The social laws that govern the Etiquette of Entertainments of all kinds are as stringent and as well defined as any law a judge interprets for you. It may be thought that one may do as he pleases at the theatre, in a concert-room, or at a dinner-party; that little breaches of good manners will pass unobserved or be forgiven because the person who commits them is young. This is a great mistake. More is expected from the young than the old; and if a young man comes out of college and shows that he is ignorant of the rules of etiquette which all well-bred people observe, he will be looked on as badly brought up. There are certain finical rules which are made from time to time, which live a brief space and are heard of no more. The English, who generally set the fashion in these things, call these non-essentials “fads.” They are made to be forgotten.

For a time it had become a fashionable “fad” to use the left hand as much as possible, in saluting to take off one’s hat with the left hand, to eat one’s soup with the left hand; but this is all nonsense. Not long ago, in New York, every “dude” turned up the bottoms of his trousers in all sorts of weather, because in London everybody did it. Other fads were the carrying of a cane, handle down, and the holding of the arms with the elbows stuck out on both sides of him. Another importation of the Anglomaniacs was the habit of putting American money into pounds, shillings, and pence, for people who had been so long abroad could not be expected to remember their own currency. Another pleasant importation is the constant repetition of “don’t you know.” But they are all silly fashions, that may do for that class of “chappies” whose most serious occupation is that of sucking the heads of their canes, or of reducing themselves to idiocy with the baleful cigarette, or considering how pretty the girls think they are—but not for men.

The rules held by sane people all over the English-speaking world are those one ought to follow, not the silly follies of the hour, which stamp those who adopt them as below the ordinary level of human beings.

Let us imagine that you have been sent to Washington on business. I take Washington because it is the capital of the United States, and, if you do the right thing according to social rules there, you will do the right thing everywhere else. So you are going to Washington, where you will see one of the most magnificent domes in the world and the very beautiful bronze gates of the Capitol, a building about which we do not think enough because it happens to be in our own country. If it were in Europe, we should be flocking over in droves to see it.

Some kind friend gives you a letter of introduction to a friend of his. You accept it with thanks, of course. It is unsealed, because no gentleman ever seals a letter of introduction. You read it and are delighted to find yourself complimented. Now, if you want to do the right thing, you will go to a good hotel when you get to Washington; a good hotel—a hotel you can mention without being ashamed of it. It will pay to spend the extra money. And if a woman comes into the elevator as you are going up to your room,—I would not advise you to take a suite of rooms on the ground-floor,—lift your hat and do not put it on again until she goes out. You will send your letter of introduction to your friend’s friend and wait until he acknowledges it.

But if you want to do the wrong thing, you will take the letter of introduction and your travelling bag and go at once to Mr. Smith’s house. You may arrive at midnight; but never mind that,—people like promising young folk to come at any time. If the clocks are striking twelve, show how athletic you are by pulling the bell out by the wires. When the members of the family are aroused, thinking the house is afire, they will be so grateful to you, and then you can ask for some hot supper. This pleasing familiarity will delight them. It will show them that you feel quite at home. It will ruin you eventually in the estimation of stupid people who do not want visitors at midnight—but you need not mind them, though they form the vast majority of mankind.

If you want to do the right thing, wait until Mr. Smith acknowledges your letter of introduction and asks you to call at his house. If the letter is addressed to his office, you may take it yourself and send it in to him. But you ought not to go to his house until he invites you. After he does this, call in the afternoon or evening—never in the morning, unless you are specially asked. A “morning call” in good society means a call in the afternoon. And a first call ought not to last more than fifteen minutes. Take your hat and cane into the parlor; you may leave overcoat and umbrella and overshoes in the hall. A young man who wants to act properly will not lay his cane across the piano or put his hat on a chair. The hat and stick ought to be put on the floor near him, if he does not care to hold them in his hands. If he leaves his hat in the hall, his hostess will think that he is going to spend the day in her house. But if she insists on taking his hat from him, it will not do to struggle for it. Such devotion to etiquette might make a bad impression. Good feeling and common-sense must modify all rules; and if one’s entertainers have the old-fashioned impressions that the first duty of hospitality is to grasp one’s hat and cane, let them have them by all means; but do not take the sign to mean that you are to stay all day. A quarter of an hour is long enough for a first call.

