‘Invisible Grace’: Civility and Kindness Are the Wellspring of Joy

A simple ‘please’ and ’thank you' open the doors to something greater.
‘Invisible Grace’: Civility and Kindness Are the Wellspring of Joy
Genuine civility breeds kindness, whether it's among close relations or complete strangers. Biba Kayewich
Jeff Minick
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While thumbing at random through “Town & Country Social Graces,” a 2002 collection of lively essays by different authors on “propriety without the stuffiness,” I came to one of the book’s final entries, “Invisible Grace” by Owen Edwards. The author links civility with kindness, from which there springs a certain grace and beauty of the human spirit.

Manuals like “Social Graces” have long attracted American readers. As a youth, George Washington copied out and then put into practice “110 Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior,” a list of maxims which, composed by French Jesuits and later translated into English, were popular during his time. Mid-19th-century guides to manners, dress, and customs such as “The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette” and “The Gentlemen’s Book of Etiquette” were highly praised and sold well, and are still available today. Many other guides to manners followed, with perhaps the most influential being Emily Post’s 1922 “Etiquette.”
Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
Author
Jeff Minick has four children and a growing platoon of grandchildren. For 20 years, he taught history, literature, and Latin to seminars of homeschooling students in Asheville, N.C. He is the author of two novels, “Amanda Bell” and “Dust on Their Wings,” and two works of nonfiction, “Learning as I Go” and “Movies Make the Man.” Today, he lives and writes in Front Royal, Va.