"'Never eat pease with a spoon;
Never eat pie with a knife;
Never put salt on a prune;
Never throw crumbs at your wife.'"
They tell most of us what we all knew before. They tell us not to wear our hats in the house; they tell us all the obvious things, but the subtleties of how to get into society they do not tell us. The comic papers give us some idea of how to behave in society. We know from reading the funny papers that a really swell young man always leans against a mantel-piece when he is calling; that the swell girl sits on a comfortable divan with her feet on a tiger-skin rug, and they converse in epigram. Sometimes the epigram is positively rude; when it is not rude it is so dull that no one wonders that the tiger's head on the rug represents the tiger as yawning. But, while this is instructive, it teaches us how to behave on special occasions only. You or I might call upon a young woman who did not sit on a divan, who had no tiger-skin rug to put her feet on, and whose parlor had a mantel-piece against which we could not lean comfortably. What are we to do then? As far as they go, the funny papers are excellent, but they don't go far enough. They give us attractive pictures of fashionable dinners, but it is always of the dinner after the game course. Some of us would like to know how society behaves while the soup is being served. We know that after the game course society girls reach across the table and clink wine-glasses with young men, but we do not know what they do before they get to the clink stage. Nowhere is this information given. Etiquette books are silent on the subject, and though I have sought everywhere for information, I do not know to this day how many salted almonds one may consume at dinner without embarrassing one's hostess. Now, if I can't find out, the million can't find out. Wherefore, instead of shutting themselves selfishly up and, by so doing, forcing society finally into dissolution, why cannot some of these people who know what is what give object-lessons to the million; educate them in savoir-faire?
"Last summer there was a play put on at one of our theatres in which there was a scene at a race-track. At one side was a tally-ho coach. For the first week the coach was an utterly valueless accessory, because the people on it were the ordinary supers in the employ of the theatre. They did not know how to behave on a coach, and nobody was interested. The management were suddenly seized with a bright idea. They invited several swell young men who knew how things were done on coaches to come and do these things on their coach. The young men came and imparted a realism to the scene that made that coach the centre of attraction. People who went to that play departed educated in coach etiquette. Now there lies my scheme in a nutshell. If these twenty-five, the Old Guard of society, which dines but never surrenders, will give once a week a social function in some place like Madison Square Garden, to which the million may go merely as spectators, not as participators, is there any doubt that they would fail to be instructed? The Garden will seat eight or ten thousand people. Suppose, for an instance, that a dozen of your best exponents of what is what were to give a dinner in the middle of the arena, with ten thousand people looking on. Do you mean to say that of all that vast audience no one would learn thereby how to behave at a dinner?"
"It is a great scheme," said the Doctor.
"It is!" said the Idiot, "and I venture to say that a course of, say, twelve social functions given in that way would prove so popular that the Garden would turn away every night twice as many people as it could accommodate."
"It would be instructive, no doubt," said the Bibliomaniac; "but how would it expand society? Would you have examinations?"
"Most assuredly," said the Idiot. "At the end of the season I should have a rigid examination of all who chose to apply. I would make them dine in the presence of a committee of expert diners, I would have them pass a searching examination in the Art of Wearing a Dress Suit, in the Science of Entering a Drawing-room, in the Art of Behavior at Afternoon Teas, and all the men who applied should also be compelled to pass a physical examination as an assurance that they were equal to the task of getting an ice for a young lady at a ball."
"Society would get to be too inclusive and would cease to be exclusive," suggested Mr. Whitechoker.
"I think not," said the Idiot. "I should not give a man or a woman the degree of B.S. unless he or she had passed an examination of one hundred per cent."
"B.S.?" queried Mr. Pedagog.