The etiquette in regard to bowing is so simple and reasonable that one would scarcely suppose it possible that any differences of opinion could exist, and yet there are some who think it a breach of politeness if one neglect to bow, although meeting half a dozen times on a promenade or in driving. Custom has made it necessary to bow only the first time in passing: after that exchange of salutations it is very properly not expected. The difference between a courteous and a familiar bow should be remembered by gentlemen who wish to make a favorable impression. A lady dislikes to receive from a man with whom she has but a slight acquaintance a bow accompanied by a broad smile, as though he were on the most familiar terms with her. It is far better to err on the other side, and to give one of those stiff, ungracious bows which some men indulge in. Those gentlemen who smile with their eyes instead of their mouths give the most charming bows. As for men who bow charmingly at one time, and with excessive hauteur at others, according as they feel in a good or bad humor, they need never be surprised if the person thus treated should cease speaking altogether; nor can any man who does not lift, or at least touch, his hat in speaking to a lady expect that she will continue her salutations.
The rules to which allusion has been made are all reasonable, but there are others which, having only an imaginary foundation in the requirements of true politeness, might be disregarded with advantage. Such, for example, as that of sending answers to invitations by a special messenger. It is equally convenient to employ a man to deliver invitations or to send them by post. With the reply it is different. Each family receiving an invitation has to send out a servant with the answer. This not being always convenient, the reply is frequently delayed—sometimes until it is forgotten. But if the foreign custom of sending acceptances and regrets by post could be brought into general use, how much more sensible it would be! It was the occasion of many comments when a few years since some cards, not invitations, were thus sent by mistake, the servant posting those which he had forgotten to deliver before the wedding had taken place. But it only needs a few resolute persons to set the example, and persist in it, to have it as generally adopted as it is abroad.
THE HERMIT'S VIGIL.
Here is the ancient legend I was reading
From the black-letter vellum page last night:
Its yellow husk holds lessons worth the heeding,
If we unfold it right.
The tome is musty with dank superstition
From which we shrink recoiling, to th' extreme
Of an unfaith that with material vision,
Accounts as myth or dream
Problems too subtle for our clumsy fingers—
High truths that stretch beyond our reach as far
As o'er the fire-fly in the grass that lingers
Stretches yon quenchless star.
Give rather back the old hallucinations—
The visible spirits—the rapture, terror, grief
Of faith so human, than the drear negations
Of dumb, dead unbelief!
—But will you hear the story?
—In a forest,
Girt round by blacken'd tarns, a hermit dwelt:
And as one midnight, when the storm raged sorest,
Within his hut he knelt
In ghostly penance, sounds of fiendish laughter
Smote on the tempest's lull with sudden jar,
That sent the gibbering echoes shrilling after,
O'er weir and wold afar.