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

"Oh, howdo Freddie (or Constance)! They've put you in the Chinese room, I think. Ring for tea when you want it. Struthers telephoned he'd be over around five. Mrs. Toplofty asked you to dinner to-night and I accepted for you—hope that was all right. If not, you'll have to telephone and get out of it yourself. I want you to dinner to-morrow night and for lunch on Sunday. Sorry to leave you, but I'm late for bridge now. Good-by." And she is off.

The Newport hostess is, of course, an extreme type that is seldom met away from that one small watering place in Rhode Island.

The Energetic Hostess

The energetic hostess is the antithesis of the one above, and far more universally known. She is one who fusses and plans continually, who thinks her guests are not having a good time unless she rushes them, Cook's tourist fashion, from this engagement to that, and crowds with activity and diversion—never mind what so long as it is something to see or do—every moment of their stay.

She walks them through the garden to show them all the nooks and vistas. She dilates upon the flowers that bloomed here last month and are going to bloom next. She insists upon their climbing over rocks to a summerhouse to see the view; she insists on taking them in another direction to see an old mill; and, again, every one is trouped to the cupola of the house to see another view. She insists on every one's playing croquet before lunch, to which she gathers in a curiously mixed collection of neighbors. Immediately after lunch every one is driven to a country club to see some duffer golf—for some reason there is never "time" in all the prepared pleasures for any of her guests to play golf themselves. After twenty minutes at the golf club, they are all taken to a church fair. The guests are all introduced to the ladies at the booth and those who were foolish enough to bring their purses with them from now on carry around an odd assortment of fancy work. There is another entertainment that her guests must not miss! A flower pageant of the darlingest children fourteen miles away! Everyone is dashed to that. On some one's front lawn, daisies and lilies and roses trip and skip—it is all sweetly pretty but the sun is hot and the guests have been on the go for a great many hours. Soon, however, their hostess leaves. "Home at last!" think they. Not at all. They are going somewhere for tea and French recitations. But why go on? The portrait is fairly complete, though this account covers only a few hours and there is still all the evening and to-morrow to be filled in just as liberally.

The Anxious Hostess

The anxious hostess does not insist on your ceaseless activity, but she is no less persistent in filling your time. She is always asking you what you would like to do next. If you say you are quite content as you are, she nevertheless continues to shower suggestions. Shall she play the phonograph to you? Would you like her to telephone to a friend who sings too wonderfully? Would you like to look at a portfolio of pictures? If you are a moment silent, she is sure you are bored, and wonders what she can do to divert you!

The Perfect Hostess

The ideal hostess must have so many perfections of sense and character that were she described in full, no one seemingly but a combination of seer and angel could ever hope to qualify.

She must first of all consider the inclinations of her guests, she must not only make them as comfortable as the arrangements and limits of her establishment permit, but she must subordinate her own inclinations utterly. At the same time, she must not fuss and flutter and get agitated and seemingly make efforts in their behalf. Nothing makes a guest more uncomfortable than to feel his host or hostess is being put to a great deal of bother or effort on his account.

A perfect hostess like a perfect housekeeper has seemingly nothing whatever to do with household arrangements which apparently run in oiled grooves and of their own accord.

Certain rules are easy to observe once they are brought to attention. A hostess should never speak of annoyances of any kind—no matter what happens! Unless she is actually unable to stand up, she should not mention physical ills any more than mental ones. She has invited people to her house, and as long as they are under her roof, hospitality demands that their sojourn shall be made as pleasant as lies in her power.

If the cook leaves, then a picnic must be made of the situation as though a picnic were the most delightful thing that could happen. Should a guest be taken ill, she must assure him that he is not giving the slightest trouble; at the same time nothing that can be done for his comfort must be overlooked. Should she herself or some one in her family become suddenly ill, she should make as light of it as possible to her guests, even though she withdraw from them. In that event she must ask a relative or intimate friend to come in and take her place. Nor should the deputy hostess dwell to the guests on the illness, or whatever it is that has deprived them of their hostess.

The Guest No One Invites Again

The guest no one invites a second time is the one who runs a car to its detriment, and a horse to a lather; who leaves a borrowed tennis racquet out in the rain; who "dog ears" the books, leaves a cigarette on the edge of a table and burns a trench in its edge, who uses towels for boot rags, who stands a wet glass on polished wood, who tracks muddy shoes into the house, and leaves his room looking as though it had been through a cyclone. Nor are men the only offenders. Young women have been known to commit every one of these offenses and the additional one of bringing a pet dog that was not house trained.

