How to Behave: A Pocket Manual of Republican Etiquette, and Guide to Correct Personal Habits / Embracing an Exposition of the Principles of Good Manners; Useful Hints on the Care of the Person, Eating, Drinking, Exercise, Habits, Dress, Self-culture, and Behavior at Home; the Etiquette of Salutations, Introductions, Receptions, Visits, Dinners, Evening Parties, Conversation, Letters, Presents, Weddings, Funerals, the Street, the Church, Places of Amusement, Traveling, Etc., with Illustrative Anecdotes, a Chapter on Love and Courtship, and Rules of Order for Debating Societies

by Samuel R. Wells

II.—CITY AND COUNTRY.

The words civil and civilized are derived from the Latin civitas (Ital., città), a city, and polite, from the Greek πολις (polis), a city; because cities are the first to become civilized, or civil, and polite, or polished (Latin, polire). They are still, as a general rule, the home of the most highly cultivated people, as well as of the rudest and most degraded, and unquestioned arbiters of fashion and social observances. For this reason the rules of etiquette laid down in this and all other works on the subject of manners, are calculated, as the astronomers say, for the meridian of the city. The observances of the country are borrowed from the city, and modified to suit the social condition and wants of the different localities. This must always be borne in mind, and your behavior regulated accordingly. The white or pale yellow gloves, which you must wear during the whole evening at a fashionable evening party in the city, under pain of being set down as unbearably vulgar, would be very absurd appendages at a social gathering at a farm-house in the country. None but a snob would wear them at such a place. So with other things.