Art of good manners; or, Children's etiquette

Contents

I

TOWARD MOTHER'S COMPANY

II GREETINGS AND NICKNAMES .

II

HE other Sunday, before going into church, I stopped out of the dust to let my dress down, and was by chance witness of the choice manners found where they should not be to-day. Two well-dressed girls of thirteen came in, whom I know belonged to the best families in the Society, and met on their way to the gallery, where our young folks like to have the full benefit of the organ and view of the congregation. These girls were pretty and nice in appearance, from the trim French boots to the checked silk and pale chip hats they wore, which matched, in blue, ruffles, and trimming. They carried themselves well, which means that they walked straight and easily, without being so shy that they seemed made of wood, or holding their heads so high as to look haughty. But as the elder put her dainty foot on the stairs, the greeting that passed between them was, " Hallo, Sid ! " from her, and " Hallo, Tude ! " from her friend. It was just what two lounging young men might have said, or two stable-boys, for that matter. It would not have been out of the way for them, but it sounded odd from a pair of well-bred girls. There was nothing else coarse or fast in their manner ; but they used unconsciously the words they heard from the rest of their mates. It sounded as it does to hear a beautiful gray and rose-colored bird begin to swear with a croak in his throat. Or it was as little in keeping as if one had found an end of soiled tape hanging outside of their delicate dresses. It is common enough to hear girls say " Hallo " at meeting, but one can't like it, nor get used to it.

It's a trifle, but you might as well leave off going to school and learning manners at once, if you despise trifles. They make all the difference between nice things and common ones. You ought to know better, and you do know enough to prefer sweet, lively, gentle people to those who are rough and careless. Girls fall into the free and easy ways of their brothers because they are easy ; and one habit leads to another, till it is no longer sweet and quiet company we find in them, but the rapid ways and short speech of young gentlemen in flounces. The ways of boys are pleasant enough in their place ; but there was meant to be a difference between them and girls, for the sake of giving us a variety, I suppose.

And if girls try to be like boys, where will we get our sweethearts, please? You can't sweeten with allspice and cloves.

Of course, when you meet a friend you see every day, you don't want to say, " How do you do?" as formal as to a person you see less often; but wouldn't it sound just as pleasant to pass with a " Well, Sidney," and " Well, Gertie," as to "Hallo" like teamsters? If you want to be a little more precise, Good Morning always has a kindly sound when you think that it means one is wishing good to you that day. It is a little prayer of good-will for everybody we say it to, and each one needs it in this trying world. We don't need to ask people whom we see often, " How do you do?" because we know pretty well without asking ; but when friends have been away from us a while, it sounds indifferent to throw them a good morning without caring to ask if they are better or worse in feelings or body since they left us. How do you do, doesn't mean to ask merely if one is sick or in health ; but it wishes to know if all is well with him. All the forms of politeness have the friendliest meaning ; and if we can only feel all that they express, we shall find ourselves the politest people in the world without any more trouble.

While you are thinking of these things, pray make up your mind to drop the stupid nicknames that girls seem to delight in. I say stupid ones ; but you are not to think, as some good people do, that all nicknames are senseless. Whenever we are familiar with anyone, it is an instinct to soften and shorten their names, and nicknames often express some peculiarity of a person with a good deal of pith. Trudie is a softer name than Gertrude, Gertie is a shorter one ; and somehow it is nature among all the nations in the world to turn a friend's name, shorten it, and pet it, to make a special name of it for those who love him. Pet names and nicknames are pleasant because they belong only to one's family and intimates. But there are some names so harsh and uncouth, without any meaning or fun, that there is no excuse for using them. I know girls whose favorite nickname for Gertrude is " Toot," or "Tute," as you like to spell it. Besides making one think of a fish-horn, it isn't in the least like the name it is taken for, any more than Caddie, or Cad, is like Caroline, or Wede is like Louisa ; for which I've had the unhappiness of hearing it used. The worst and most sickishly silly of all is Mamie for Mary, in any but a very little girl who cannot speak plain. Are names any sweeter for being spoken as toothless babies might mumble them in trying to talk? Don't make dumplings out of your friend's names, or gnaw them out of all shape. Boys have their whims that are past endurance. Geordie always sounds like a babyish nickname for that manly name George. To hear a boy called Dode, when his real name is Theodore, gives most people a disposition to think little of the speaker and of the boy too. In the country, I believe, it is the height of manliness for a boy who goes to district school to be called Hank, if his name happens to be Henry — for what reason I cannot tell, unless because it is the least like it of any name in the spelling book. You must have the least grain of sense in your foolishness to make it fun, just as we have to put a pinch of salt into ice-cream to make it taste right.

