Emily Post

“ There are a few old-fashioned ladies, living in old-fashioned houses, and still staying at home in the old-fashioned way to old-fashioned friends who for decades have dropped in for a cup of tea and a chat. And there are two maiden ladies in particular, joint chatelaines of an imposingly beautiful old house where, on a certain afternoon of the week, if you come in for tea, you are sure to meet not alone those prominent in the world of fashion, but a fair admixture of artists, scientists, authors; inventors, distinguished strangers—in a word Best Society in its truest sense. ”

“ Witnesses of most weddings can scarcely imagine that a wedding march is a march at all; more often than not, the heads of ushers and bridesmaids bob up and down like something boiling in a pan. A perfectly drilled wedding procession, like a military one, should move forward in perfect step, rising and falling in a block or unit. To secure perfection of detail, the bars of the processional may be counted so that the music comes to an end at precisely the moment the bride and groom stand side by side at the chancel steps. ”

“ If you see acquaintances of yours in deepest mourning, it does not occur to you to go up to them and babble trivial topics or ask them to a dance or dinner. If you pass close to them, irresistible sympathy compels you merely to stop and press their hand and pass on. A widow, or mother, in the newness of her long veil, has her hard path made as little difficult as possible by everyone with whom she comes in contact, no matter on what errand she may be bent. ”

“ And a happy groom looks first of all protective—he, too, may have the quality of radiance, but it is different—more directly glad. They both look as though there were sunlight behind their eyes, as though their mouths irresistibly turned to smiles. No other quality of a bride's expression is so beautiful as radiance; that visible proof of perfect happiness which endears its possessor to all beholders and gives to the simplest little wedding complete beauty. ”

“ Whoever in remote ages thought it was better to forbid "followers" the house, and have Mary and Selma slip out of doors to meet them in the dark, had very distorted notions to say the least. And any lady who knows so little of human nature as to make the same rule for her maids to-day is acting in ignorant blindness of her own duties to those who are not only in her employ but also under her protection.
A pretty young woman whose men friends come in occasionally and play cards with the others, or dance to a small and not loud phonograph in the kitchen, is merely being treated humanly. ”

“ If emerald green is the fashionable color, all of the yellowest skins will be framed in it. When hobble skirts are the thing, the fattest wabble along, looking for all the world like chandeliers tied up in mosquito netting. If ball dresses are cut to the last limit of daring, the ample billows of the fat will vie blandly with the marvels of anatomy exhibited by the thin. Comfort, convenience, becomingness, adaptability, beauty are of no importance. Fashion is followed to the letter—therefore they fancy, poor sheep, they are the last word in smartness. ”

“ The reputation of Southern women for having the gift of fascination is perhaps due not to prettiness of feature more than to the brilliancy or sweetness of their ready smile. That Southern women are charming and "feminine" and lovable is proverbial. How many have noticed that Southern women always bow with the grace of a flower bending in the breeze and a smile like sudden sunshine? The unlovely woman bows as though her head were on a hinge and her smile sucked through a lemon.
Nothing is so easy for any woman to acquire as a charming bow. ”

“ Of those elaborate ceremonials between host and guest familiar to all readers of the Bible and all travelers in the East, only a few faint traces remain in our country and generation. It is still unforgivable to eat a man's bread and remain his enemy. It is unforgivable to criticize your host, or in his presence to criticize his friends. It is unforgivable to be rude to any one under your own roof or under the roof of a friend. If you must quarrel with your enemy, seek public or neutral ground, since quarrels and hospitality must never be mingled. ”

“ If you live in a palace like Golden Hall, or any completely equipped house of important size, you overlook nothing! There is no more excuse for delinquency than there is in the Army. If anything happens, such as illness of one servant, there is another to take his (or her) place. A huge household is a machine and it is the business of the engineers—in other words, the secretary, housekeeper, chef or butler, to keep it going perfectly.
But in a little house, it may not be fair to say "Selma, the silver is dirty!" ”

“ When you are dining before going to the opera or theater you must arrive on the stroke of the hour for which you are asked; it is one occasion when it is inexcusable to be late.
In accepting an invitation for lunch or dinner after which you are going to a game, or any sort of performance, you must not be late! Nothing is more unfair to others who are keen about whatever it is you are going to see, than to make them miss the beginning of a performance through your thoughtless selfishness. ”

