How To Close A Door
Book Report: The Butler’s Guide To Clothes Care, Managing The Table, Running The Home, & Other Graces. Stanley Ager and Fiona St. Aubyn. Fireside Books, 1980.
The season of commencement speeches approaches. The longer and more boring specimens are already being drafted – drafts that will mature into torrents of hot air. Grand people will drone at length. Some will rehearse weary platitudes. Some will expound on concepts political or theological. Graduates will shuffle in their seats and endure the exercise. If they can get away with it, they may even play Tetrus on their cell phones.
You won’t hear from the speakers’ servants (those that employ them) and more is the pity. Put a butler up there, and hear him tell how to close a door quietly – that would be likely be more engrossing, and the graduates would be hearing something useful. They might even extract a small lesson in living as an individual among others – with skill and grace.
April 24th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
Well said. What a pity that so many of our upcoming graduates may never know what they could learn from a butler.