White Gloves, No. I

White Gloves, No. I. [No. 30]

Wear not White Gloves to hide hands that are stain’d
With deeds of violence and wrong: be sure
Your fingers as the Gloves you wear are pure.
If wealth be yours, let it not be obtain’d
By force of fraud: if in the social scale 5
’Tis yours to rise, bend not your souls to climb,—
Or seeming-upward steps will prove in time
All down to shame. Mere rank can naught avail
To shield you from dishonour, unless ye
Are true at heart: all subterfuges fail, 10
In time to serve the worthless: and they quail,
Lake craven cowards, when they come to see
Their wretched fall. Let all who wear White Gloves,
Be spotless as their Clothes, and innocent as Doves.

by George Markham Tweddell  1st published 1887