There are other nicknames, not pleasant to hear from older persons, but which we must allow to boys and girls — who appear, if they are not allowed small follies while young, to make up for it by large ones hereafter. When are the professors in our town ever called anything but " Prof " by the young folks, while the boys of the preparatory school would feel as if one was chaffing them if they were called anything more than " Preps." The church on the hill goes by the name of the " First Cong," with never another syllable. There is not the shadow of disrespect in this; it is only a boy's natural dislike to long pedantic names ;

and I fancy most people would be sorry to have all these whimsical ways of speaking dropped. They make^a variety. But there is a fault in so falling into the habit of using slang as never to speak without it. One might as well talk pidgin- English that the Chinese use, as to learn the slang dialect so thoroughly as to forget decent language. It will keep you from this to have one little rule about the matter — never to use slang in talking to older people. There are plenty of stories for children nowadays, in which the boys and girls speak the vilest slang, from beginning to end, to their fathers, and mothers, and teachers. They cannot speak like well-bred, cared-for children, used to neat, sweet expressions about them ; but they borrow the talk of corner groceries, stables, and saloons, till one wonders if these young folks were actually brought up on the street. They say, " cheese it," or "that 's the cheese," like a grocer's boy ; and talk about the " cops," and " plug-uglies," say "nary red," and " going on the straight," like the low roughs who hang about the ill-smelling resorts of the town. These expressions are used so much by this class of persons that to hear them brings up the idea of the miserable places they come from. One actually seems to smell unsavory cheese and beer-spillings at the sound of such words. And it always seems as if a boy's boots smelt of the stable when he uses such talk.

There are several sorts of slang, and some of it is thieves' slang, and corner slang, which suggests nothing but what is vile and mean. Please to let that alone. As to the better sort of slang, be very careful not to get so much in the habit of using it that you can't do without it. When you can't describe a boy running down hill without saying he went " lickety split," or "lickety brindle," or if you must always say "cut and run" when you mean merely to run, you had better engage somebody to correct you every time you speak, for two or three weeks, till you can use decent English when you wish to. You get the taste of your slang — that is, the fun of it — most by not using it often.

Your teachers have probably talked to you enough against using fine words for simple meanings, like saying splendid for pretty or good, and awful or terrible for what is ugly or bad. You must learn to choose words that mean just what you mean, no more and no less. When I hear girls saying anything is splendid, I don't feel like getting out of my chair to go and see it, for they use the word on every slight occasion. But a splendid thing ought to be something that the world would be glad to see — fine and rich together. It isn't the word to describe caramel, or the ruffles on a debeige dress, or a picnic in a grove, or a visit to town, for any or all of which things young people use it. Why do you take out your best words for such common occasions? It is like paying out quarters for three-cent stamps ; and everybody would think you a fool for doing that. As for such words as "gent " and "pants," you probably know that there are two good reasons for letting them forever alone. The first is, that there are really no such words ; but they have been cut off of the longer ones — gentleman and pantaloons. The second is, that these short words are used by vulgar people almost entirely. Now, to be vulgar in manners is like being unclean in the face, and having one's clothes torn, or displeasing in any other way. You are just as unpleasant with your coarse ways of speaking as the dirtiest, raggedest newsboy in the street is in his appearance. As for these shabby and lowborn words, we will have none of them. 5

Ill

Oon't you feel very tired of being told to J^ " sit up" and "stand straight?" I used to, when a child, and could never see the use of it, so I'm afraid the sitting and standing were not well attended to. But every day somebody comes before one, whose walk and way of holding themselves are so bad that they are a very good lesson as to the worth of doing these things well.

