What Not to Do.
Never write the word “accepts,” “regrets” or “declines” upon your visiting card and send in lieu of a written note. To do so is not only an insult to your hostess but a mark as well of your own ill-breeding. An invitation, which is always an honor and implies the best that your host is able to offer, should always receive the courtesy of a civil reply.
[Etiquette of Courtship and Marriage]
“Courtship,” according to Sterne, “consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.”
In this little quotation lies the spirit and the letter of all etiquette regarding courtship. The passion of love generally appearing to everyone save the man who feels it, so entirely disproportionate to the value of the object, so impossible to be entered into by any outside individual, that any strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third person. For this reason it is that all extravagance of feeling should be carefully repressed as an offense against good breeding.
Man was made for woman, and woman equally for man. How shall they treat each other? How shall they come to understand their mutual relations and duties? It is lofty work to write upon this subject what ought to be written. Mistakes, fatal blunders, hearts and lives wrecked, homes turned into bear-gardens, tears, miseries, blasted hopes, awful tragedies—can you name the one most prolific cause of all these?
If our young people were taught what they ought to know—if it were told them from infancy up—if it were drilled into them and they were made to understand what now is all a mystery to them—a dark, vague, unriddled mystery—hearts would be happier, homes would be brighter, lives would be worth living and the world would be better.
“Good Night! Good Night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”
A POLITE ESCORT.
This is now the matter—matter grave and serious enough—which we have in hand. There are gems of wisdom founded on health, morality, happiness, which should be put within reach of every household in our whole broad land. It is a most important, yet neglected subject. People are squeamish, cursed with mock modesty, ashamed to speak with their lips what their Creator spoke through their own minds and bodies when he formed them. It is time such nonsense—nonsense shall we say?—rather say it is time such fatal folly were withered and cursed by the sober common sense and moral duty of universal society.
Courtship! Its theme, how delightful! Its memories and associations, how charming! Its luxuries the most luxurious proffered to mortals! Its results how far reaching, and momentous! No mere lover’s fleeting bauble, but life’s very greatest work! None are equally portentous, for good and evil.