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Chivalry is not dead, but it nearly killed me. Here's how it happened.

A year ago, I started this column with a description of a place on the Maine coast my wife and I visit most summers: "Forged by a half-billion years of folding and faulting from continents colliding, heat so intense it lends credence to the concept of hell and pressure that stretched, twisted and thrust them to the surface to be scoured by glaciers, the rocks that ring Orr's Island are still a work in progress, worn by waves that pound them, etched by ceaseless tides scratching their crevices." Add to the forces that have had their impact on them: my face, after I toppled head-first onto one last month, ripping and smashing my nose and slashing my brow. Since we were on vacation, I won't deny that alcohol was involved, but not in the quantity to call it the culprit. I blame the manners my momma beat into me so long ago.

We had arrived at the majestic old house my friend Doug Warren's family owns on the island that evening just before supper, having driven up over the course of three days with our 8-year-old grandson, stopping to show him Antietam, the Civil War battlefield in western Maryland, and Mystic Seaport in Connecticut along the way. After a leisurely meal, the adults--Doug and his wife, Jane and I and two other couples who also were houseguests--walked down to watch starlight play on Casco Bay. My butt was firmly ensconced on a bench above the rocks when I noticed one of the ladies sitting on the ground. I offered her my seat. She demurred. I insisted.

Standing up to make way for her, I lost my balance. As I tottered backward, her husband...