Rules of Etiquette

Rules of Etiquette

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ETIQUETTE is a comprehensive term, for it embraces not only all observances connected with social intercourse, but such as belong particularly to the home circle.

To obtain fireside comforts and home-born enjoyments and happiness, something more is required than a handsome house, a beautiful lawn, shade-trees, and a garden filled with flowers and arranged in the most artistic order.

Family bickerings and strife; a lack of politeness, good-breeding and etiquette, would turn the loveliest Eden into a barren waste.

It will avail us little to furnish our houses with all the elegancies which the upholsterer's art can afford, and to cultivate the grounds with the utmost skill, if our hearts and minds are uncultivated, rough, uncouth and uncivil.

The members of one family must unceasingly interchange kind offices; must rejoice and mourn, hope and fear smile and weep in unison; and must exchange sympathetic emotions, with a due regard to each other's feelings, or the charming delights of the domestic circle will lose much of their relish, or will be broken up and become totally devoid of interest.

And it cannot be too strongly impressed upon the mind, that mutual respect is the basis of true affection; and, although it may seem a trifling matter in the family whether this or that mode of speech is adopted, in reality it is a very important thing.

Children and servants are greatly influenced by the demeanor of master and mistress of the house; and the husband who addresses his wife, in their presence, in a derogatory manner, does both himself and her a decided injury. While the wife, on her part, is equally bound to show all due respect to her husband.

Every human being possesses an innate perc...

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...too trifling for us to heed, are often the things by which the world judges us. There are many little matters of personal bearing and conduct which must be attended to, if we desire to be agreeable to society.

It is useless to say that such a man, whose attire is neglected, whose whole appearance bespeaks the sloven, is a good and able man and therefore must be agreeable and pleasing. His ability and goodness are, doubtless, desirable qualities, but the personal juxtaposition of the man is insupportable to those who are accustomed to cleanliness and refinement.

Not that it is essential that every man should be externally elegant, or an adept in the rules which constitute good-breeding; but no one can hope to be admired and sought after, who is addicted to conspicuous uncleanliness, the special tendency of which is to inspire painful feelings in those around him.