Mother's Remedies Part 193

Don't read your letters to others, unless they are family letters in which all may rightly have a share. A letter is a private communication.

Keeping Letters.--It is a bad plan to keep old letters, especially if they are of a personal nature, or if they contain confidences or secrets. When the owner dies, there is no knowing to what use they may be put. One regrets the publication of the private letters of great men and women, showing, as they so often do, the foolish, silly, conceited side of a character we have admired. Private letters are often disillusioning, or betray the presence of the skeleton of the family, unhappiness or disgrace.

The safest way is to keep a letter till it is answered, then destroy it, This does away with a lot of useless lumber.

Letters of Congratulation and Condolence.--It is not possible to give forms for letters of this character. They are meaningless unless they come from the heart, and should be characterized by sincerity. Nevertheless, they should be written, and promptly, as also letters of acknowledgment of gifts, favors offered, and the "bread-and-b.u.t.ter letter"--the missive you write to your hostess after a few days' visit. Letters of condolence are especially difficult to write. One so fears to wound instead of comforting. If one can offer some quotation that has been a personal help in time of sorrow, it is often gratefully appreciated. But because we "don't know what to say" we must not omit writing. The letter is often a greater kindness than the call, which is a tax upon the strength of the mourner.

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown; no traveler ever reached that blessed abode who found not sorrows in his road."

"Wherever souls are being tried and ripened in whatever commonplace and homely way, there G.o.d is hewing out the pillars for His temple."

Do not think you must write a long letter. A few well chosen phrases, sincere expressions of feeling, are more grateful to one who grieves. One may say:

My dearest Friend:-- It is with sincerest sorrow I have just heard of your great bereavement. I cannot hope to comfort you; G.o.d only can do that, but I want to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your sad affliction.

Believe me, most faithfully yours,

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On the other hand, if we must congratulate, we may write:

I have just heard of your engagement to Mr. Blank, and wish to be among the first of your friends to express my sympathy with you in your happiness. I have known Mr. Blank for some time, and greatly admire his many good qualities. I am sure you are very happy with him, and will be more so as you grow together in marriage. Hoping good fortune and joy may always be your portion in life, and present bliss an earnest of more in store for you, I am, Most sincerely yours,

MANNERS FOR MEN.

"Politeness and good breeding are absolutely necessary to adorn any or all other good qualities or talents."--Chesterfield.

Though what we call society is largely vested in women, and women's customs regulate etiquette, men are by no means exempt from the necessity of knowing and practising what we call good manners. A man can have no greater charm than that easy, unstudied, unconscious compliance with social forms which marks what we call "a man of the world"--the man who knows what a good manner requires of him in any situation, and does it quietly and with the grace of habit.

There has been no time in the history of the world when good manners counted for more than at the present. This is true of both men and women.

It is so true that in certain fields it is practically impossible to succeed without their aid. The value of a pleasing manner can hardly be overestimated. Such a manner is as far from the self-a.s.surance and presumptuous familiarity which some men a.s.sume under the idea that these are impressive, as night is from day.

Value of Courtesy.--Courtesy has a commercial value, and exerts no little influence upon a man's success in business. Polite attention and readiness to oblige bring customers again and again, where their lack would send people to rival houses.

We can forgive, in the intellectually great, or in the man of affairs who has done things worth doing, a lack of social training that would not be endured in a man with no such claim. Yet this is not saying that the great man would not command more unqualified admiration were he to practise the social graces instead of ignoring them. The truth is, the fact that we have to overlook the absence of these graces induces a more critical att.i.tude toward his achievements. Great though he be in spite of his lack of courtesy, we feel he would have been greater had he known and practised the art of gentle manners.

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The Manners of the Gentleman.--These "gentle-manners," that make the "gentle man" are an indispensable requisite to success in society. They testify to a man's good breeding, to his social affiliations; they "place him." They often bring a man many things that wealth could not.

The rich boor is despised in spite of his money. The poor man may be popular because of his pleasing personality and his fine manner.

