The University Courier.
Vol. II. JANUARY 25, 1884. No. 10.
THE FORTNIGHT.
The world is advancing, we suppose civilization is on the increase as the twentieth century approaches, but sometimes it looks as if this advance had its corresponding retrograde. It is now the fashion to laugh at the poetic legend of the Golden Age, to sneer at the "good old times," to exalt and magnify the present and ourselves at the expense of our ancestors.
But when we think on the life of old times as reflected in its literature,we begin to believe that it had a nameless something, a freshness and joyous strength, perhaps, that is gone forever now; that the intensity of modern life,with its economies of time and space,has transformed this into a fierce mechanical energy. There are little outward signs of this change,and to the writer there is no surer mark of this retrogression than in the decay of courtesy to women.
We are become very democratic. Taking our cue from the cries of certain epicene beings who pass as women, we have begun to think seriously that there is an injustice here; that there should be perfect equality between men and women. Well and good, equality before the law by all means. But we do not stop at this point. It soon becomes
very easy for us to think that women are socially entitled to no more consideration and courtesy than are our fellow men. A lady told us that she lately rode thirty-five miles standing, and not one of the thirty or forty gentlemen in the car offered her a seat. It was formerly said that while no woman could walk alone in Paris without insult, in any American city she was perfectly safe. We fear, nay, we know that this is no longer true. But why multiply examples, we can see them about us every day.
So we say that with all our advance there is a corresponding decadence. We fear that beautiful courtesy, that true gentlemanliness that treated every woman with respect and deference simply because she was a woman, is fading away. This unfailing courtesy was one thing that distinguished the much ridiculed "Southern gentleman." We are glad to see by recent newspaper notices, that this spirit is not yet extinct in the South. Perhaps we are a little old-fashioned, but we think the total loss of this spirit of courtesy would be a great loss indeed. We are glad to know that the students in general regard this point, but we can see that its worth is diminishing in their eyes. We say it with regret, for there is no trait that so well dis-