Rules of Civility

by Amor Towles

If excellence is to be expected, Miss Markham liked to observe, you can’t ask the wrestlers to throw the javelins.

—Emily Post says that talking about oneself isn’t very polite.

for the moment, we let ourselves imagine that we were still in Max’s diner—with our knees knocking under the tabletop and seagulls circling the Trinity steeple and all the brightly colored possibilities dangled by the New Year still within our reach. Old times, as my father used to say: If you’re not careful, they’ll gut you like a fish.

—Eeny, meany, miney, moe . . .

The doors closed, the train got under way and he produced a little yellow book from his overall pocket. He opened it to a dog-eared page and began reading loudly in a voice that must have been uprooted from Appalachia. It took me a passage or two to realize that he was reading from the Sermon on the Mount. —And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. To his credit, the preacher wasn’t holding on to a strap. As the car rocked back and forth, he was keeping steady by gripping the sides of his righteous little book. One got the sense that he could read the Gospels all the way to Bay Ridge and back without losing his footing. —Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. The preacher was doing an admirable job. He was speaking clearly and with feeling. He captured the poetry of the King James version and he punched every they like his life depended on it, in celebration of this central paradox of Christianity—that the weak and weary would be the ones who would walk away with it all. But on the Broadway local on a Saturday night, all you had to do was look around you to see that this guy didn’t know what he was talking about.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. . . . The ghost of Henry David Thoreau frowned upon me, as well he should. I

1st Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present.

Speak not injurious Words neither in Jest nor Earnest Scoff at none although they give Occasion.

Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire Called Conscience.