Abstract

In the Driftway

Etiquette is a strong seed, sown in. the minds of young children of all classes, nourished by both habit and expedience, and flowering in conduct which to the neutral observer frequently seems irrational. It is possible, of course, that this codified irrationality of etiquette is a necessary defense, a blindness erected against the otherwise intolerable irrationality of our modern way of living which one may call civilized. Doubtless of compensation for such humiliations, the Drifter cherishes those rare eccentricities of behavior that he has encountered and occasionally tried to emulate. There was the West Indian elevator boy in a down-town skyscraper who by some miracle of art imposed a kind of African rhythm upon the vertical traffic which he supervised.