ACKNOWLEDGING FAVORS
Unless one receives special permission from the person giving an invitation to hold the matter open for some good and sufficient reason, one should accept or decline a verbal invitation as soon as it is given. If circumstances make this impossible, one should apologize for hesitating, saying, “I am so anxious to come that I am going to ask your permission to send you my answer later, after I ascertain if my husband has no engagement for that evening,”—or some such form. The hostess will readily grant such a request.
It may seem far-fetched to speak of ingratitude as a breach of etiquette, but the lack of acknowledgment of favors is very much like it. The man who accepts all done for him as his due, who forgets the “thank you” in return for the trifling favors, is not a gentleman—in that respect, at least. The young men and young women of to-day are too often spoiled or heedless, taking pretty attentions offered them as matters of course, and as their right.
In this miscellaneous chapter it may be well to enforce what is said elsewhere with regard to the respect every man should show to women. For instance, every man who really respects the women of his family will remove his hat when he enters the house. There are, however, men who kiss these same women with covered heads.
In a well-known play acted by a traveling company some years ago in a small town, the hero, standing in a garden, told the heroine he loved her, was accepted by her, and bent to kiss her without removing the conventional derby from his blond pate. All sentiment was destroyed for the spectators when irate Hibernian accents sounded forth from the gallery with: “Suppose ye take off yer hat, ye ill-mannered blokey!”
The Irishman was in the right.
A WORD TO THE SHY
I would say a word to those who, through bashfulness or self-consciousness, do the things they ought not to do and leave undone those things which they ought to do. They are so uncomfortable in society, so afraid of not appearing as they should, and so much absorbed in wondering how they look and act, and wishing that they did better, that they are guilty of the very acts of omission and commission they would guard against.