AS TO FOREIGN PHRASES
Seldom use a foreign phrase even if you have perfectly mastered its meaning and pronunciation. The “well of English undefiled” is usually sufficient for all needs. People who constantly sprinkle their conversation and letters with “dictionary” French or Latin lay themselves open to the charge of affectation. Certain foreign words once accorded their original pronunciation are now habitually Anglicized. One of the commonest of these is “valet,” which is now spoken as if it were an ordinary English word.
Engage no servant who patronizes you. Give your maids to understand at the outset that you are the head of the house, and know perfectly well what you want each one to do, and how your household is to be run. Be kind with all—familiar with none. They are your severest critics. Never speak to them of your husband by his Christian name. Your daughter should be “Miss Mary” and your son “Master John” in this connection.
“Breakfast is on,” “Luncheon is ready,” “Dinner is served” are the correct formulas that you should require at the announcement of a meal. Assert yourself with dignity, never defiantly. Your servants have nothing to do with your past, or with anything connected with your personal history beyond the present relation existing between you and them. They will discuss and criticize you below-stairs and on “evenings out,” and, in the event of “changing their place,” to the next mistress who will stoop to listen to them. They would do the same were you a princess with a thousand-year-old pedigree. Stand in your lot and be philosophical.
You can not be too punctilious in not questioning them about how “things” were done in other houses in which they have been employed. Every such query will be construed into ignorance and diffidence. Be a law unto yourself and unto them.
WORDS TO BE AVOIDED
Learn to speak of your “maid” or “maids,” not of your “girl.” If you have two, call one the cook and the other the housemaid. “Girl” is in itself a perfectly good word but it has, like some other good words as “genteel,” become debased by getting into indifferent company. In referring to your family avoid the word “folks” which has been decreed inelegant. Substitute “folk” or “people.” Do not overwork the word “lady,”—never speak of a “saleslady,” though this does not mean that any particular girl or woman serving behind a shop counter may not be a lady in every essential of the word. Train yourself in the nice distinctions that dictate when one shall say “woman” or “lady,” when “man” and when “gentleman.” The terms “lady friend” or “gentleman friend” are never to be used. Never say “Excuse me!” Leave that to the person who calls herself a “saleslady.”
SOCIAL AWKWARDNESS