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

III.—IMPORTED MANNERS.

N. P. Willis says, "We should be glad to see a distinctly American school of good manners, in which all useless etiquette were thrown aside, but every politeness adopted or invented which could promote sensible and easy exchanges of good-will and sociability. Good sense and consideration for others should be the basis of every usage of polite life that is worth regarding. Indeed, we have long thought that our country was old enough to adopt measures and etiquettes of its own, based, like all other politeness, upon benevolence and common sense. To get rid of imported etiquette is the first thing to do for American politeness."

This is an important truth well stated. We have had enough of mere imported conventionalism in manners. Our usages should not be English or French usages, further than English and French usages are founded on universal principles. Politeness is the same everywhere and always, but the forms of etiquette must change with times and places; for an observance which may be proper and useful in London or Paris, may be abundantly absurd in New York.