At theater, the other night, Mr. Edwin Booth was playing Richelieu, a play which, by the way, is considered one of the finest ever put upon the stage. A handsome young actor had the part of Adrian De Mauprat, a gallant, brave young soldier and gentleman of France, and very well he spoke some of the lines; but he spoiled the effect of his frank air and speaking face, by standing with his knees bent, and looking round the stage. I found that nearly all the actors stood in the same weak-kneed fashion. Only Mr. Booth, the principal, and one other ambitious actor, had any idea how to stand at all. Since then, thinking over the matter, it seems that very few people stand or walk well, and the reason is they never thought anything about either. The college boys go by, looking like the flat, jointed pasteboard dolls awry, their shoulders and elbows up one side, down the other, and one hip sticking up to match. They have very fine figures for lying at full length under an apple tree, or stretched on a sofa, but when they stand, sit, or walk, their joints sag. Sometimes this is the effect of growing fast, which takes all one's strength ; but that excuse won't do for most boys. They copy the attitudes of loafers without knowing it. It is so easy to be a loafer. It takes as little talent to be a first-rate one, as it does to tell lies. The stout, pudgy boys who stand about the streets with hands in their pockets, shoulders up to their ears, and slack knees, as if they sat on the edge of nothing at all, make stout, pudgy men who could knock a blacksmith over, but who always " settle " if they stand alone. It is pure carelessness or ignorance with many boys that leads to these ill habits, and they deserve a special talking to about the matter.

Every boy and girl should stand so as to have a good balance, that no one brushing past can disturb them, and that standing will tire them less. To this end, turn out your feet as far as you can, one foot an inch or two farther forward than the other, resting the weight on the ball of the foot as well as the heel, and keeping the knees stiff. Brace them as if trying to bend the joint backward, and keep them so. You will feel as if you had hold of your knees, and in this way you can stand in a swaying horse car, or railway car, or on ship, with three times the steadiness of the common, loose-jointed way. Hold your head up, and hollow your back in all you can without allowing yourself to poke out in front. Feel as if you were going to fall all to pieces ? That is because you are not as strong as you ought to be. You sit indoors reading or studying when you ought to be out in the sunshine at play or work. It is not hard for thoroughly well persons to hold themselves straight. It is the only natural thing to them. If you would bathe your joints in cool water before you go to bed tired, and try the same refreshing when you wake in the morning warm and languid, you would find it helped you to feel brisk and to hold yourself erect all day. If you do this after a long, tiresome walk or hard play, it will keep you from feeling stiff and aching the next morning. It will be hard work to keep straight at first. But if you once take pride in an erect, decided way of carrying yourself, it will come easy always afterwards. To help yourself to it, stand flat against the door, so that your shoulder blades don't press against it, which you can't do without holdingyour shoulders well back. When you sit, choose straight-backed chairs, and take care that your shoulder blades don't rest against them. Keep them flat, so that you won't grow up with these paddle bones sticking out under your coat or dress.

When you walk, arch your back the other way from what the cat does. You will find this easier to think of and do than the oft-repeated command, " throw your shoulders back," and it is the same thing done by another set of muscles than those you naturally try to use on hearing those words. Hold your chest forward, as this gives you more room for breath, as you would find in running. Put the toe down first at each step, and bend your knee well back, as the whole foot touches the ground. This will give you a firm step, one of the great beauties of motion. Look at all good walkers, as they go swinging across country or pavements, with firm, lithe step. You see these two things in each of them, they put the toe to the ground first, and straighten the knee at each step. Look at the cat, which is a very graceful walker. See how she sets her paw down, and the little spring in her leg moves till it is straight. Nothing weak-kneed there, or in any animal that can walk far or fast, run, climb, or fight. As for you, little girls, if you knew what grace there is in one of your slim, supple figures, or what pleasing there is in a round, stout one, if held straight and carried well, with a good step, you would spring out of your languid, fine-lady attitudes, and unlearn the goose walk three-fourths the women practice from the time they are eight years old. I often watch the feet of women on Broadway, instead of their faces. It is often painful, but it is curious that so many of them walk badly, and all do it alike. They lift their toes and set their feet down so that the sole of the foot shows at every step, broad as a duck's bill, and they have in result the walk of a green drake, or something not much better. You were not made to come down on your heels at every step, and the soles of your shoes were not made to show. Break yourselves of these bad habits, so that the next generation will have such grace and ease of movement that it will be a pleasure to look at them.

