And so, if you travel, remember that as soon as you reach a place where you intend to stop for a short while, send out visiting cards to all your friends, relatives and acquaintances, and let them know your temporary address. It may be written in pencil or ink above the home address. When you change your address permanently, be sure that all your friends and acquaintances know of the change. For this purpose, the old visiting cards are the best to use; they may be sent with a line drawn through the old address, and the new written above it.
A man stopping at a hotel for a week or two, and desirous of letting his friends in the vicinity know of his whereabouts, posts his cards bearing the temporary address, to all his masculine friends, and calls and leaves his card upon the women he wishes to see. A woman stopping at a hotel or resort, posts her visiting cards, with the temporary address above her home address, to all whose attention she wishes to claim,—men and women.
P.P.C. CARDS
Pour prendre congé, it means, a French expression translated to read, "To take leave." And it is used in connection with those last-day visits before one sails for Europe, or starts on a long trip to some distant place.
The ordinary visiting card is used, with the letters P.P.C. written in pencil or ink in one corner, indicating the departure and so differentiating it from other cards. Cards so inscribed are posted to, or left with, all friends and acquaintances, a day or two before setting out on the voyage. No acknowledgment is necessary as they are courtesy-cards with no relation whatever to one's social debts and dues.
P.P.C. cards are always necessary before an extended departure, but they are particularly so when one owes calls in return for hospitality, or calls in return for first calls. If there is very little time, and a great many calls to be attended to, it is entirely correct in this case to drive from house to house, leaving the cards with the servant who opens the door. The cards may even be posted a day before the departure, if time is very much limited.
It is not usual for P.P.C. cards to be distributed at the end of the season, when members of society make their regular change of residence. As explained under the head "When Traveling," a visiting card may be sent to one's friends and acquaintances, bearing the temporary address above the permanent home address. Thus the P.P.C. card would not be especially necessary.
[ ] [ [1]There seems to be a tendency for widows to use, the first year of their mourning, cards that have borders measuring one-third of an inch in width. Certainly if one is in deep mourning, and genuinely sorrowing, a border of this width is permissible. But the one-quarter inch border, varying down to one-sixteenth of an inch, is always preferred, always in better taste.
[ ] [ [2]Chaperon being to-day a practically obsolete term, we use it here to signify the parent or guardian most directly concerned with the social welfare of the young lady.