George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation
Don’t draw attention to yourself.
Turds
No comment necessary.
(curtsey)
Wow. So THIS is what George was doing while burning the midnight oil. He had to have been making and keeping extensive notes of those around him all day every day... 24/7/365. Heavens, he would have had to make daily inspections of everyone he came in contact with. Pity his poor wife and children! And to think, we thought the man was running the country.
His every waking moment would have been devoted to doing everything just so-so and perfectly so he could chastise everyone else who fell short of his criteria. Guarantee it, he kept a checklist.
At the very least he was an OCD obsessive compulsive on the good and bad behavior practices of others and the rest of the time he spent washing his hands of imaginary germs. What a silly bore. Observer
My, my, my! How social decorum has changed throughout the years! What's so striking is George's consideration of his guests, or people in his social company.
How sad it is to know that the social graces we once held to be so important no longer hold the same importance they once did.
I'd love to know what George would think about "pants on the ground", or pants worn so low that one's a*s is clearly visible. What's even more distasteful is the fact that those wearing such clothing could care less how they offend those around them.
Texas Anon
There is a lot to be learned from polite society manners.
It is a way to conduct yourself with dignity and bestow the gift of respect on all you meet.
I entered the home of friend and saw someone who was guest in her home sitting on her couch looking at a cell phone.
The next thing that happened, sickened me. I was approached from behind and strongly tapped on the shoulder and commanded to look at the cell phone images.
When I realized that it was same sex porn on the cell phone, I tried to walk away, only to be blocked and have the phone shoved into my face again. This happened four times until I escaped and left the premises.
Is this the new social standard?
Other people have related similar stories to me.
I do wish we for more societal courtesies. Most are common sense and just using your heart and head. Most manners and courtesy could be summed up by "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That would be easier to remember, but trying to write it out would be an endless chore.
With everyone having their noses stuck in their cells phones they have tunnel vision and no awareness of anyone around them, including in grocery aisles and on the highways. Manners are the grease that make society run smoothly. We've lost the understanding that courtesy is the grease that makes society run smoothly. Time for some public services ads?
13. Kill no Vermin as Fleas, lice ticks &c in the Sight of Others, if you See any filth or thick Spittle put your foot Dexterously upon it if it be upon the Cloths of your Companions, Put it off privately, and if it be upon your own Cloths return Thanks to him who puts it off.
How times have changed
My favorite out of the entire list: "110. Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."
... Little spark of celestial fire ...
How cool is that?!
110 Rules!!!LOL!!!
Smile
Actually, he didn't write the rules. It was a book he owned. http://www.knowledgehouse.info/GeorgeWashingtonRulesofCivility.pdf
It's a shame that most people today don't invest even a tiny portion of the effort Washington invested in caring about how one affects their fellowman. Some of his ideas may seem rigid, but at least the goal was to be considerate of others. It seems this entire concept has disappeared for the most part.
"Sitting on her coutch"THEN "Approached from behind"?????
STOP TELLING LIES!!! Its impolite!!!
SHUT UP RASCIST!
ω_ABC YOU ARE A BIGGOTED COW RASIST
Well. I feel a little better knowing this was a book he owned rather than one he wrote himself.
Had he written it himself he would have been making extensive inspections and notes on a daily and nightly basis, wording and rewording his list nightly fifty times over until he got his final draft 'just right', and on and on.
BTW, to all those who hint at how our manners (and lack of) have changed; how many of you take your kids to sunday school or send them to a church sponsored summer camp, where they might REALLY learn a genteel attitude and consideration towards others? My guess is not many. Observer
Observer I would like to point a few things out to you, but in order to do so I'd have to employ the same condemning and critical thinking and tone that you have. Instead I'll suggest you might benefit from comparing your comments on this thread with the definitions of genteel and considerate.
Two 1840s Articles on Oney Judge
On this page:
• "Washington's Runaway Slave"
• 1846 interview with Ona Judge Staines
"Washington's Runaway Slave"
from The Granite Freeman, Concord, New Hampshire (May 22, 1845); reprinted in Frank W. Miller's Portsmouth New Hampshire Weekly, June 2, 1877, under the title "Washington's Runaway Slave, and How Portsmouth Freed Her." Author: Rev. T.H. Adams
There is now living in the borders of the town of Greenland, N.H., a runaway slave of Gen. Washington, at present supported by the County of Rockingham. Her name at the time of her elopement was ONA MARIA JUDGE. She is not able to give the year of her escape, but says that she came from Philadelphia just after the close of Washington's second term of the Presidency, which must fix it somewhere in the [early?] part of the year 1797.