Besides these actually destructive shortcomings, there are evidences of bad upbringing in many modern youths whose lack of consideration is scarcely less annoying. Those who are late for every meal; cheeky others who invite friends of their own to meals without the manners or the decency to ask their hostess' permission; who help themselves to a car and go off and don't come back for meals at all; and who write no letters afterwards, nor even take the trouble to go up and "speak" to a former hostess when they see her again.

On the other hand, a young person who is considerate is a delight immeasurable—such a delight as only a hostess of much experience can perhaps appreciate. A young girl who tells where she is going, first asking if it is all right, and who finds her hostess as soon as she is in the house at night to report that she is back, is one who very surely will be asked again and often.

A young man is, of course, much freer, but a similar deference to the plans of his hostess, and to the hours and customs of the house, will result in repeated invitations for him also.

The lack of these things is not only bad form but want of common civility and decency, and reflects not only on the girls and boys themselves but on their parents who failed to bring them up properly.

The Considerate Guest

Courtesy demands that you, when you are a guest, shall show neither annoyance nor disappointment—no matter what happens. Before you can hope to become even a passable guest, let alone a perfect one, you must learn as it were not to notice if hot soup is poured down your back. If you neither understand nor care for dogs or children, and both insist on climbing all over you, you must seemingly like it; just as you must be amiable and polite to your fellow guests, even though they be of all the people on earth the most detestable to you. You must with the very best dissimulation at your command, appear to find the food delicious though they offer you all of the viands that are especially distasteful to your palate, or antagonistic to your digestion. You must disguise your hatred of red ants and scrambled food, if everyone else is bent on a picnic. You must pretend that six is a perfect dinner hour though you never dine before eight, or, on the contrary, you must wait until eight-thirty or nine with stoical fortitude, though your dinner hour is six and by seven your chest seems securely pinned to your spine.

If you go for a drive, and it pours, and there is no top to the carriage or car, and you are soaked to the skin and chilled to the marrow so that your teeth chatter, your lips must smile and you must appear to enjoy the refreshing coolness.

If you go to stay in a small house in the country, and they give you a bed full of lumps, in a room of mosquitoes and flies, in a chamber over that of a crying baby, under the eaves with a temperature of over a hundred, you can the next morning walk to the village, and send yourself a telegram and leave! But though you feel starved, exhausted, wilted, and are mosquito bitten until you resemble a well-developed case of chickenpox or measles, by not so much as a facial muscle must you let the family know that your comfort lacked anything that your happiest imagination could picture—nor must you confide in any one afterwards (having broken bread in the house) how desperately wretched you were.

If you know anyone who is always in demand, not only for dinners, but for trips on private cars and yachts, and long visits in country houses, you may be very sure of one thing: the popular person is first of all unselfish or else extremely gifted; very often both.

The perfect guest not only tries to wear becoming clothes but tries to put on an equally becoming mental attitude. No one is ever asked out very much who is in the habit of telling people all the misfortunes and ailments she has experienced or witnessed, though the perfect guest listens with apparent sympathy to every one else's. Another attribute of the perfect guest is never to keep people waiting. She is always ready for anything—or nothing. If a plan is made to picnic, she likes picnics above everything and proves her liking by enthusiastically making the sandwiches or the salad dressing or whatever she thinks she makes best. If, on the other hand, no one seems to want to do anything, the perfect guest has always a book she is absorbed in, or a piece of sewing she is engrossed with, or else beyond everything she would love to sit in an easy chair and do nothing.

She never for one moment thinks of herself, but of the other people she is thrown with. She is a person of sympathy always, and instantaneous discernment. She is good tempered no matter what happens, and makes the most of everything as it comes. At games she is a good loser, and a quiet winner. She has a pleasant word, an amusing story, and agreeable comment for most occasions, but she is neither gushing nor fulsome. She has merely acquired a habit, born of many years of arduous practise, of turning everything that looks like a dark cloud as quickly as possible for the glimmer of a silver lining.

She is as sympathetic to children as to older people; she cuts out wonderful paper dolls and soldier hats, always leisurely and