Such abandonment of the reserves that etiquette enjoins on every household is a dangerous experiment. The back porch is for family use. Your next-door neighbor may not meddle therewith. Personally, I do not want my own son, or my married daughters, to enter my house through the kitchen. If you, dear reader, would retain your footing in the house of the friend best-loved by you, come in by the front door, and never without announcing your presence as any other visitor would. Steady persistence in this rule will avoid the chances of divers unpleasant possibilities. Your hostess—or her husband—or grown son—may be as much in dishabille as the intimacy which, in your opinion, warrants you in running in and up, without knock or ring. You may happen on a love-scene, or a family quarrel, or a girl may be in the hands of the treasure of a hair-dresser who shampoos her twice a month with pure water that looks like peroxide of hydrogen, and “restores” the subject’s dark brown tresses to the guileless flaxen of her forgotten babyhood; or your clattering heels upon the stairway may break the touchy old grandmother’s best afternoon nap.
There is but one place on earth where it is safe to make yourself “perfectly at home,” and that is your own house—or apartment—or chamber.
CHAPTER XXXIII
CHURCH AND PARISH
THEORETICALLY, the church is a pure democracy, a mighty family. There, if anywhere, the rich and the poor meet together on terms of absolute equality.
In that least poetical of pious jingles,—
“Blest be the tie that binds,”—
we declare that
“The fellowship of kindred minds