Business addresses should never be used on a gentleman's social card. A physician or clergyman need not follow this rule, provided that no office hours are given.
Mr. Robert Livingston
4 West Tenth Street
PROFESSIONAL CARDS FOR MEN
Professional cards and visiting cards should always be kept distinct from each other. The physician who uses his professional card, with business hours engraved on it, for a social call, is committing an irretrievable blunder in etiquette.
A physician has the privilege of choosing either of two forms for his professional card. He may prefix his name with "Dr." or add the initials "M.D." to it. In the lower right-hand corner of the card, his house address is engraved; and in the opposite corner, his office hours. For his social cards, the physician omits the office hours and uses M.D. after his name rather than "Dr." before it.
"Rev." or "Reverend," is the approved title for a clergyman. Cards are engraved: "Reverend Raymond Falke Fleming" or "Rev. Raymond F. Fleming." A clergyman who is entitled to the degree of doctor may use all his titles on his professional cards, but has his social card engraved merely: "Ralph Kendrick Williams, D.D."
Not infrequently it happens that a man has occasion to write his name on a card with his own hand. In this case he does not omit the conventional "Mr.," or his honorary titles, but writes his name identically as it would appear if engraved.
No card should be crowded with a great deal of information but a business card may bear whatever is necessary really to represent the person whose name appears upon it. The salesman or other representative of a large firm has the name of the firm on his business card and the man who is in a highly specialized kind of work such as advertising, may have the word "Advertising" engraved on his card. An agent for a particular kind of commodity may have this fact indicated on his business card. Such details have, of course, absolutely no place on the social card.
CARDS FOR MOURNING
The tradition of edging a card with black in deference to the dead can be traced back to the ancient Patagonians who used black paint to denote the passing of a spirit. They painted their bodies black, if they were near relatives of the deceased, and painted all the belongings of the dead man or woman black. This may not have been so much mourning as it was fear, for these people of long ago were afraid of death, and they used the death-color largely to please the spirit of the one who died. Perhaps the black-bordered mourning cards we use to-day are used more in the spirit of ostentation and display rather than that of mourning.