1.2 On Saying “Please”
-A. G. Gardiner
About the Author:
G. Gardiner was an English journalist, editor, and novelist Alfred who was born on 2 June 1865 and passed away on 3 March 1946. His pen name is “Alpha of the Plough”.
In 1887, he began working for the Northern. His ability to teach life’s basic lessons made him unique and popular. His most well-known works are Pillars of Society, Pebbles on the Shore, Many Furrows, and Leaves in the Wind etc.
About the story:
In, On Saying ‘‘Please’’, he points out the value of good manners in social life and emphasizes the importance of courtesy and politeness in daily behavior. He shows how polite speech and manner sweeten the atmosphere around and how discourtesy and ill manners spoil or pollute it.
Summary
At the beginning of the story writer has given one of the incidents through which he tries to highlight the need and importance of good manners and politeness in our daily life.
The author describes in the first paragraph, a lift man who was working in a city office threw a passenger out of a lift. The question was of “Please” word. The passenger was very arrogant. He ordered lift man to take him to the Top of the city office. The lift man preferred a more formal request that began with “please,” but the passenger was not ready to mention. Therefore the lift man expelled the passenger or threw him out of the lift.
Writer comments on the incident and emphasizes that justifying the lift man’s behavior is unacceptable. He believes this because discourtesy is not viewed as a crime subject to legal punishment. According to writer, “Discourtesy is not a legal offence, and it does not excuse assault and battery”.
The law will support a person who uses force against a burglar who has broken into his home or anybody else who has assaulted him. This is true since the law does not allow both robbery and violence. Law doesn’t allow us to use physical violence against a person whose manners or speech we do not like, despite the fact that we could feel empathetic toward the lift man. Further writer says if we were allowed this freedom, we would constantly be striking people, and the city’s drains would run whole day with blood.
According to the narrator, the only consequence of being rude or arrogant is that others will refer to you as arrogant fellow. The law, however, will defend him rather than condemn him. There is no any kind of restrictions on manners. Hurting someone’s “feelings” is not seen as a situation in which the lawbreaker must be held liable for damages. There is no legal protection against the harm impolite individual’s behavior to one’s moral character or intellectual capacity.
But it doesn’t mean that such damages are insignificant or negligible. The lift man might have felt his social standing had been insulted by the passenger’s behavior toward him. In any event, the pain of a kick immediately subsides. Therefore, this must be more painful than a kick to the shins. It is very true that the damage done to one’s self-respect is harder to recover from. Narrator thinks how the lift man probably thought about the insult all day and how, after getting home, he must have taken out his anger or stress on his wife in the evening. People who experience rudeness are quickly infected by it.
The author refers an example from R. B. Sheridan’s play The Rivals. Sir Antony Absolute abuses his son in the play, and when the boy becomes enraged, he complains to his servant, who then goes and kicks the lower-ranking slaves. Writer speculates that the issue may have started with a housemaid who had been obnoxious to the cook, who, in turn, may have been rude to his mistress, who, in turn, may have passed on her frustration to her husband, who, ultimately, passed upon his annoyance through being rude to the lift man. We inflect our surrounding with our ill-manners.
Even so, the law is unable to intervene in this situation. No Decalogue could ever cover all the harm that ill-manners cause. There is no any kind of legal system which may impose restrictions on manners.
Even though everyone tries to show respect to the lift man’s situation, ironically, everyone will feel sorry for him. We cannot abandon traditions that are more revered than the law. Writer focuses on the use of words ‘Please’, ‘thank you’ to maintain the harmony in our life and in the society. Politeness and courtesies allow us to live in a peaceful community. In addition, there should be a kind of easy give and take relationship rather than superiors give orders to subordinates.
Gardiner, further, wants to refer an example by citing the behavior of “the polite bus conductor.” Even he clarifies that he does not mean that all conductors are unfriendly by praising one particular conductor for his politeness. In reality, he claims that despite the difficulty of their duties, most conductors approach their profession very kindly. Undoubtedly, there are exceptions.
Most of the time, we see that the bus conductors who always think that the passengers are their natural enemies to whom they can handle with violence. Such examples are, however, less common than they formerly were. Gardiner believes this is because the men who work for the Underground Railway Company, which oversees the bus service, must adhere to a specific code of courteous behavior.
One day writer encounters with the polite bus conductor. As he gets on the bus without realizing he left home with no money in his pocket. The author believes the reader may be familiar with the emotion that such a circumstance creates because this is a frequent experience for most individuals.
Now it seems that the bus driver will order him to get off the bus when the conductor gives him a suspicious look and suggests that this is a frequent trick used by thieves. Even if the conductor is sympathetic and believes him, he will still have to waste time and effort returning home to get his wallet. He will also be unlikely to complete the work he had intended to accomplish.
Gardiner honestly admits that he doesn’t have single penny in his pocket. In this situation the bus conductor allows him to travel and books his ticket. However, when the conductor was asked where he ought to put the money, he cheerfully said that he would undoubtedly run into the latter on some bus in the future. He felt very happy due to the conductor’s friendly behavior. After passing little time somehow writer finds few amounts in one of the corner of his pocket and he hands over the amount of ticket.
One more experience the author gets with the same bus conductor. Next time the author was severely injured when the same conductor unintentionally walked on his toe. The bus conductor quickly apologized, adding that he had such hefty boots on since his toes. It shows the polite nature of bus conductor. After that incident, the author then starts to pay attention to the courteous conductor’s activities. In his interactions with his passengers, we see an almost endless source of kindness and compassion in conductor.
Bus conductor made passengers comfortable, showing the same compassion for older people as he would for his children. Gardiner says that a trip with him taught one what natural courtesy and good manners were, whether it was by informing people on the top that there are extra seats lower down when it rains or by cracking jokes with younger passengers to make them laugh, or by setting down a blind person up on the footpath and safely on his way.
Gardiner further demonstrates the advantages of this behavior. The polite conductor never experienced any difficulties carrying out his work. In the same way that rudeness breeds more rudeness, kindness breeds kindness in others. According to the poet Keats, he always felt happy when it was sunny, and according to Gardiner, happy people come to us, similar to the gift of fine weather.
The author is sorry to hear that the polite conductor is no longer working on his route, but he hopes that he has brought his kindness to another route. He claims that since the world as a whole is pretty uninteresting, this joy must be shared with as many people as possible. Additionally, Gardiner is unrepentant about crafting a work in honour of an unnamed conductor. He believes that as William Wordsworth, an English romantic poet could draw inspiration from the meek leech gatherer and the lonely moor, so might regular people from a guy who exalted his menial occupation with compassion and good Nature.
The writer wants to restore those civilities which are lost. At the end of the story, Gardiner tells the humorous Lord Chesterfield’s story. There was a time when the city’s streets were exceedingly muddy, and the only way to keep one’s shoes clean was to walk as near as possible to the wall, where a tiny strip of ground was a bit higher than the rest of the route. A crude man who refused to walk into the mud to make room for Chesterfield to pass met Chesterfield in this location. He answered, “I never give in to a scoundrel. Chesterfield replied, “I always do.” Gardiner believes the liftman will see that this kind of retaliation is preferable to tossing the man into the mud.
Conclusion:
The importance of good manners in daily life is illustrated in this story. The narrator describes various incidents just to highlight the importance of good manners in personal and social life. Politeness is a sign of a civic society.