Remember that many professional men do not like to be called “Professor” because of the cheap ways in which this title has in recent years been used. By a little tact in individual instances one can learn which is preferred—“Professor,” or “Mr.,” or “Doctor,” if the person in question be entitled to that distinction.
In making introductions a clever man or woman often adds a word of comment that will help the two meeting to start their acquaintance on a friendly and intelligent basis.
CHAPTER V
AFTER SIX O’CLOCK
FOR most of us the active business of the day is over at sundown. Mothers of large families, physicians and occasionally other workers are employed over time; but most of us can count on leisure after six o’clock. Much of our happiness depends upon how this leisure is employed. That it should afford recreation of one sort or another is a commonly accepted opinion, though one that is accepted usually without appreciation of the obligations involved. Recreation implies something more than idleness. One can not be amused in any worth-while sense without sitting up and paying attention. Foreigners complain habitually that Americans take their pleasure sadly, that they do not go in for gaiety with spirit. We are much more vital in our attitude toward work than toward play. We know that we must pay for success in labor of any sort, but the debt we owe to amusement is a point not yet so widely grasped. Pleasure is shy of the person who makes only occasional advances to her. She must be courted habitually in order to give a full return. We are all acquainted with the dull unhappy appearance of the sedulous man of business off for a rare holiday. He is out of his element. He knows how to behave himself at work but he is not acquainted with the fundamental principles of having a good time. These can not be learned in a minute. One must have practise in enjoyment in order to carry off the matter easily; and this practise should be a habit of every-day life. Many people who stand shyly off from the delights of the world and wonder why they are deprived of them, fail to realize that diversion of any sort worthy the name, is a thing for which one must make some effort.
HOME FESTIVITY
It is at home that one should cultivate the graces that make one attractive abroad; and this is only preliminary to saying that planning for the every-day recreation of a household should be as much a matter of course as devising ways and means for the purchase of food and clothing.
The first requisite for bringing about an atmosphere of festivity and good cheer at home is to adopt in some degree the methods that one uses away from home. If one is invited out to dinner, one makes some preparation for it, and so one should do for dinner at home. Externals have much to do with coaxing gaiety to live as a guest in the house. A pretty table and food managed with some regard to esthetic values as well as to the palatable quality, have a happy effect upon the mind and temper of the diners. A few flowers properly distributed assist still further. If all the inmates of a house are in the habit, as they should be, of making some change in their toilet for dinner, this of itself makes a sharp line of demarcation between the work-time and the play-time of the twenty-four hours. The hint of festivity in attire induces a happy and a festive frame of mind, imparts just that touch of difference from the habit of prosaic daylight necessary to send the mind sailing off into pleasant channels.