Twentieth Century Culture and Deportment / Or the Lady and Gentleman at Home and Abroad; Containing Rules of Etiquette for All Occasions, Including Calls; Invitations; Parties; Weddings; Receptions; Dinners and Teas; Etiquette of the Street; Public Places, Etc., Etc. Forming a Complete Guide to Self-Culture; the Art of Dressing Well; Conversation; Courtship; Etiquette for Children; Letter-Writing; Artistic Home and Interior Decorations, Etc.

by Maud C. Cooke

Georgetown, D. C., January 10, 189—.

Dear Jack:

“And so they were married and lived happy ever after,” of course. At least, that is what you and Mrs. Julia anticipate at this present time, and is what I, knowing you both, do confidently predict. Accept my heartfelt congratulations, and believe me

Your true friend,
Richard Doe.

To John Myers, Esq.,
Yankton, Da.

Answer to the foregoing might be:

Yankton, Da., January 20, 189—.

Dear Dick:

Julia and I received your congratulations with pleasure, my only regret being that I cannot return them in kind.

“Gather roses while ye may,

Old Time’s a-flying.”

A word to the wise, etc., and let me speedly have occasion to felicitate you in like manner.

Your friend and well-wisher,
John Myers.

Mr. Richard Doe,
Georgetown, D. C.

It should be mentioned here that while one congratulates a gentleman upon his engagement, or marriage, and may congratulate his parents upon the same occasion, it is inadmissible to congratulate a lady on a similar event, or to extend the congratulations to her parents. Well-bred mothers have been known to resent this solecism keenly. You may, and indeed are expected to, offer to her, and her parents, all manner of good wishes for future happiness, but be sure not to congratulate.

Almost any success, or pleasant happiness in life, may be made the subject of a congratulatory letter, but a multiplicity of forms is unnecessary here.

Proposals, Engagements, “Naming the Day,”

And other letters of this description are important affairs that may all be transacted through the medium of correspondence, but it is to be hoped that a matter so closely personal will quicken the imagination and inspire the pen of the dullest swain.

Let him woo his Dulcinea swiftly and tempestuously, as King Hal wooed Kate, or let him serve twice seven years as Jacob served for Rachel, but let him never search out printed forms whereby to declare his passion: nor fit the measure of his love to the lines of the “Model Letter-Writer.” As to “naming the day,” ’twere a wordless lover indeed who could not say, as the poet says:

“Sun comes, moon comes,

Time slips away.