Perfect Behavior: A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in All Social Crises

ETIQUETTE IN THE SCHOOL 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.