IT is against the rules of strict etiquette to take a child when
making formal calls, as they are a restraint upon conversation,
even if they are not troublesome about touching forbidden
articles, or teasing to go home.
Never take a child to a funeral, either to the house of mourning
or to the cemetery.
Never allow a child to take a meal at a friend's house without
special invitation. It is impossible to know how much she may be
inconvenienced, while her regard for the mother would deter her
from sending the little visitor home again.
Never allow a child to handle goods in a store.
Never send for children to meet visitors in the drawing-room,
unless the visitors themselves request to see them. Make their
stay then very brief, and be careful that they are not
troublesome.
Never take a child to church until it is old enough to remain
perfectly quiet. Although you may be accustomed to its restless
movements, and not disturbed by them, others near you will
certainly feel annoyed by them.
It is not etiquette to put a child to sleep in the room of a
guest, nor to allow children to go at all to a guest's room,
unless especially invited to do so, and even then to make long
stay there.
Etiquette excludes children from all companies given to grown
persons, from all parties and balls, excepting such as are given
especially given for their pleasure.
When invited to walk or drive, never take a child, unless it has
been invited, or you have requested permission to do so; even in
the latter case, the consent is probably given more from good
nature than from any desire to have a juvenile third to the party.
Never crowd children into pic-nic parties, if they have not been
invited. They generally grow weary and very troublesome before the
day is over.
Never take a child to spend the day with a friend unless it has
been included in the invitation.
Never allow children to be in the drawing room if strangers are
present.
Never allow children to handle the ornaments in the drawing room
of a friend.
Never allow a child to pull a visitor's dress, play with the
jewelry or ornaments she may wear, take her parasol or satchel for
a plaything, or in any way annoy her.
Train children early to answer politely when addressed, to avoid
restless, noisy motions when in company, and gradually inculcate a
love of the gentle courtesies of life. By making the rules of
etiquette habitual to them, you remove all awkwardness and
restraint from their manners when they are old enough to go into
society.
Never send a child to sit upon a sofa with grown people, unless
they express a desire to have it do so.
Never crowd a child into a carriage seat between two grown people.
Never allow a child to play with a visitor's hat or cane.
If children are talented, be careful you do not weary your
friends, and destroy their own modesty by "showing them off," upon
improper occasions. What may seem wonderful to an interested
mother, may be an unutterable weariness to a guest, too polite to
allow the mother to perceive the incipient yawn.
Never allow children to visit upon the invitation of other
children. When they are invited by the older members of the
family, it is time to put on their "best bibs and tuckers."
Never take children to a house of mourning, even if you are an
intimate friend.
The custom for having children in the drawing-room for morning or
evening parties, or in the dining-room with the dessert at dinner
companies, is not only often an annoyance to the guests, but bad
for the children themselves.
It is one of the first duties of parents to train their children
at home as they would have them appear abroad. An English lady
writes thus:
"If, then, we desire that our children shall become ladies and
gentlemen, can we make them so, think you, by lavishing money upon
foreign professors, dancing-masters, foreign travel, tailors, and
dressmakers? Ah, no! good breeding is far less costly, and begins
far earlier than those things. Let our little ones be nurtured in
an atmosphere of gentleness and kindness from the nursery upwards;
let them grow up in a home where a rude gesture or an ill-tempered
word are alike unknown; where between father and mother, master
and servant, mistress and maid, friend and friend, parent and
child, brother and sister, prevails the law of truth, of kindness,
of consideration for others, and forgetfulness of self. Can they
carry into the world, whither we send them later, aught of
coarseness, of untruthfulness, of slatternliness, of vulgarity, if
their home has been orderly, if their parents have been refined,
their servants well mannered, their friends and playmates kindly
and carefully trained as themselves? Do we want our boys to
succeed in the world; our girls to be admired and loved; their
tastes to be elegant; their language choice; their manners simple,
charming, refined, and graceful; their friendship elevating? then
we must ourselves be what we would have our children to be,
remembering the golden maxim, that good manners, like charity,
must begin at home.
"Good manners are an immense social force. We should, therefore,
spare no pains to teach our children what to do, and what to avoid
doing, in their pathway through life.
"On utilitarian as well as social principles, we should try to
instruct our children in good manners; for whether we wish them to
succeed in the world, or to adorn society, the point is equally
important. We must never lose sight of the fact, that here
teachers and professors can do little, and that the only way in
which it in possible to acquire the habits of good society is to
live in no other."