It may be laid down, however difficult, with our present
social habits, it may be to keep the rule, that sarcasm should never be
employed, except deliberately, and as a punishment, and that for
innuendo, if justifiable by facts, men should always have the courage to
substitute direct assertion.
Of the minor social vices, one of the commonest is a disregard, in
conversation, of other persons' feelings. Men who lay claim to the
character of gentlemen are specially bound to shew their tact and
delicacy of feeling by avoiding all subjects which have a disagreeable
personal reference or are likely to revive unpleasant associations in
the minds of any of those who are present. And yet these are qualities
which are often strangely conspicuous by their absence even in educated
and cultivated society. One of the most repulsive and least excusable
forms which this indifference to other persons' feelings takes is in
impertinent curiosity. There are some people who, for the sake of
satisfying a purposeless curiosity, will ask questions which they know
it cannot be agreeable to answer. In all cases, curiosity of this kind
is evidence of want of real refinement, and is a breach of the finer
rules of social morality; but, when the questions asked are intended to
extract, directly or indirectly, unwilling information on a man's
private life or circumstances, they assume the character of sheer
vulgarity.
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