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

easily as though it cost neither time nor effort. She knows a hundred stories or games, every baby and every dog goes to her on sight, not because she has any especial talent, except that one she has cultivated, the talent of interest in everyone and everything except herself. Few people know that there is such a talent or that it can be cultivated.

She has more than mere beauty; she has infinite charm, and she is so well born that she is charming to everyone. Her manner to a duke who happens to be staying in the house is not a bit more courteous than her manner to the kitchen-maid whom she chances to meet in the kitchen gardens whither she has gone with the children to see the new kittens; as though new kittens were the apex of all delectability!

She always calls the servants by name; always says "How do you do" when she arrives, "Good morning" while there, and "Good-by" when she leaves. And do they presume because of her "familiarity" when she remembers to ask after the parlor-maid's mother and the butler's baby? They wait on her as they wait on no one else who comes to the house—neither the Senator nor the Governor, nor his Grace of Overthere!

This ideal guest is an equally ideal hostess; the principle of both is the same. A ready smile, a quick sympathy, a happy outlook, consideration for others, tenderness toward everything that is young or helpless, and forgetfulness of self, which is not far from the ideal of womankind.

The Guest On A Private Car Or Yacht

The sole difference between being a guest at a country house and a guest on a private car or a yacht, is that you put to a very severe test tour adaptability as a traveler. You live in very close quarters with your host and hostess and fellow guests, and must therefore be particularly on your guard against being selfish or out of humor. If you are on shore and don't feel well, you can stay home; but off on a cruise, if you are ill you have to make the best of it, and a sea-sick person's "best" is very bad indeed! Therefore let it be hoped you are a good sailor. If not, think very, very carefully before you embark!

CHAPTER XXVI

ToC

THE HOUSE PARTY IN CAMP

"Roughing it" in the fashionable world (on the Atlantic coast) is rather suggestive of the dairymaid playing of Marie Antoinette; the "rough" part being mostly "picturesque effect" with little taste of actual discomfort. Often, of course, the "roughing it" is real, especially west of the Mississippi (and sometimes in the East too); so real that it has no place in a book of etiquette at all. In the following picture of a fashionable "camping party" it should perhaps be added, that not only the Worldlys but most of the women really think they are "roughing it."

At the same time there is nothing that a genuine dependent upon luxury resents more than to be told he is dependent. It is he who has but newly learned the comforts of living who protests his inability to endure discomfort.

The very same people therefore who went a short time before to Great Estates, women who arrived with their maids and luggage containing personal equipment of amazing perfection and unlimited quantity (to say nothing of jewels worth a king's ransom), and men who usually travel with their own man-servants and every variety of raiment and paraphernalia, on being invited to "rough it" with the Kindharts at Mountain Summit Camp, are the very ones who most promptly and enthusiastically telegraph their delighted acceptance. At a certain party a few years ago, the only person who declined was a young woman of so little "position" that she was quite offended that Mrs. Kindhart should suppose her able to endure discomfort such as her invitation implied.

This year the Worldlys, the Normans, the Lovejoys, the "Bobo" Gildings, the Littlehouses, Constance Style, Jim Smartlington and his bride, Clubwin Doe and young Struthers make up the party. No one declined, not even the Worldlys, though there is a fly in the amber of their perfect satisfaction. Mrs. Kindhart wrote "not to bring a maid." Mrs. Worldly is very much disturbed, because she cannot do her hair herself. Mr. Worldly is even more perturbed at the thought of going without his valet. He has never in the twenty years since he left college been twenty-four hours away from Ernest. He knows perfectly well that Ernest is not expected. But he means to take him—he will say nothing about it; he can surely find a place for Ernest to stay somewhere.

The other men all look upon a holiday away from formality (which includes valeting) as a relief, like the opening of a window in a stuffy room, and none of the women except Mrs. Worldly would take her maid if she could.

The Clothes They Take

The men all rummage in attics and trunk-rooms for those disreputable looking articles of wearing apparel dear to all sportsmen; oil soaked boots, water soaked and sun bleached woolen, corduroy, leather or canvas garments and hats, each looking too shabby from their wives' (or valet's) point of view to be offered to a tramp.

Every evening is spent in cleaning guns, rummaging for unprepossessing treasures of shooting and fishing equipment. The women also give thought to their wardrobes—consisting chiefly in a process of elimination. Nothing perishable, nothing requiring a maid's help to get into, or to take care of. Golf clothes are first choice, and any other old country clothes, skirts and sweaters, and lots of plain shirt waists to go under the sweaters. An old polo coat and a mackintosh is chosen by each. And for evenings something "comfortable" and "easy to put on" in the way of a house gown or ordinary summer "day dress." One or two decide to take tea gowns in dark color and plainest variety.

