"By persevering in this course,' your father continues, you will more effectually secure to yourself the confidence of business men. Your credit I will be better. You will sooner be able to have a home of your own. You will make that home more hapYour life will glide away with far less danger of your falling before the power of temptation; and consequently, there will be a far brighter prospect of your enjoying happiness beyond the grave."

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This is, in the main, the argument upon which the objectors to this amusement rely, and have relied during all past ages. They are fully convinced, that he, who acquires a taste for ball-room pleasures, will find his earthly happiness greatly impaired, and will be exposed to temptations which will greatly endanger his eternal wellbeing.

GENUINE POLITENESS.

THE virtues and the graces are much more nearly allied, than they, who are strangers to the virtues, are willing to acknowledge. There is something extremely beautiful in all the moral virtues, clearly understood and properly reduced to practice.

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He who has a heart glowing with kindness and good-will towards his fellow-men, and who is guided in the exercise of these feelings by good common sense, is the truly polite man. liteness does not consist in wearing a white silk glove, and in gracefully lifting your hat as you meet an acquaintance it does not consist in artificial smiles and flattering speech, but in sincere and honest desires to promote the happiness of those around you; in

the readiness to sacrifice your own ease and comfort, to add to the enjoyment of others. The poor negro women, who found Mungo Park perishing under the palm-trees of Africa, and who led him to their hut, and supplied him with food, and lulled him to sleep with their simple songs, were genuinely polite. They addressed him in language of kindness and sympathy; they led him tenderly to their home, and did all in their power to revive his drooping spirits.

A poor drover was driving his beeves to market in a winter's day. The cattle met a lady in the path, and, apparently unconscious of the impoliteness, compelled the lady to turn one side into the snow. 'Madam,' said the drover, apologizing for the rudeness of his herd, 'if the cattle knew as much as I do, you should not walk in the snow. That drover was, in the best sense of the term, a gentleman, while many a young man, in Washington street or

Broadway, with gloves, and cane, and graceful step, is a brute.

The man, who lays aside all selfishness, in regard to the happiness of others, who is ever ready to confer favors, who speaks in language of kindness and conciliation, and who studies to manifest those little attentions which gratify the heart, is a polite man, though he may wear a homespun coat, and make a very ungraceful bow. And many a fashionable, who dresses genteelly, and enters the most crowded apartments with assurance and ease, is a perfect compound of rudeness and incivility. True politeness is a virtue of the understanding and of the heart. It is not like the whited sepulchre, or like Sodom's far-famed fruit. There are no rules for the exercise of this virtue, more correct and definite than those laid down in the New Testament. There is no book of politeness comparable with the Bible.

SINGULARITY,

A MAN should make it a point to avoid Unconscious singularity of manner. eccentricity is a defect which every one and every should labor to overcome; voluntary attempt to deviate from the usual manner of doing ordinary acts, is a foible unworthy of a man of sense. In conduct and in speech, the rule of good sense, says Lord Brougham, is to do common things in the common way. This is true in those numberless instances, in which no moral principle is involved. But on the other hand, there can be no greater instance of a weak and pusillanimous temper, than for a man to pass the whole of his life in opposition to his own conscience and understanding, and not dare to be what he thinks he ought to be in the order of nature. Singularity is always