex

The youthful Walter Raleigh spreading his velvet cloak on muddy walk for his queen to pass, is a pleasant historical picture. But the heart of a courteous gentleman may beat under the blouse of a workingman as well as under the cloak of a courtier.

Last November the city of Cleveland was cut off from the outer world by the worst storm of wind and sleet and snow in its history. Traction lines and railways were tied up for several days. Four days after the storm, a woman reached Cleveland to visit her sister. She knew that the cars were not yet running on the line she wished to take, and so she took a car on another line that would take her to the city limits, where she hoped to connect with a car that would take her where she wanted to go.

Forty minutes later she stepped from the car at the edge of the city. Between her and the curbstone a wide stream of water six or eight inches deep was running. As she looked helplessly about, a workingman whose hair was touched with gray left a group on the sidewalk, waded out to her and said: "Madam, you don't know me, and I don't know you, but if you'll let me, I'll be glad to help you to the sidewalk." She thanked him, and he took her suitcase to the curb, splashed back, and taking her up in his arms, waded with her to the walk. There he put her down dry-shod, carried her suitcase into a near-by store, and told her he would tell her when her car came; for he was also waiting for it.

Two hours later he waded with the suit case to the long-delayed car, returned, and splashed once more through the stream of melting snow as he carried her to the step. Then he said "I hope you'll be all right," and took a place at the opposite end of the car. — Youth's Companion.


Daily Thought

As the flowers carry dewdrops trembling on the edge of the petals, and ready to fall at the first waft of wind or brush of wing of bird, so the heart should carry its beaded words of thanksgiving, and at the first breath of heavenly favor let down the shower perfumed with the heart's gratitude. — Beecher.