The Gentlemen's Book of Etiquette, and Manual of Politeness

of our education so important and so neglected in our schools and colleges, that it cannot be too highly impressed on the young man who proposes to enter society. I mean that which we learn first of all things, yet often have not learned fully when death eases us of the necessity--the art of speaking our own language. What can Greek and Latin, French and German be for us in our every-day life, if we have not acquired this? We are often encouraged to raise a laugh at Doctor Syntax and the tyranny of Grammar, but we may be certain that more misunderstandings, and, therefore, more difficulties arise between men in the commonest intercourse from a want of grammatical precision than from any other cause. It was once the fashion to neglect grammar, as it now is with certain people to write illegibly, and, in the days of Goethe, a man thought himself a genius if he could spell badly.

"Precision and accuracy must begin in the very outset; and if we neglect them in grammar, we shall scarcely acquire them in ex