It seems very tedious to learn these things, does it ? and you can't quite see how you are ever going to get the idea of a good carriage in your heads ? You must practice every day, for fifteen minutes or so, how to walk, just as recruits do. Turn your toes out, flatten your shoulders against the wall to start from, fix your eyes on a point opposite you, and a little higher than your head, so you will look up and carry your head well, brace your knees. Now slowly lift your foot, put down the toe, straighten your knee and bring your foot down. So the next foot, walking on one line of the carpet or crack in the floor. Mind about looking up, and straightening the knees, for these two things will bring all the rest right. You will have to take time to learn, but you will get the idea best by practicing very slowly and steadily fifteen minutes daily. When you go to walk alone, down to the post office or to carry a basket to the neighbors, think about your steps a little. Don't try to make a hole in the ground with your heels, or let them fly up behind. Six weeks' practice ought to improve your walk very much, and after that you would grow so used to it as to walk well without thinking about it. If you have a long mirror to practice before, so much the better. If this makes you vain I shall have a very poor opinion of you. Or if thinking about your walk makes you think a great deal of yourself, I'm afraid there is something that needs correcting more than your manner, something weak in the head if not worse in the heart. Pray, why should you be any more vain of having a good walk than of having a clean face ? One is just as much credit, or rather the want of it is as much discredit, as the other. Yet you hardly get puffed up because you are clean. Take all the improvemerit that comes to you, in the same way, as something you should not be without, but too much a matter of course to be proud of. For the least pride or vanity showing in a child is more offensive by far than a soiled face or ungainly walk.

There is one trouble you find that besets older people, also. What shall you do with your hands? Trousers' pockets are not the place for them in company, and little girls have no pockets for them. I forgot, but does it look well to see a girl always carrying her hands in the pockets of her apron or jacket? It will do once in a while, among one's mates, but it is rather free and easy for a regular habit. You don't want always to fold them like a cat crossing her paws. Let me tell you something that will help in this puzzle which troubles much better-bred persons than you can be yet. I've heard well-trained ladies, brought up very carefully in good society, say, " I can't walk without a parasol or book. I must have something to do with my hands."

One could not help feeling sorry they had not learned how to carry every part of themselves easily and gracefully, without thinking about the matter. If they would try a very simple thing, bringing the hands together in front, below the waist, at arm's length, just as they sat down or started on a walk, and then let them fall apart as they would, and keep them as they fall, the position would be nice and easy in nearly every case. Keep your hands down, and your arms pressed lightly against your sides in walking or in sitting. You need not look like a trussed chicken, at all, but a little stiffness at first is less harm than carelessness. Don't have slovenly manners whatever you are.

Don't think, in all this advice, that you are to be little prigs and " high-shouldered " small creatures. There is a time to lounge, and a time to sit with one's heels higher than one's head, and to lie on the hearthrug. These are all changes of position that rest us by changing the weight from one muscle to another. It is a good thing, sometimes, to sit in a chair tipped back, or put one's feet on a window sill ; it takes the strain off one's back. But we will take care to do this by ourselves, or with those so friendly and close as to be like ourselves. To sprawl before a stranger or visitor is entirely too familiar. It says, " I don't consider you of enough account to put myself in a pleasing position before you. I don't care whether I look awkward or not in your presence."

It isn't a comfortable feeling to give a person, and it's no credit to you. None of us have such fine manners that we need be saving of them, or be afraid of making too good an impression. We were made to be pleasant to ourselves and to others, and we ought to look well and act well for •their sakes. Even in the privileged time of a home evening, or in one's room with a chum, there is such a thing as easy lounging, quiet enough to save the eyes of a looker-on, and there is a loutish, wide-armed and wide-legged sprawling, for which any mortal deserves to be started out of his chair with a rattan cane. I have seen a young man just from college, not to speak of men a good man years from it, who, in talking with a woman he did not know very well, would curl up in an easy chair with his shoulders above his collar and one leg over the arm of a chair, never knowing the rudeness he was guilty of. And I've seen a woman of very good family indeed, who composed in French and painted in water colors, sprawl between two seats before two chance visitors, till she looked as if she were just about to tip over ; and I knew a poetess who read blue and gold books to young men in the back parlor, half lying on an easy chair with her feet on the sofa, both ladies having good health, and being in no way familiar with their visitors.

