The Wayland Identity

Tuesdays With Another

The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies;

who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity;

who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another;

who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements;

who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy;

whose deed follows his word;

who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own;

and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.

-- John Walter Wayland, 1899        
While a graduate student at        
the University of Virginia            

Long misattributed to John Paul Jones (above)