You may be sure that if young Mr. Jones should put in an appearance after that note he would find the door closed in his face.
An invitation to dinner must be accepted or declined on the day it is received. One is not permitted to say he will come if he can. He must say Yes or No at once. The words “polite,” “genteel,” and “present compliments” are no longer used. “Your kind invitation” now takes the place of “your polite invitation;” and “genteel” is out of date. The letters “R. S. V. P.” are no longer put on notes or cards. It is thought it is not necessary to tell, in French, people to “answer, if you please.” All well-educated people are pleased to answer without being told to do so. The custom of putting “R. S. V. P.” in a note is as much out of fashion as that of drawing off a glove when one shakes hands. In the olden times, when men wore armor, a hand clothed in a steel or iron gauntlet was not pleasant to touch. There was then a reason why a man should draw off his glove when he extended his hand to another, especially if that other happened to be a lady. But the reason for the custom has gone by; and it is not necessary to draw off one’s glove now when one shakes hands.
But to return to the subject of letter-writing. If you are addressing a Doctor of Medicine or Divinity, you may put “Esq.” after his name in addition to his title “M.D.” or “D.D.” but it is a senseless custom. But “Mr.” and “Esq.” before and after a man’s name sends the writer, in the estimation of well-bred people, to “the bottom of the sea.” Paper with gilt edges is never used; in fact, a man must not have anything about him that is merely pretty. Usage decrees that he may wear a flower in his button-hole—and Americans are becoming as fond of flowers as the ancient Romans; but farther than that he may not go, in the way of the merely ornamental, either in his stationery or his clothes.
It is the fashion now to fasten envelopes with wax and to use a seal; but it is not at all necessary, though there are many who prefer it, as they object to get a letter which has been “licked” to make its edges stick.
Begin, in addressing a stranger, with “Madam” or “Sir.” “Miss” by itself is never used. After a second letter has been received, “Dear Madam” or “Dear Sir” may be used. Conclude all formal letters with “Yours truly,” or “Sincerely yours,” not “Affectionately yours.” Sign your full name when writing to a friend or an equal. Do not write “T. F. Robinson” or “T. T. Smith;” write your name out as if you were not ashamed of it.
Put your address at the head of your letters, and if you make a blot, tear up the paper. A dirty letter sent, even with an apology, is as bad a breach of good manners as the extending of a dirty hand. Answer at once any letter in which information is asked. Do not write to people you do not know or answer advertisements in the papers “for fun.” A man that knows the world never does this. These advertisements often hide traps, and a man may get into them merely by writing a letter. And the kind of “fun” which ends in a man’s being pursued by vulgar postal cards and letters wherever he goes does not pay.
In writing a letter, do not begin too close to the top of the page, or too far down towards the middle. Do not abbreviate when you can help it; you may write “Dr.” for “Doctor.”
Do not put a yellow envelope over a sheet of white note-paper. It is not necessary to leave wide margin at the left-hand side. A habit now is to write only on one side of the paper; to begin your letter on the first page, then to go to the third, then back to the second, ending, if you have a great deal to say, on the fourth. A late fad is to jump from the first to the fourth.
With a good dictionary at his elbow, black ink, white paper, a clear head, and a remembrance of the rules and prohibitions I have given, any young man cannot fail, if he write, to impress all who receive his letters with the fact that he is well-bred.