After a funeral it is customary for the family to supply a few extra carriages in which the pallbearers and mourners go to the burial ground. After this ceremony the bachelor, who has availed himself of one of the vehicles, may, with propriety, ask the driver to take him to his rooms; but it is a gross breach of good form to keep the carriage on (at the family’s expense) for calling, going to the play, or driving to Belmont Park for the races.
In thanking friends for wedding presents, it is well to remember that nearly all of them will have to be exchanged. Lay your plans accordingly. Do not thank anybody until you have bunched the duplicates.
Let us assume, for instance, that the seventeen traveling clocks, forty-eight candlesticks, eleven porcelain parasol handles, fifty-one cut-glass salad bowls, thirteen fans, and eighty-four silver teapots have all been gathered together in convenient groups. At this point the bride-to-be may dictate an appropriate “teapot” letter to her secretary. This note will do for all the teapots. The following is a graceful example of such an epistle:
My Dear —— ——:
The teapot is too ravishing. What an angel you are! I simply adore it. Oddly enough, it was the very thing I had longed and prayed for.
Yours ever,
Blanche.
P. S.—Where did you say you bought it?