“ And as it is almost impossible, without advice, for any stranger anywhere to know which people like or dislike each other, the would-be hostess must either by means of natural talent or more likely by trained attention, read the signs of liking or prejudice much as a woodsman reads a message in every broken twig or turned leaf.
One who can read expression, perceives at a glance the difference between friendliness and polite aloofness. When a lady is unusually silent, strictly impersonal in conversation, and entirely unapproachable, something is not to her liking. ”

“ As a matter of fact, Best Society is not at all like a court with an especial queen or king, nor is it confined to any one place or group, but might better be described as an unlimited brotherhood which spreads over the entire surface of the globe, the members of which are invariably people of cultivation and worldly knowledge, who have not only perfect manners but a perfect manner. Manners are made up of trivialities of deportment which can be easily learned if one does not happen to know them; manner is personality—the outward manifestation of one's innate character and attitude toward life. ”

“ The fish which was to have been a mousse with Hollandaise sauce, is a huge mound, much too big for the platter, with a narrow gutter of water around the edge and the center dabbed over with a curdled yellow mess. You realize that not only is the food itself awful, but that the quantity is too great for one dish. You don't know what to do next; you know there is no use in apologizing, there is no way of dropping through the floor, or waking yourself up. You have collected the smartest and the most critical people around your table to put them to torture such as they will never forget. ”

“ The endeavor of a hostess, when seating her table, is to put those together who are likely to be interesting to each other. Professor Bugge might bore you to tears, but Mrs. Entomoid would probably delight in him; just as Mr. Stocksan Bonds and Mrs. Rich would probably have interests in common. Making a dinner list is a little like making a Christmas list. You put down what they will (you hope) like, not what you like. Those who are placed between congenial neighbors remember your dinner as delightful—even though both food and service were mediocre ”

“ Nearly all people are quick to censure but rather chary of praise. Admonish of course where you must, but censure only with justice, and don't forget that whether of high estate or humble, we all of us like praise—sometimes. When a guest tells you your dinner is the best he has ever eaten, remember that the cook cooked it, and tell her it was praised. Or if the dining-room service was silent and quick and perfect, then tell those who served it how well it was done. ”

“ If you have any ambition to be sought after in society you must not talk about the unattractiveness of old age to the elderly, about the joys of dancing and skating to the lame, or about the advantages of ancestry to the self-made. It is also dangerous, as well as needlessly unkind, to ridicule or criticize others, especially for what they can't help. If a young woman's familiar or otherwise lax behavior deserves censure, a casual unflattering remark may not add to your own popularity if your listener is a relative, but you can at least, without being shamefaced, stand by your guns. ”

“ We all of us know a Mr. Newgold who would give many of the treasures in his marble palace for a single invitation to Mrs. Oldname's comparatively little house, and half of all he possesses for the latter's knowledge, appearance, manner, instincts and position—none of which he himself is likely ever to acquire, though his children may! But in our description of great or medium or small houses, we are considering those only whose owners belong equally to best society and where, though luxuries vary from the greatest to the least, house appointments are in essentials alike. ”

“ Never in the recollection of any one now living has it been so easy to surround oneself with lovely belongings. Each year's achievement seems to stride away from that of the year before in producing woodwork, ironwork, glass, stone, print, paint and textile that is lovelier and lovelier. One can not go into the shops or pass their windows on the streets without being impressed with the ever-growing taste of their display. Nor can one look into the magazines devoted to gardens and houses and house-furnishings and fail to appreciate the increasing wealth of the beautiful in environment. ”

“ Nothing shows selfish want of consideration more than being habitually late for dinner. Not only are others, who were themselves considerate, kept waiting, but dinner is dried and ruined for everyone else through the fault of the tardy one. And though expert cooks know how to keep food from becoming uneatable, no food can be so good as at the moment for which it is prepared, and the habitually late guest should be made to realize how unfairly she is meeting her hostess' generosity by destroying for every one the hospitality which she was invited to share. ”

“ A ball is the only social function in America to which such qualifying words as splendor and magnificence can with proper modesty of expression be applied. Even the most elaborate wedding is not quite "a scene of splendor and magnificence" no matter how luxurious the decorations or how costly the dress of the bride and bridesmaids, because the majority of the wedding guests do not complete the picture. A dinner may be lavish, a dance may be beautiful, but a ball alone is prodigal, meaning, of course, a private ball of greatest importance. ”

