Manners cost nothing. Every parent—though the veriest pauper—can
give them to every child. You may not be able to send your boy to
Harvard nor your girl to dancing school. They will never upbraid you for
that. But bring them through childhood surrounded by and solely taught
coarse, common, slovenly ways of speech and behavior, and no matter how
devoted and unselfish you have otherwise tried to be, as surely as they
live will they see the day when your memory is stung by the bitterest
reproaches.
Start them in the
world with faultless manners, and though they have no other inheritance
they are immeasurably far from poor in the world’s most cherished coin.
Money does not rule everywhere. Does some busy, tired mother or careworn
father cry out, “How shall I study all the intricacies of etiquette to
teach them again!” I reply: There are a dozen broad rules that are
sufficient to pass muster. The rest are very good to know, and not
absolutely necessary.
I set down
some of them here, with this excuse, that I see them constantly
violated by bright, gentle little people who would be glad to "act
pretty," if, poor, small souls they had the faintest stimulus of example
or even precept to guide them. Teach a boy never to wear his hat in the
house, nor while standing before a woman; to allow a woman always to
precede him, even (as latest advices say) in ascending stairs; to be
quick to open doors for her, to carry her parcels, to wait upon her and
never to sit while she is standing.
Teach
both boys and girls good table manners. Make them wait by their chairs
till their elders are seated; eat noiselessly; not fidget nor talk with
full mouths, nor upon unappetizing subjects; not leave knife and fork
trailing off the plate, but always laid side by side, never crossed upon
it, every second that they are not in use; not to soak and sop their
food; not to bite off bits from a slice: to half fold the napkin when it
is not to be used again; not to reach: to be courteous in thanks and
requests; to push the chair against the table after the meal.
Teach
them always to knock at a closed door: not to call from one room to
another; not to slouch in their seats, nor, if in a rocking chair, to
rock. With speech there are more than a dozen ‘don'ts.’ They certainly
are vulgar who use "havin’’ and "doin,” and “run” for "ran” and "come”
for "came;” who are not early taught to abstain from subjects and
words—all proper enough in their place—that are not agreeable to the
most sensitive ear.
A child almost surely learns from the beginning to wash his hands often; not to take bones in his fingers nor to drink from his saucer; to take off his hat when be meets a lady (but it should include even little girls) and to use “done” and "seen” in in their proper places. I wish some elders were not content with this very slim outfit of polite baggage when as much more would be as easily taught. "Some day the child will wish so, too." says the writer in Good Housekeeping, from whom we quote.—Red Bluff Daily News, 1892
A child almost surely learns from the beginning to wash his hands often; not to take bones in his fingers nor to drink from his saucer; to take off his hat when be meets a lady (but it should include even little girls) and to use “done” and "seen” in in their proper places. I wish some elders were not content with this very slim outfit of polite baggage when as much more would be as easily taught. "Some day the child will wish so, too." says the writer in Good Housekeeping, from whom we quote.—Red Bluff Daily News, 1892
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