“Remember, if a house is pleasant, and you like to remain in it, that to be well with the women of the house is the great, the vital point. If it is a good house, don’t turn up your nose because you are only asked to come in the evening, while others are invited to dine. Recollect the debts of dinners which an hospitable family has to pay; who are you that you should always be expecting to nestle under the mahogany? Agreeable acquaintances are made just as well in the drawing-room as in the dining-room. Go to tea brisk and good-humoured. Be determined to be pleased. Talk to a dowager. Take a hand at whist. If you are musical, and know a song, sing it like a man. Never sulk about dancing, but off with you. You will find your acquaintance enlarge. Mothers, pleased with your good humour, will probably ask you to Pocklington Square, to a little party. You will get on—you will form yourself a circle. You may marry a rich girl, or, at any rate, get the chance of seeing a number of the kind and the pretty.”
* * * *
“The dressing, the clean gloves, and cab-hire, are nuisances, I grant you. The idea of the party itself is a bore, but you must go. When you are at the party, it is not so stupid; there is always something pleasant for the eye and attention of an observant man.”
IN CHURCH.
On arriving late at church.
I know a young man who makes it a practice to arrive late in church every Sunday. I often wish that he did not go to my church, for he makes me cordially despise him, thus disturbing the calm and quiet of the proper frame of mind for Sundays. I conclude that he likes to be looked at, though why he should do so is not apparent. It is, in fact, not only rude, but irreverent, to be late in church for the beginning of the service. If one should be accidentally late, it is good manners to wait till the congregation rises from the kneeling posture before making one’s way to a seat. It is almost an awful thing to interrupt a prayer. But I have seen people do it with no more scruple than if they were passing in a crowded street.
On the space one may occupy.
Eighteen inches are the measurement of space allowed to each sitter in the churches. In some it may be more; in others it may be less. But I have reason to believe that this is the average. Now, if any man of extra size should find himself in a pew with other persons, he must, in common courtesy, keep himself as well within the limits of eighteen inches as the width of his shoulders will allow. But I have occasionally seen quite slim young men sprawl far beyond the frontier lines.
Lounging.
Lounging is a habit of the day, and there are men who get themselves into marvellously corkscrew attitudes, in church as elsewhere.