If the ceremony is performed in the house of the parents, or if the guests return there from the church, the only refreshments required by etiquette are cake and wine.
The father of the child usually gives a present of money to the nurse who carries the babe to the church.
It is not etiquette to remain long at a christening; and it is better taste for the infant to be removed to the nursery as soon as the ceremony is over. To keep a weary mother sitting up entertaining guests, or a cross, tired child on exhibition, are either of them in bad taste.
For a guest to show any annoyance if a child cries loudly, or is in any way troublesome, is the height of rudeness. Remarks or even frowns are forbidden entirely, even if the infant screams so as to make the voice of the clergyman entirely inaudible.
Etiquette requires that the babe be praised if it is shown to the guests, even if it is a little monster of pink ugliness. Ladies, especially mothers, will see something beautiful, if only its helpless innocence, and gentlemen must behold infantile graces, if they cannot actually behold them. "Mother's darling" must be the great attraction at a christening, if it only improves the occasion by a succession of yells.
ETIQUETTE FOR FUNERALS.
WHEN the saddest of all the ceremonies of this life calls forth the sympathy of friends and relatives, there are many little points the observance of which evinces a delicate consideration for the mourners, and a respect for the melancholy occasion.
In entering the house of mourning, a gentleman must remove his hat in the hall, and not replace it while in the house.
Loud talking in the chamber of death is a rudeness which shows not only a want of respect for the dead, but a want of consideration for the grief of the survivors.
All quarrels must be forgotten in the presence of death. Enemies who meet at a funeral are bound by etiquette, if not by feeling, to salute each other with quiet gravity.