Men sometimes profess to despise those refinements that are a.s.sociated with good manners, saying they detest affectations. But these things are not to be affectations. They should be the outward expression of inward kindness and good-will and unselfishness. The cultivation of good manners is a duty; somebody has said that "the true spirit of good manners is so nearly allied to that of good morals that they seem almost inseparable."

John G. Holland says somewhere: "Young men would be thoroughly astonished if they could comprehend at a glance how greatly their personal happiness, popularity, prosperity, and usefulness depend on their manners." Emerson remarked that,--"Manners should bespeak the man, independent of fine clothes. The general does not need a fine coat."

A Matter of Training.--It may be that politeness is instinctive with some, but with most men (women also), it is a matter of training and habit, and careful discipline. In process of time courtesy becomes perfectly natural, so gracefully spontaneous it seems to be.

Here is where the mother's work in the early training of her sons comes in. Taught from childhood, by example and precept, the observances that make for good manners, the young man wears them as easily and as unconsciously as he does his clothes.

Politeness an Armor.--There is no better armor against rudeness and discourtesy than politeness. The individual is impervious to slights and snubs who can meet them with the courtesy which at once puts the common person in his proper place as the inferior.

A woman is shocked and repelled by disagreeable manners in a man, manifested in discourtesy toward her, by an awkward manner, coa.r.s.e speech, incivility, neglect of the little attentions she expects of a man and which men of breeding render as a matter of course. A woman is more likely to fall in love with a homely man of pleasing address than with an Adonis so clad in self-complacency that he thinks politeness unnecessary, or one who does not know its forms.

THE ETIQUETTE OF THE HAT.

The first rule a man should observe in regard to his hat is never to wear it in the presence of women, save in the open. If mothers would take the trouble to train their small sons to rigid observance of the rule of removing their head covering the moment they enter the house there would, be fewer adults guilty of this particular discourtesy, which is at once the greatest and the most common. One occasionally sees a man wearing his hat and preceding a woman down the aisle of a theatre.

The expression, "tipping the hat," is a vulgarism. A man doesn't "tip" his hat, he raises it quite off his head.

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The Coachman's Salute.--The semi-military salute--raising the hand to the hat as if to lift it, but merely approaching the forefinger to the brim--is a discourtesy to a woman. Such a salute would bring a reproof in military circles; it is objectionable among men. Actually it is the manner in which a man-servant acknowledges an order from his master or mistress, and is not inaptly called "the coachman's salute."

A man wears his hat on the street, on the deck of the steamboat, in a picture-gallery or promenade concert-room. He removes it in a theatre, the opera-house, and the parlors of a hotel.

When to Raise the Hat.--Men raise their hats to each other on the street.

They extend the same courtesy to all members of their family, of both s.e.xes. A well-bred man raises his hat to his little daughter, as he would to his wife.

On the street, a man must wait for a lady to recognize him, but should be ready to remove his hat simultaneously with her greeting, raising and replacing it quickly. The fas.h.i.+on of removing the hat after meeting a lady is absurd. How does she know the courtesy has been extended?

When a man is with a lady who recognizes an acquaintance, he must raise his hat, whether he knows the individual or not. He should, however, keep his eyes straight ahead, not looking at the person.

If he meets a man walking with a lady whom he does not know, he waits the man's recognition.

A man removes his hat in an elevator if women enter or are already inside.

This rule is often ignored in large public buildings.

If a woman bows to a man in any place where it is his privilege to wear his hat, he removes his hat and does not replace it while she is talking with him. This rule applies everywhere except on the street. "A gentleman of the old school" will stand bareheaded on the street if exchanging a word or two with a lady; in such case she may request him to replace his hat.

A man when driving or motoring cannot remove his hat. He bends forward slightly and touches his hat brim with his whip, held upright, in the first case, and raises his hand to the visor of his cap in the latter.

At Other Times.--When he is able to render some slight service to a woman whom he does not know, she will thank him with a slight inclination of the head and a smile, and he should raise his hat. When he relinquishes his seat in the street car, he should give the lady a chance to acknowledge his courtesy, and then raise his hat.

Men raise their hats and stand uncovered as a funeral cortege pa.s.ses into the church or from a house, and at the grave.

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