Being a waiting maid of Mrs. Washington, she was not exposed to any peculiar hardships. If asked why she did not remain in his service, she gives two reasons, first, that she wanted to be free; secondly that she understood that after the decease of her master and mistress, she was to become the property of a grand-daughter of theirs, by name of Custis, and that she was determined never to be her slave.
Being asked how she escaped, she replied substantially as follows, "Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn't know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty. I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington's house while they were eating dinner."
She came on board a ship commanded by CAPT. JOHN BOLLES, and bound to Portsmouth, N.H. In relating it, she added, "I never told his name till after he died, a few years since, lest they should punish him for bringing me away. …"
Washington made two attempts to recover her. First, he sent a man by the name of Bassett to persuade her to return; but she resisted all the argument he employed for this end. He told her they would set her free when she arrived at Mount Vernon, to which she replied, "I am free now and choose to remain so."
Finding all attempts to seduce her to slavery again in this manner useless, Bassett was sent once more by Washington, with orders to bring her and her infant child by force. The messenger, being acquainted with Gov. [then Senator John] Langdon, then of Portsmouth, took up lodgings with him, and disclosed to him the object of his mission.
The good old Governor. (to his honor be it spoken), must have possessed something of the spirit of modern anti-slavery. He entertained Bassett very handsomely, and in the meantime sent word to Mrs. Staines, to leave town before twelve o'clock at night, which she did, retired to a place of concealment, and escaped the clutches of the oppressor.
Shortly after this, Washington died, and, said she, "they never troubled me any more after he was gone. …
The facts here related are known through this region, and may be relied on as substantially correct. Probably they were not for years given to the public, through fear of her recapture; but this reason no longer exists, since she is too old and infirm to be of sufficient value to repay the expense of search.
Though a house servant, she had no education, nor any valuable religious instruction; says she never heard Washington pray, and does not believe that he was accustomed to. "Mrs. Washington used to read prayers, but I don't call that praying.["] Since her escape she has learned to read, trusts she has been made "wise unto salvation," and is, I think, connected with a church in Portsmouth.
When asked if she is not sorry she left Washington, as she has labored so much harder since, than before, her reply is, "No, I am free, and have, I trust been made a child of God by the means.["]
Never shall I forget the fire that kindled in her age-bedimmed eye, or the smile that played upon her withered countenance, as I spake of the Redeemer in whom there is neither "bond nor free," bowed with her at the mercy seat and commended her to Him "who heareth prayer" and who regards "the poor and needy when they cry," I felt that were it mine to choose, I would not exchange her possessions, "rich in faith," and sustained, while tottering over the grave, by "a hope full of immortality," for tall the glory and renown of him whose slave she was.
1846 interview with Ona Judge Staines
by the Rev. Benjamin Chase. Letter to the editor, The Liberator, January 1, 1847.. As quoted in Slave Testimony, Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies, John W. Blassingame, ed. (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), pp. 248-50.
I have recently made a visit to one of Gen. Washington's, or rather Mrs. Washington's slaves. It [sic] is a woman, nearly white, very much freckled, and probably, (for she does not know her age,) more than eighty. She now resides with a colored woman by the name of Nancy Jack … at what is called the Bay side in Greenland, in New-Hampshire, and is maintained as a pauper by the county of Rockingham.
She says that she was a chambermaid for Mrs. Washington; that she was a large girl at the time of the revolutionary war; that when Washington was elected President, she was taken to Philadelphia, and that, although well enough used as to work and living, she did not want to be a slave always, and she supposed if she went back to Virginia, she would never have a chance of escape.
She took a passage in a vessel to Portsmouth, N.H. and there married a man by the name of Staines, and had three children, who, with her husband, are all dead. After she was married, and had one child, while her husband was gone to sea, Gen. Washington sent on a man by the name of Bassett [Burwell Bassett, Jr., Washington's nephew], to prevail on her to go back. He saw her, and used all the persuasion he could, but she utterly refused to go with him. He returned, and then came again, with orders to take her by force, and carry her back. He put up with the late Gov. [John] Langdon, and made known his business, and the Governor gave her notice that she must leave Portsmouth that night, or she would be carried back. She went to a stable, and hired a boy, with a horse and carriage, to carry her to Mr. Jack's [John Jack, a free black], at Greenland, where she now resides, a distance of eight miles, and remained there until her husband returned from sea, and Bassett did not find her.
She says that she never received the least mental or moral instruction, of any kind, while she remained in Washington's family. But, after she came to Portsmouth, she learned to read; and when Elias Smith first preached in Portsmouth, she professes to have been converted to Christianity.
