Of course, as the children become older, the instruction should
gradually come to embrace all forms of correct behaviour, and the
youthful games and rhymes should give way to the more complex and
intricate problems of mature social etiquette. It is suggested
that the teachings during this period may be successfully
combined with the young gentleman’s or lady’s other schoolroom
studies; in the case of mathematics, for example, the instruction
might be handled in somewhat the following manner:
_A Problem in Mathematics (7th grade)_
_A swimmer starts across a stream which is 450 yards wide. He
swims for five minutes at the rate of three miles per hour, and
for three minutes at the rate of four miles per hour. He then
reaches the other bank, where he sees a young lady five feet ten
inches tall, walking around a tree, in a circle the circumference
of which is forty-two yards._
_A. What is the diameter of the circle?
B. How fast is the current flowing in the stream?
C. At what point would the swimmer land if there were no current
in the stream?
D. At what point does the swimmer actually land?
E. But suppose that he has no bathing suit on?_
And so, when the young person has reached the age for his first
formal dinner party, he will undoubtedly be able to handle the
fundamentals of correct etiquette in a satisfactory manner. But,
as in every sport or profession, there are certain
refinements—certain niceties which come only after long
experience—and it is with a view of helping the ambitious
diner-out to master these more complex details, that I suggest
that he study carefully the following “unwritten laws” which
govern every dinner party.
In the first place, a guest is supposed tacitly to consent to the
menu which the hostess has arranged, and the diner-out who makes
a habit of saying “Squab, you know, never agrees with me—I wonder
if I might have a couple of poached eggs,” is apt to find that
such squeamishness does not pay in the long run.
Practical jokes are never countenanced at a formal affair of this
sort. I do not mean that a certain amount of good-natured fun is
out of place, but such “stunts” as pulling the hostess’ chair out
from under her—or gleefully kicking the shins of your neighbor
under the table and shouting “Guess who?”—are decidedly among the
“non-ests” of correct modern dinner-table behaviour.
Then, too, it is now distinctly bad form to practise legerdemain
or feats of sleight-of-hand at a dinner party. Time was when it
was considered correct for a young man who could do card or other
tricks to add to the gayety of the party by displaying his skill,
but that time is past, and the guest of today, who thinks to make
a “hit” by pulling a live rabbit or a potted plant from the back
of the mystified hostess or one of the butlers, is in reality
only making a “fool” of himself if he only knew it. The same
“taboo” also holds good as concerns feats of juggling and no
hostess of today will, I am sure, ever issue a second invitation
to a young man who has attempted to enliven her evening by
balancing, on his nose, a knife, a radish, a plate of soup and a
lighted candle. “Cleverness” is a valuable asset but only up to a
certain point, and I know of one unfortunately “clever” young
chap who almost completely ruined a promising social career by
the unexpected failure of one of his pet juggling tricks and the
consequent dumping of a large dish of mashed potatoes on the head
of a vice-president of the Equitable Trust Company. Besides,
people almost always distrust “clever” persons.
It does not “do,” either, to “ride your hobby” at a dinner party,
and the real truth as to the cause of the sudden social ostracism
of young Freddie H——, a New York clubman of some years ago (now
happily deceased), is that on one occasion this young fellow, who
had developed a craze for marksmanship amounting almost to a
mania, very nearly ruined a dinner party given by a prominent
Boston society matron by attempting to shoot the whiskers off a
certain elderly gentleman, who happened to be a direct descendant
of John Smith and Priscilla Alden.
It might also be remarked that the possession of certain physical
gifts—such as the ability to wriggle one’s ears or do the
“splits”—is in itself no “open sesame” to lasting social success.
“Slow and sure” is a good rule for the young man to follow, and
although he may somewhat enviously watch his more brilliant
colleagues as they gain momentary applause by their ability to
throw their thumbs out of joint or squirt water through a hole in
their front teeth, yet he may console himself with the thought
that “the race is not always to the swift” and that “Rome was not
built in a day.” The gifts of this world have been distributed
fairly equally, and you may be sure that the young girl who has
been born a ventriloquist very likely is totally unable to spell
difficult words correctly or carry even a simple tune.
Ventriloquism, by the way, is also passing out as a form of
dinner party diversion, and it is no longer considered a
priceless accomplishment to be able to make a dog bark or a baby
cry under the hostess’s chair.