All the women who sew or knit take something to "work on" in unoccupied moments, such as the hours of sitting silent in a canoe while husbands fish.

Finally the day arrives. Every one meets at the railroad station. They are all as smart looking as can be, there is no sign of "rough" clothes anywhere, though nothing in the least like a jewel case or parasol is to be seen. At the end of somewhere between eight and eighteen hours, they arrive at a shed which sits at the edge of the single track and is labelled Dustville Junction, and hurrying down the narrow platform is their host. Except that his face is clean shaven and his manners perfect, he might be taken for a tramp. Three far from smart looking teams—two buckboards and an express wagon—are standing near by. Kindhart welcomes everyone with enthusiasm—except the now emerging Ernest. For once Kindhart is nonplussed and he says to Worldly: "This isn't Newport, you know—of course we can give him a bed somewhere, but this is really no place for Ernest and there's nothing for him to do!"

Worldly, for the moment at a loss, explains lamely: "I thought he might be useful—if you could find some corner for him to-night, then we can see—that's all right, isn't it?"

Kindhart as host can't say anything further except to agree. Everyone is bundled into the buckboards (except Ernest who goes on top of the luggage in the express wagon), and a "corduroy" drive of six or eight miles begins.

What The Camp Is Like

Summit Camp is a collection of wooden shacks like a group of packing cases dumped in a clearing among the pine trees at the edge of a mountain lake. Those who have never been there before feel some misgivings, those who have been there before remember with surprise that they had liked the place! The men alone are filled with enthusiasm. The only person who is thoroughly apprehensive of the immediate future is Ernest.

In front of the largest of the shacks, Mrs. Kindhart, surrounded by dogs and children, waves and hurries forward, beaming. Her enthusiasm is contagious, the children look blooming. That the "hardship" is not hurting them, is evident! And when the guests have seen the inside of the camps most of them are actually as pleased as they look. The biggest "shack" is a living-room, the one nearest is the dining camp, four or five smaller ones are sleeping camps for guests and another is the Kindharts' own.

The "living" camp is nothing but a single room about thirty feet wide and forty feet long, with an open raftered roof for ceiling. It has windows on four sides and a big porch built on the southeast corner. There is an enormous open fireplace, and a floor good enough to dance on. The woodwork is of rough lumber and has a single coat of leaf-green paint. The shelves between the uprights are filled with books. All the new novels and magazines are spread out on a long table. The room is furnished with Navajo blankets, wicker furniture, steamer chairs, and hammocks are hung across two of the corners. Two long divan sofas on either side of the fireplace are the only upholstered pieces of furniture in the whole camp, except the mattresses on the beds.

The guest camps are separate shacks, each one set back on a platform, leaving a porch in front. Inside they vary in size; most have two, some have four rooms, but each is merely one pointed-roofed space. The front part has a fireplace and is furnished as a sitting-room, the rear half is partitioned into two or more cubicles, like box-stalls, with partitions about eight feet high and having regular doors. In each of the single rooms, there is a bed, bureau, washstand, chair, and two shelves about six or seven feet high, with a calico curtain nailed to the top one and hanging to the floor, making a hat shelf and clothes closet. The few "double" rooms are twice the size and have all furniture in duplicate. There is also a matting or a rag rug on the floor, and that is all!

Each cottage has a bathroom but the hot water supply seems complicated. A sign says your guide will bring it to you when needed. Mrs. Worldly, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and hungry, is firmly determined to go home on the next morning train. Before she has had much time to reflect, Mrs. Kindhart reports that lunch is nearly ready. Guides come with canisters of hot water, and everyone goes to dress. Town clothes disappear, and woods clothes emerge. This by no means makes a dowdy picture. Good sport clothes never look so well or becoming as when long use has given them an "accustomed set" characteristic of their wearer. The men put on their oldest country clothes too. Not their fishing "treasures" to sit at table with ladies! The treasured articles go on in the early dawn, and the guides are the only humans (except themselves) supposed worthy to behold them!

Presently a gong is sounded. The Kindhart children run to the guest houses to call out that "the gong means dinner is ready!" And "dinner" means lunch.

Dining-room Details

In a short while the very group of people who only ten days before were being shown to their places in the Worldlys' own tapestry-hung marble dining-room at Great Estates by a dozen footmen in satin knee breeches, file into the "dining camp" and take their places at a long pine table, painted turkey red, on ordinary wooden kitchen chairs, also red! The floral decoration is of laurel leaves in vases made of preserve jars covered with birch bark. Glass and china is of the cheapest. But there are a long centerpiece of hemstitched crash and crash doilies, and there are "real" napkins, and at each plate a birch bark napkin ring with a number on it. Mrs. Worldly looks