Never be filthy in anything. Cleanliness is a virtue that even a recognized gentleman cannot afford to hold in contempt.
Never appear in other than subdued colors, for the most part. “Give me plain red and yellow,” said the negro minister, in his advice to his flock on the vanities of dress.
Never wear anything over-dainty. Never—of course, we are now addressing the male reader, for whom this invaluable Hand Book is chiefly designed—wear anything that the gentler sex have made exclusively their own. To appear in public with a nosegay in lieu of a throat-stud, or even with a sunflower at the waist, would be likely to excite remark.
Never wear check-shirts, children’s dickies, nor ’longshoremen’s jumpers. An immaculate shirt-front with a clean collar to match, is always en règle.
Never wear full evening dress in the early morning, especially if you intend working in the garden, or whitewashing the back fence, before going down town.
Never wear dancing pumps in rainy or snowy weather, or arctics if it is warm and fine. But long-continued observation will finally enable you to discriminate for yourself in these minor matters.
Never appear among ladies with your boots covered with mud, and your whole person suggestive of having been rolled in the gutter. If you haven’t a servant or wife to clean you up, undertake the task yourself, however distasteful.
Never wear your hat tilted far over your nose, with a cigar meeting its brim at a rising angle of forty-five degrees from your lips. The Volunteer Fire Department, though once the arbiter of manly deportment, is a thing of the past.
Never wear pinchbeck jewelry, loud breast-pins, nor steel, silver or washed-gold watch-guards. Secret-society regalia, conspicuously worn, and multitudinous finger-rings are also in questionable taste.
Never walk with a high-and-mighty stud-horse gait, nor yet slouch and slink along as if you had robbed a hen-roost, nor yet with a bounding hoop-la sort of prance, like a clown in the circus-ring. Never, either, walk bow-legged or club-footed, if you can help it. Cultivate a grand, regal, easy and flowing carriage, but without swagger or bombast.