They simply
cannot do it. Carlisle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer
gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was because he loved
everything--the mouse, and the daisy, and all the things, great and
small, that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle
with any society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage
on the banks of the Ayr.
You know the meaning of the word "gentleman." It means a gentle man--a
man who does things gently, with love. That is the whole art and
mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things do an
ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the
inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature, cannot do anything else. "Love
doth not behave itself unseemly."
_Unselfishness._ "Love seeketh not her own." Observe: Seeketh not even
that which is her own. In Britain the Englishman is devoted, and
rightly, to his rights. But there come times when a man may exercise
even
THE HIGHER RIGHT
of giving up his rights.
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