“ In other words, you who are establishing yourself, either as a young husband or a stranger, would you, if you could have your wish granted by a genie, choose to have the populace look upon you askance and in awe, because of your wealth and elegance, or would you wish to be loved, not as a power conferring favors which belong really to the first picture, but as a fellow-being with an understanding heart? ”

“ Toward the latter end of the dinner the groom rises, and holding a filled champagne glass aloft says: "To the bride!" Every man rises, drinks the toast standing, and then breaks the delicate stem of the glass. The impulse to break more glass is natural to youth, and probably still occurs. It is not hard to understand. The same impulse is seen at every county fair where enthusiastic youths (and men) delight in shooting, or throwing balls, at clay pipes and ducks and—crockery! ”

“ You wait, at first merely eager to get out of the smoke-filled drawing-room. Gradually you are becoming nervous—what can have happened? The dining-room door might be that of a tomb for all the evidence of life behind it. You become really alarmed. Is dinner never going to be served? Everyone's eyes are red from the smoke, and conversation is getting weaker and weaker. ”

“ Another attribute of the perfect guest is never to keep people waiting. She is always ready for anything—or nothing. If a plan is made to picnic, she likes picnics above everything and proves her liking by enthusiastically making the sandwiches or the salad dressing or whatever she thinks she makes best. If, on the other hand, no one seems to want to do anything, the perfect guest has always a book she is absorbed in, or a piece of sewing she is engrossed with, or else beyond everything she would love to sit in an easy chair and do nothing. ”

“ If you would dress like a gentleman, you must do one of two things; either study the subject of a gentleman's wardrobe until you are competent to pick out good suits from freaks and direct your misguided tailor, or, at least until your perceptions are trained, go to an English one. This latter method is the easiest, and, by all odds, the safest. It is not Anglomania but plain common sense to admit that, just as the Rue de la Paix in Paris is the fountainhead of fashions for women, Bond Street in London is the home of irreproachable clothes for men. ”

“ Just as one discordant note makes more impression than all the others that are correctly played in an entire symphony, so does a discordant incident stand out and dominate a hundred others that are above criticism, and therefore unnoticed.
In every country of Europe and Asia are Americans who combine the brilliancy which none can deny is the birthright of the newer world, with the cultivation and good breeding of the old. These Americans of the best type go all over the world, fitting in so perfectly with their background that not even the inhabitants notice they are strangers ”

“ She is good tempered no matter what happens, and makes the most of everything as it comes. At games she is a good loser, and a quiet winner. She has a pleasant word, an amusing story, and agreeable comment for most occasions, but she is neither gushing nor fulsome. She has merely acquired a habit, born of many years of arduous practise, of turning everything that looks like a dark cloud as quickly as possible for the glimmer of a silver lining. ”

“ Of course no waitress and no single-handed butler can keep silver the way it is kept in such houses as the Worldlys', nor is such perfection expected. The silver polishing of perfection in huge houses is done by such an expert that no one can tell whether a fork has that moment been sent from the silversmiths or not. It is not merely polished until it is bright, but burnished so that it is new! Every piece of silver in certain of the great establishments, or in smaller ones that are run like a great one, is never picked up by a servant except with a rouged chamois. ”

“ And the fact that older ladies of distinction dance with dignity, has an inevitable effect upon younger ones, so that at balls at least, dancing has not degenerated into gymnastics or contortions.
The extreme reverse of a "smart" Boston ball is one—no matter where—which has a roomful of people who deport themselves abominably, who greet each other by waving their arms aloft, who dance like Apaches or jiggling music-box figures, and who scarcely suggest an assemblage of even decent—let alone well-bred—people. ”

“ There always are and doubtless always will be any number of women to whom admiration and flirtation is the very breath of their nostrils, who love to parade a beau just as they love to parade a new dress. ”

“ Suitability is the test of good taste always. The manner to the moment, the dress to the occasion, the article to the place, the furniture to the background. And yet to combine many periods in one and commit no anachronism, to put something French, something Spanish, something Italian, and something English into an American house and have the result the perfection of American taste—is a feat of legerdemain that has been accomplished time and again. ”

“ A gem of a house may be no size at all, but its lines are honest, and its painting and window curtains in good taste. As for its upkeep, its path or sidewalk is beautifully neat, steps scrubbed, brasses polished, and its bell answered promptly by a trim maid with a low voice and quiet courteous manner ”