Beware of giving out violent opinions before knowing where the other person stands. This does not mean that you should be untrue to your own beliefs, but that you should, with one newly met, cast about for at least a plank on which you two may stand in friendly relation. It is the people who most accurately measure the common ground between them and other people who make the most and the happiest friendships.
Never command even one who is paid to serve you. The same words put in the form of a request are equally effective and are much more creditable to you and grateful to the persons to whom they are spoken. English servants invariably say “Thank you” for any information or direction given them, but this smacks of servility and one hopes the custom will not be taken up in this country.
Never begin a conversation with “Say,” as “Say, Marjorie.” In a group conversation be careful to include, by voice and glance, every one in it.
SAY GOOD-BY TO ALL
Finally, be sure, as Emerson says, “that people like a room better with you in it than out of it,” and when you leave the room, learn to do it in a way that adds to the pleasure your presence has already given. Do not, for one thing, neglect to say good-by to every one present if the number is small. The grace with which some people take leave amounts to an art. Some one has recorded with delight “the exquisite, laughing farewells” of Mrs. Browning.
CHAPTER XLIV
SELF-HELP AND OBSERVATION
TO the uninstructed, socially, the bare rules and conventions regulating social life seem often meaningless and arbitrary. A careful consideration of these conventions, such as it has been the aim of this book to give, shows that no one of them is without a reason for its being. The classification, however, of social forms, together with the reasons governing these forms, does not provide a body of knowledge sufficient to serve as guide in the matter of comporting one’s self easily and to advantage socially. There are many situations and points of behavior that it is impossible for a book of etiquette to cover. The laws laid down are only a small social capital. They discuss the more obvious matters of social contact. Numerous points,—and these of the finer sort,—must be left without comment. In the treatment of these points and problems the person desirous of solving them properly must rely largely on his own good sense. One must apply to social exigencies the same methods of reasoning that one applies in meeting the other exigencies of life. In a word, one must resort to the principle of self-help.