It is well to return a bow which is directed to you, even if you do not know the one bowing. This often saves considerable embarrassment to the one who has for the moment mistaken you for some one else.
When passing before ladies seated in a lecture hall, or concert, a gentleman always asks their pardon for troubling them.
In passing or repassing on the street or promenade, a single bow is sufficient recognition, even though you may meet an acquaintance several times.
A lady, receiving in her own home, shakes hands with the stranger with the same cordiality as with the friend.
A gentleman when greeting a lady never takes the initiative in hand-shaking. If a lady offers her hand, however, it would be very rude indeed for a gentleman not to accept the courtesy.
Persons who have met at the house of a mutual friend, but have not been introduced, are under no obligation to bow when they meet elsewhere afterward, and usually do not.
When a man passes a lady on a staircase, in the corridor of a hotel, in the elevator of a private apartment house, or in the public rooms of a hotel, he lifts his hat although she may be a stranger.
This rule does not prevail on the staircases and in the corridors of office buildings, with the exception, perhaps, of banks and such offices as people of wealth frequent; for a new fineness of courtesy has made men feel that, as women are winning an equality of position in the business field, a delicate way of recognizing that equality is by giving them a comradely deference rather than paying them the social attentions. Another marked expression of this is in the fact that a business man, when walking on the street with a business woman, does not interrupt their conversation by changing sides with her in order to keep constantly on the outside of the walk.
An indication of the two kinds of courtesy, social and business, is often grotesquely shown when a woman in social life, perhaps the wife of one of the men present, enters an office where there are both men and women of equal business importance and social rank. There is an elaborate social courtesy paid to the wife, who is in private life, which would not be paid, and would seem grotesque and ill-mannered if paid, to the business woman, even though she were at once the active vice president of the corporation and wife of the president.
Introductions