The Etiquette of To-day

by Edith B. Ordway

The child should be allowed a certain sum of money, which, even in the most lavish homes, should be a little under what the wants of the child require. The giving of this money should be done regularly at a stated time, and there should never be any extra giving, or increase of the usual sum, except under very unusual circumstances, which should not be allowed to happen more than once a year.

The child should also be held accountable for his money. If he is old enough to have any money, or to spend any, he is old enough to tell how he spent it, even to the last penny. Unless all is accounted for, the habits of accuracy and care are not formed. The record of this should be written down, even if done very simply and without special form, and later, as the child grows older, more conventional forms of bookkeeping should be required.

It should be also required that there be some saving, which is preferably a certain proportion of the whole, this for a beginning to which to add extra sums as the child may wish. This saved sum should be permanently put by, and drawing from it should not be permitted. It may be transferred to a bank at long intervals, always by the child himself, and his pride in doing it and keeping it there should be cultivated.

These matters may all be made a game and sheer fun. Their grave importance is apparent on every hand. For the child which has been taught early to do these things, will do them with such ease as to make it seem instinctive, and the child who does it will never, under any ordinary circumstances, come to want.

The proper behavior in church should be taught rather by trying to inculcate the spirit of worship than by making rules to be followed. A child is very susceptible to impressiveness of any sort, and if the reason for it is made clear to him, he will be quicker to respond to it by a reverent attitude of spirit than does an older person. Even the obstreperous child is at least temporarily impressed, if he sees that others are, and if he knows the reason for it.

Children should realize that it is their privilege and duty to serve guests, whether their own or their parents. The sacrifice of one's own comfort for the sake of the guest takes, with a child, the form of a sort of play, usually because of the excitement of the arrival of a stranger, and the possibilities of fun in the enjoyment of the stranger's stay.

The child should be taught respect for the guest's person, and should not be allowed to take the same liberties with a gown or a glove that sometimes the mother or aunts permit, no matter how great the novelty of the texture or how it appeals to the child's sense of beauty. The privileges of being a guest should be always duly respected, and the child be thus taught at once his duty as a host and his position as a guest.

Children should never be allowed to play with a visitor's hat or cane, or handle furniture or ornaments in a strange house, or show by ill-mannerly conduct the curiosity which a child, in unaccustomed surroundings, naturally feels. They can be taught so great a respect for the possessions of others that they would become able to stifle their curiosity, or express it only at a fitting time.

Children should not be sent to the drawing-room to entertain visitors, unless the visitors request it themselves. Nor should they be allowed to be troublesome to visitors or guests at any time, any more than servants should be allowed to be insolent. They should never be allowed the freedom of the rooms of the guests, nor to visit them often or long.

Children should not be permitted to enter into the pleasures of their elders when, to do so, would be to spoil the kind of sociability for which the occasion was intended. At all formal functions, children are out of place. When making formal calls, children are usually in the way, and the silent part they are forced to play is disagreeable for them. They are also out of place at a funeral, or in a cemetery, or anywhere that there is mourning. It is an injury to a child to see grief,—unless it be his great concern, and in that case it is no longer a matter of etiquette, but of necessary life experience.