Manners and Social Usages

Manners and Social Usages [with accents]

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Title: Manners and Social Usages
Author: Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
Release Date: June, 2005 [EBook #8399] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 7, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES ***

Produced by Holly Ingraham.

[frontispiece]THE MODERN DINNER-TABLE.
MANNERS AND SOCIAL USAGES BY MRS. JOHN SHERWOOD M.E.W.
AUTHOR OF "A TRANSPLANTED ROSE"
"Manners are the shadows of great virtues."--Whateley
"Solid Fashion is funded politeness."--Emerson
NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION, REVISED BY THE AUTHOR
JUN 11 1887

PG TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:
This etiquette manual was probably originally a series of columns in a newspaper or a magazine like Harper's, as the chapters on weddings in the different seasons refer to how the fashions have changed since the last one--by the original copyright, 1884, though the book version appeared in 1887. Notable features among the usual: how to dance the German, or Cotillon; remarks and four chapters on English, French, or others in contrast to American customs, making it a guide to European manners; proper behavior for the single woman past girlhood; appropriate costumes for many occasions; three chapters on staff and servants.
PREFACE.
There is no country where there are so many people asking what is "proper to do," or, indeed, where there are so many genuinely anxious to do the proper thing, as in the vast conglomerate which we call the United States of America. The newness of our country is perpetually renewed by the sudden making of fortunes, and by the absence of a hereditary, reigning set. There is no aristocracy here which has the right and title to set the fashions.
But a "reigning set," whether it depend upon hereditary right or adventitious wealth, if it be possessed of a desire to lead and a disposition to hospitality, becomes for a period the dictator of fashion to a large number of lookers-on. The travelling world, living far from great centres, goes to Newport, Saratoga, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and gazes on what is called the latest American fashion. This, though exploited by what we may call for the sake of distinction the "newer set," is influenced and shaped in some degree by people of native refinement and taste, and that wide experience which is gained by travel and association with broad and cultivated minds. They counteract the tendency to vulgarity, which is the great danger of a newly launched society, so that our social condition improves, rather than retrogrades, with every decade.
There may be many social purists who will disagree with us in this statement. Men and women educated in the creeds of the Old World, with the good blood of a long ancestry of quiet ladies and gentlemen, find modern American society, particularly in New York and at Newport, fast, furious, and vulgar. There are, of course, excesses committed everywhere in the name of fashion; but we cannot see that they are peculiar to America. We can only answer that the creed of fashion is one of perpetual change. There is a Council of Trent, we may say, every five years, perhaps even every two years, in our new and changeful country, and we learn that, follow as we may either the grand old etiquette of England or the more gay and shifting social code of France, we still must make an original etiquette of our own. Our political system alone, where the lowest may rise to the highest preferment, upsets in a measure all that the Old World insists upon in matters of precedence and formality. Certain immutable principles remain common to all elegant people who assume to gather society about them, and who wish to enter its portals; the absent-minded scholar from his library should not ignore them, the fresh young farmer from the countryside feels and recognizes their importance. If we are to live together in unity we must make society a pleasant