But your mother wouldn't like to have you do so, and I want to help you with hints, so that you will never fall into these bad habits. You have a better chance to grow wise and agreeable than those who went before you, for the world is wiser, and you are getting the benefit of it. Make much of your chance.

IV

" T DREAD to have vacation come, for the chil- -*- dren will be at home all the time." Somebody's mother said this in the sitting room, not long ago.

It was a queer thing for a woman to say, as if she wanted to get rid of her children. But you may think it queerer when I say I don't blame that mother one bit. I know how things go on in that house.

In the morning trouble begins. To say nothing of screeches, howls and jumps upstairs, while the children are dressing, that sound as if there was a bear garden overhead, peace downstairs is at an end when the first small head presents itself. Instead of coming down in any Christian fashion, the door flies open in a way to carry lock and hinges with it, and a boy lands in the middle of the floor. Four mornings in a week he has to be sent back to comb his hair smooth, or take care of a strap or shoe-lacing.

He would never affront our eyes in such a way if he thought to take a good look in the glass before he came down. He has his head in some new book before his mother can send him back, and drags his unwilling body away, with his eyes on the book, till her voice quickens him, and he disappears with a handspring on the way.

You can't think how entertaining it is to have such a boy in the family. He took the tablecloth with him one morning, and upset the ink, and it took only two hours to undo the harm. For two weeks after, Harry was kind enough to vary the x . erformance by walking out of the room on his hands instead of his feet. As far as the mischief he can do, I don't know that it makes any difference which end of a boy is uppermost, but most folks prefer seeing a curly head, or a smooth one, to a pair of dusty boots, with the soles broken.

Harry says we are " pernickety," a Scotch word he has picked up somewhere, meaning particular. It is a queer word, and expresses queer people. Whether it is queer not to like to see boys with shock heads and soiled jackets, or to have them shout, shuffle and hoot nearly every minute of their mortal lives, is a point on which Harry and we differ. I am sorry to say that not even a good book can keep him still. While he reads it he whistles, drums on the table, and, as a last resort, plays tunes on his teeth, which rattle like castanets. It is a very pleasant variety performance, but I have known people to object to a hand organ, when it played all day.

Carrie's father calls her the champion whiner. She always comes down cross in the morning, which, I think, is the effect of nibbling candy all the time. There is no harm in eating candy, as much as you want, if you eat it about meal times. But if you eat a little now and again, it will make you sick and cross and headachy, as I know poor Carrie is half the time.

As breakfast isn't quite ready, Carrie takes a bit of caramel, and, crowding close up to her mother, begins, with a whine, by way of grace note :

"Mamma, what shall I do with myself to-day?"

" It is so bright I think it would do to walk. You might go to ask after Aunt Jane."

" N-o-o. I don't feel like walking to-day. What else is there?"

"Do you want to help me stone raisins? I'm going to make cake this forenoon."

"N-o-o-o. That's too sticky work. I don't like it. Give me something else."

"Well, how would you like to paint? Or will you try making those picture frames out of fretwork? You used to do them so nicely."

" No, I don't like any of those things. I want something different. Oh, dear! I thought you would give such a good time in vacation, and I don't see one thing pleasant."

After breakfast, before she has been out of doors to get a smile from the sun or say good morning to the large, bright, busy, happy world outside, this wretched, nervous midge of a girl curls up on the lounge, with Jean Ingelow's stories, the sweetest ever written for children. But Carrie pays Miss Ingelow a poor compliment, by reading her book in this stupid, selfish fashion, just as a greedy child crams itself with candy. All the sweet, bright, cool morning she sits there like lead, and it is as much as the family peace is worth to try to move her. I have my lap full of work, and ask her for the scissors, and she gets up, oh ! so slowly, holding the book to her nose, and reads all across the room, and back again, sticks the scissors out before her without looking, so that she nearly pokes them into my face.