If you write a letter asking for information, you should always enclose an envelope, addressed and stamped for the answer.
Courtesy demands that you reply to all letters immediately.
If you are in a company of men where two or more are talking over business matters, do not listen to the conversation which it was not intended you should hear.
In calling upon a man during business hours, transact your business rapidly and make your call as short as is consistent with the matters on hand. As a rule, men have but little time to visit during business hours.
If an employer has occasion to reprove any of his clerks or employes, he will find that by speaking kindly he will accomplish the desired object much better than by harsher means.
In paying out a large sum of money, insist that the person to whom it is paid shall count it in your presence, and on the other hand, never receive a sum of money without counting it in the presence of the party who pays it to you. In this way mistakes may be avoided.
CHAPTER XXX.
Dress.
O dress well requires good taste, good sense and refinement. A woman of good sense will neither make dress her first nor her last object in life. No sensible wife will betray that total indifference for her husband which is implied in the neglect of her appearance, and she will remember that to dress consistently and tastefully is one of the duties which she owes to society. Every lady, however insignificant her social position may appear to herself, must exercise a certain influence on the feelings and opinions of others. An attention to dress is useful as retaining, in the minds of sensible men, that pride in a wife's appearance, which is so agreeable to her, as well as that due influence which cannot be obtained without it. But a love of dress has its perils for weak minds. Uncontrolled by good sense, and stimulated by personal vanity it becomes a temptation at first, and then a curse. When it is indulged in to the detriment of better employments, and beyond the compass of means, it cannot be too severely condemned. It then becomes criminal.