She, and the woman with whom she lives, (who is nearly of her age,) appear to be, and have the reputation of being imbued with the real spirit of Christianity. She says that the stories told of Washington's piety and prayers, so far as she ever saw or heard while she was his slave, have no foundation. Card-playing and wine-drinking were the business at his parties, and he had more of such company Sundays than on any other day. I do not mention this as showing, in my estimation, his anti-Christian character, so much as the bare fact of being a slaveholder, and not a hundredth part so much as trying to kidnap this woman; but, in the minds of the community, it will weigh infinitely more.
Great names bear more weight with the multitude, than the eternal principles of God's government. So good a man as Washington is enough to sanctify war and slavery; but where is the evidence of his goodness?
This woman is yet a slave. If Washington could have got her and her child, they were constitutionally his; and if Mrs. Washington's heirs were now to claim her, and take her before Judge Woodbury, and prove their title, he would be bound, upon his oath, to deliver her up to them. Again — Langdon was guilty of a moral violation of the Constitution, in giving this woman notice of the agent being after her. It was frustrating the design, the intent of the Constitution, and he was equally guilty, morally, as those who would overthrow it.
Mrs. Staines was given verbally, if not legally, by Mrs. Washington, to Eliza Custis, her grand-daughter.
These women live in rather an obscure place, and in a poor, cold house, and speak well of their neighbors, and are probably treated with as much kindness and sympathy as people are generally in their circumstances; but not with half so much as it is the duty and interest of people, in better outward circumstances, to treat them.
I greatly enjoyed my visit to them, and should rather have the benediction they pronounced upon me at parting, than the benediction of all the D.D.'s in Christendom.
ABC, you see my posts signed as Observer, right? That's my point entirely. I am an observer. So, what exactly does your ABC handle mean? Not that I care to continue in your chastisement of me, which I observe to be YOUR point. Thank you.
Anon @ 5:29, your copied-righted posts are very touching. Many don't know, (many don't care), how much these people of color suffered. Many still do in demeaning and dehumanizing ways. It was/is a real tragedy on the black human race and a shame to every white who participated in their enslavement. G. Washington was no different. A white wolf in sheeps clothing. Observer.
Chase and his cohorts goal was well known - to paint George Washington as a non Christian and to sullie his reputation. They did this for political reasons and because of jealously. Read the interview carefully. Chase can barely contain himself in telling what a heathen George Washington was.
To counter this attack, many peers of Washington's testified to seeing him praying, taking communion, and attending church. George Washington was a man of great faith. And it is a shame it had (and has) to be proved. I can obviously see from his actions he is a man to emulate.
I think these rules are great and applicable to today with a little stretch of the mind. It's all about being kind to others.
Darn, I hate when someone spits on the grill and I'm cooking hamburger on there! Don't you all?
Serial posting! Sorry!
I was sitting at the table doing reading group with students once when a lice fell off one boy. I didn't want to embarrass him, yet wasn't sure that's what it was. I put surreptitiously put tape over it and kept it under my elbow till after class. Then I had the nurse look at it and check him. Sure enough...lice, and the whole class didn't have to know.
Rule 13. :)
Goodness, they had some free time back then.
Yep, they sure did DrDebo, while they lolled around all day and evening, visiting their friends, being fitted for georgeous gowns and giving lavish parties; and all because they had a housefull of black (and mixed) free slaves doing all their work both inside and outside the home, and all for the 'limited' (selected) food they gave them to keep them from starving to death.
It didn't cost their owner anything for their slaves clothing either; their clothing was their old cast offs and hand-me-downs.
Money? What money? They had none. If a child got sick, they had to go begging the master for help for their child. The babies they delivered themselves. Many had to live in basements and attics provided by their master and the misses, or the old cotton-house shed, working from the time they arose in the mornings until they laid their head down at night.
Those who had families had to live in little one-room lean-too shacks near the main house and on the property, while all who were old enough and able to work, including children, worked for the master and the misses, many out in fields all day long. If they had anything at all to call their own, it was a few chickens the master gave them, flour and corn meal and some turnip greens from their garden.
They were TOTALLY at the mercy of their white master and subject to having their family and friends split up and traded off to another master at any time, never to be seen again. Some wonder why we still have angry blacks? I don't. Observer
Smile
June 21, 2013 at 6:12 PM
Smiles Rules; Face the person,make eye contact, ( if your hiding under a table, have the balls to come out) think kind thoughts and SMILE.
This cracks me up. I'd like to add a nod to Strunk and White: Be thou brief in all comments and do not rephrase
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