The Sumter Banner

WHAT IS RESPECTABILITY!—To judge from the conduct and ideas of some persons among both sexes, respectability consists in driving fast horses, wearing rich laces, drinking champagne, or idling away life. To cut a figure in society, on the promenades, or at a watering place, appears to be the sole aim of many women, who surely were born for better things. To cultivate a moustache, sport a "two forty" trotter, or act as a model exhibitor of coats for some fashionable tailor, seems to be the conception of a dignified and respectable career formed by not a few of the men.

Now being respectable, in either man or woman is, to our notion, doing what is duty. The poorest person, even in what is considered popularly the humblest avocation, who pays his debts, obeys the law, and fulfils his other obligations to society and to his fellow-creatures, is a thousand times more respectable than the wealthy idler, the educated spendthrift, the callous miser, or the fashionable fool. So the modest female, whether seamstress, book-folder, press tender, storekeeper, or even house-servant, is, in the true sense of the word, infinitely more respectable than the extravagant wife who is ruining her husband, than the thoughtless votary of fashion, than the butterfly flirt. In a word, worth, not wealth, constitutes respectability.

Again. It is what it really is, not seems to be, respectable, that men of sense honor as such. The millionaire, who has obtained wealth by knavish practices, though he may creep through the meshes of the law, cannot escape the indignant verdict of an honest public; he may give grand dinners; drive a showy equipage, inhabit a palace, and even subscribe ostentatiously to benevolent purposes; yet, with all his out-gilding, people recognize the rottenness within, and from the very summit of his splendor, trace back the slimy track by which he rose. Such a man, let him do what he will, can never become respectable. A gulf as wide as that between Dives and Lazarus, separates him from the esteem of the good. So also the low-minded in all pursuits, those cruel and unfeeling towards their fellow-men, charlatans of every hue, hypocrites, demagogues, toadies, sharpers, and all others of a similar kind, cannot be respectable. Pinchbeck never yet passed long for gold. Or as the old proverb has it, "you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

As people are generally what habit renders them, it is for the young that these remarks are meant. The old cannot be cured. If they are shams now, shams they will remain; nothing, alas! can ever make them respectable. But the young have yet their habits to form. Let them take a high standard and become truly respectable.

"Insert the above from the Ledger in your Home Gazette," writes a valued and intelligent friend, "and request every paper in the United States to copy it." Our friend is an honest hater of all shams, assume what forms they will. Step by step, beginning at the first round in the ladder of fortune, he has ascended, through honorable industry and far-seeing enterprise, to wealth and social position. Quick and close in his observation, he separates the tinsel of character, from the substance at a glance, and gives no countenance to false assumption, let it come in what shape it will. In the above indignant protest against the false and vicious in society, he finds an exact expression of his own views; and having an ardent desire to see truth, and honor, and manliness of sentiment prevail, he asks for it a wide circulation by the press. Let it find a place in the columns of every newspaper in the land. It cannot fail to do a good work.—Arthur's Home Gazette.