Etiquette, Emily Post [read people like a book txt] 📗

lose a friend for life. When no other guests are arriving, you can chatter to your own friends as much as you like, but as you turn to greet another stranger, you must show pleasure, not annoyance, in giving him your attention.

A happy attitude to cultivate is to think in your own mind that new people are all packages in a grab-bag, and that you can never tell what any of them may prove to be until you know what is inside the outer wrappings of casual appearances. To be sure, the old woman of the fairy tale, who turns out to be a fairy in disguise, is not often met with in real life, but neither is her approximate counterpart an impossibility.

As those who have sent you flowers approach, you must thank them; you must also write later an additional note of thanks to older people. But to your family or your own intimate friends, the verbal thanks—if not too casually made—are sufficient.

A Few Don'ts For Débutantes

Don't think that because you have a pretty face, you need neither brains nor manners. Don't think that you can be rude to anyone and escape being disliked for it.

Whispering is always rude. Whispering and giggling at the same time have no place in good society. Everything that shows lack of courtesy toward others is rude.

If you would be thought a person of refinement, don't nudge or pat or finger people. Don't hold hands or walk arm-about-waist in public. Never put your hand on a man, except in dancing and in taking his arm if he is usher at a wedding or your partner for dinner or supper. Don't allow anyone to paw you. Don't hang on anyone for support, and don't stand or walk with your chest held in, and your hips forward, in imitation of a reversed letter S.

Don't walk across a ballroom floor swinging your arms. Don't talk or laugh loud enough to attract attention, and on no account force yourself to laugh. Nothing is flatter than laughter that is lacking in mirth. If you only laugh because something is irresistibly funny, the chances are your laugh will be irresistible too. In the same way a smile should be spontaneous, because you feel happy and pleasant; nothing has less allure than a mechanical grimace, as though you were trying to imitate a tooth-paste advertisement.

Where Are The "Belles" Of Yesterday?

In olden days and until a comparatively short while ago, a young girl's social success was invariably measured by her popularity in a ballroom. It was the girl who had the most partners, who least frequently sat "against the wall," who carried home the greatest quantity of the baubles known as "favors," who was that evening's and usually the season's belle.

But to-day although ballroom popularity is still important as a test by which a young girl's success is measured, it is by no means the beginning and end that it used to be.

As repeated several times in this book, the day of the belle is past; beaux belong to the past too. To-day is the day of woman's equality with man, and if in proving her equality she has come down from a pedestal, her pedestal was perhaps a theatrical "property" at best and not to be compared for solid satisfaction with the level ground of the entirely real position she now occupies.

A girl's popularity in a ballroom is of importance to be sure, but not greatly more so than the dancing popularity of a youth.

There was a time when "wall-flowers" went to balls night after night where they either sat beside a chaperon or spent the evening in the dressing-room in tears. To-day a young girl who finds she is not a ballroom success avoids ballrooms and seeks her success otherwhere. She does not sit in a corner and hope against hope that her "luck will turn" and that Prince Charming will surely some evening discover her. She sizes up the situation exactly as a boy might size up his own chances to "make" the crew or the football team.

To-day's Specialists In Success

The girl of to-day soon discovers, if she does not know it already, that to be a ballroom belle it is necessary first of all to dance really well. A girl may be as beautiful as a young Diana or as fascinating as Circe, but if she is heavy or steps on her first partner's toes, never again will he ask her to dance. And the news spreads in an instant.

The girl of to-day therefore knows she must learn to dance well, which is difficult, since dancers are born, not made; or she must go to balls for supper only, or not go to balls at all, unless—she plays a really good game of bridge! In which case, her chances for popularity at the bridge tables, which are at all balls to-day, are quite as good as though she were a young Pavlowa in the ballroom. Or perhaps she skates, or hunts, or plays a wonderful game of tennis or golf, each one of which opens a vista leading to popularity, and the possibilities for a "good time" which was after all the mainspring of old-fashioned ballroom success.

And since the day of femininity that is purely ornamental and utterly useless is gone by, it is the girl who does things well who finds life full of interests and of friends and of happiness. The old idea also has passed that measures a girl's popular success by the number of trousered figures around her. It is quality, not quantity, that counts; and the girl who surrounds herself with indiscriminate and possibly "cheap" youths does not excite the envy but the derision of beholders. To the highest type of young girl to-day it makes very little difference whether, in the inevitable "group" in which she is perpetually to be found, there are more men than girls or the opposite.

