Duration of call.
A call should never extend over half an hour unless the caller be expressly requested to prolong it.
Consulting the watch.
A gentleman never looks at his watch during a call, at a dinner-party, afternoon reception or ball. This is prohibited because the inference would be that time was dragging with him and that he was anxious to get away. A man may feel such anxiety, but he must hide it if he would be deemed well-bred.
Young men who do not pay their duty call and leave a card after any entertainment, are likely to be omitted from the list of guests invited on some succeeding occasion.
When a man finds himself “dropped.”
Occasionally it happens that a young man finds himself “dropped” by some family with whom he has been on terms of intimacy. He is debarred by the rules of polite society from asking for an explanation, it being a canon of good breeding never to ask questions that are embarrassing to reply to. This has been embodied in a very outspoken and unceremonious phrase “you ask me no questions, I tell you no lies.” There is a deep truth in it, nevertheless, and even in family life it is well to observe it.
Sometimes the reason a young man is dropped in this way is that something to his disadvantage has been discovered.
An occasional reason.
But not unfrequently the true reason is that one of the daughters of the house has shown a preference for his society which the parents think should be checked. Girls of the present day do not always exercise the well-bred self-control that is the rule of good society in such matters. To love unsought is a misfortune for any girl, leading inevitably to much mortification and humiliation, but these may be minimised if she can only practice a dignified reticence about her feelings.