It sometimes happens that a group of young people, carried away by the contagion of high spirits, will behave like school-children. The manners of our day are much less formal than those of an earlier generation, but they impose of necessity a certain degree of restraint. Our girls and boys must remember that it is always easy to relapse into the barbarism from which mankind has emerged by a slow and tedious process. As the cultivated apple-tree tends always to return to the wild crab, so does our civilization, if it is not vigilantly guarded, incline to revert to the savagery of the primitive man.
Good Form for All Occasions, 1914.
Tis so true…
“relapse into the barbarism,” I am afraid this has already occured with those on my Daughter’s playground… the parents, that is!
Well stated.
Lovely!
I see it in the children’s coaches, and yes even the parents of little ones playing a game which should be FUN!!!
My sons often take great delight in teasing me, when my southern formality rears- and I begin to take on an air of “Scarlet O’hara.” I say “gone with the wind” – manners!