This does not mean that human nature has changed—scarcely! There always are and doubtless always will be any number of women to whom admiration and flirtation is the very breath of their nostrils, who love to parade a beau just as they love to parade a new dress. But the tendencies of the time do not encourage the flirtatious attitude. It is not considered a triumph to have many love affairs, but rather an evidence of stupidity and bad taste.

Frankness Of To-day

A young man playing tennis with a young girl a generation ago would have been forced patiently to toss her gentle balls and keep his boredom to himself, or he would have held her chin in his hand, while he himself stood shivering for hours in three feet of water, and tried his best to disguise his opinion as to the hopelessness of her ever learning to swim.

To-day he would frankly tell her she had better play tennis for a year or two with a "marker" or struggle at swimming by herself, and any sensible girl would take that advice!

For What She Really Is

Instead of depending upon beauty, upon sex-appeal, the young girl who is "the success of to-day" depends chiefly upon her actual character and disposition. It is not even so necessary to do something well as to refrain from doing things badly. If she is not good at sports, or games, or dancing, then she must find out what she is good at and do that! If she is good for nothing but to look in the glass and put rouge on her lips and powder her nose and pat her hair, life is going to be a pretty dreary affair. In other days beauty was worshiped for itself alone, and it has votaries of sorts to-day. But the best type of modern youth does not care for beauty, as his father did; in fact, he doesn't care a bit for it, if it has nothing to "go with it," any more than he cares for butter with no bread to spread it on. Beauty and wit, and heart, and other qualifications or attributes is another matter altogether.

A gift of more value than beauty, is charm, which in a measure is another word for sympathy, or the power to put yourself in the place of others; to be interested in whatever interests them, so as to be pleasing to them, if possible, but not to occupy your thoughts in futilely wondering what they think about you.

Would you know the secret of popularity? It is unconsciousness of self, altruistic interest, and inward kindliness, outwardly expressed in good manners.

CHAPTER XIX

ToC

THE CHAPERON AND OTHER CONVENTIONS

A Gloomy Word

Of course there are chaperons and chaperons! But it must be said that the very word has a repellent schoolteacherish sound. One pictures instinctively a humorless tyrant whose "correct" manner plainly reveals her true purpose, which is to take the joy out of life. That she can be—and often is—a perfectly human and sympathetic person, whose unselfish desire is merely to smooth the path of one who is the darling of her heart, in nothing alters the feeling of gloom that settles upon the spirit of youth at the mention of the very word "chaperon."

Freedom Of The Chaperoned

As a matter of fact the only young girl who is really "free," is she whose chaperon is never very far away. She need give conventionality very little thought, and not bother about her P's and Q's at all, because her chaperon is always a strong and protective defense; but a young girl who is unprotected by a chaperon is in the position precisely of an unarmed traveler walking alone among wolves—his only defense is in not attracting their notice.

To be sure the time has gone by when the presence of an elderly lady is indispensable to every gathering of young people. Young girls for whose sole benefit and protection the chaperon exists (she does not exist for her own pleasure, youthful opinion to the contrary notwithstanding), have infinitely greater freedom from her surveillance than had those of other days, and the typical chaperon is seldom seen with any but very young girls, too young to have married friends. Otherwise a young married woman, a bride perhaps scarcely out of her teens, is, on all ordinary occasions, a perfectly suitable chaperon, especially if her husband is present. A very young married woman gadding about without her husband is not a proper chaperon.

There are also many occasions when a chaperon is unnecessary! It is considered perfectly correct for a young girl to drive a motor by herself, or take a young man with her, if her family know and approve of him, for any short distance in the country. She may play golf, tennis, go to the Country Club, or Golf Club (if near by), sit on the beach, go canoeing, ride horseback, and take part in the normal sports and occupations of country life. Young girls always go to private parties of every sort without their own chaperon, but the fact that a lady issues an invitation means that either she or another suitable chaperon will be present.

The Best Chaperon Herself

Ethically the only chaperon is the young girl's own sense of dignity and pride; she who has the right attributes of character needs no chaperon—ever. If she is wanting in decency and proper pride, not even Argus could watch over her! But apart from ethics, there are the conventions to think of, and the conventions of propriety demand that very young woman must be protected by a chaperon, because otherwise she will be misjudged.

The Resident Chaperon

No young girl may live alone. Even though she has a father, unless he devotes his entire time to her, she must also have a resident chaperon who protects her reputation until she is married or old enough to protect it herself—which is not until she has reached a fairly advanced age,