“You must have had a delightful visitor this morning,” one lady said to another. “He stayed over an hour. What did he talk about?” The other lady smiled sadly: “He told me how he felt when he had the scarlet fever, and all about his mother’s liver-complaint.”

Topics of conversation should be carefully chosen. Strangers do not want to see a man often who talks about his troubles, his illness, and his virtues. The more the “You” is used in general society and the less the “I,” the better it will be for him who has the tact to use it. There is no use in pretending that our troubles are interesting to anybody but our mothers. Other people may listen, but, depend upon it, they prefer to avoid a man with a grievance.

If the young man with the letter of introduction has made a good impression, he will probably be invited to dinner. And then, if he has been careless of little observances, he will begin to be anxious. Perhaps it will be a ceremonious dinner, too, where there will be a crowd of young girls ready to criticise in their minds every motion, and some older ladies who will be sure to make up their minds as to the manner in which he has been brought up at home or at college. And we must remember that our conduct when we get out into the world reflects credit or discredit on our homes or our schools.

If our young man is invited to luncheon, he will find it much the same as a dinner, except that it will take place some time between twelve and two o’clock; while a dinner in a city is generally given at six o’clock, but sometimes not till eight. The very fashionable hour is nine. In Washington the time is from six to eight. If the dinner is to be formal—not merely a family dinner—our young stranger will get an invitation worded in this way:

Our young man should send an answer at once to this, and he must say Yes or No; and if Mr. James Brown “regrets that he cannot have the pleasure of accepting Mr. and Mrs. John Robinson’s invitation to dinner on June the Twentieth, at seven o’clock,” let him give a good reason. If he have a previous engagement, that is a good reason; if he will be out of town, that is a good reason; but he must answer the invitation at once, and say whether he will go or not. To invite to dinner is the highest social compliment one man can pay another, and it should be considered in that light. Of course if a young man considers himself so brilliant that people must invite him to their houses, he may do as he pleases, but he will soon find himself alone in that opinion. It is not good looks or brilliancy of conversation that gains a man the right kind of friends: it is good manners. Conceit in young people is an appalling obstacle to their advancement. You remember the story of the New York college man who was rescued from drowning by a ferry-hand. The latter expressed his disgust with the reward he received, and one of the college man’s friends asked him why he had not done more for his rescuer. “Done more?” he exclaimed,—he considered himself the handsomest man of his class,—“Done more! What could I do? Did not I give him my photograph, cabinet size?”

If a young man is shy, now will come his time of trials. But if he keeps in mind the few rules that regulate the etiquette of the dinner-table, he will have no reason to fear that he will make any important mistakes. If his hostess should ask him to take a lady in to dinner, he will offer her his left arm, so that his right may be free to adjust her chair, and he will wait until his place is pointed out by the hostess. He will find it awkward if he should drop into the first seat he come to—for the laws of the dinner-table are regularity and beauty. We cannot all be beautiful, but we can move in obedience to good rules. It is important that the man received in society should not cover too much space with his feet; he ought to try to keep them together.

A dinner—that is, a formal dinner—generally opens with four or five oysters. The guest is expected to squeeze lemon on them and to eat them with an oyster-fork. If one man is tempted to saw an oyster in half with a knife, he had better resist the temptation and miss eating the oyster rather than commit so barbarous an outrage. A guest who would cut an oyster publicly in half is probably a cannibal who would cut up a small baby without remorse. A man must not ask for oysters twice.

After the oysters comes the soup. If the dinner-party is small, the soup may be passed by guest to guest; but the waiter generally serves it. It is a flagrant violation of good manners to ask for soup twice. It should be taken from the side of the spoon if the guest’s mustache will permit it, and not from the tip. Soup is dipped from the eater, not toward him. Among the Esquimaux it is the fashion to smack the lips after every luscious mouthful of liquid grease; with us, people do not make any noise or smack their lips over anything they eat, no matter how good it is. In George Eliot’s novel of “Middlemarch,” Dorothea’s sister’s greatest objection to Mr. Causaban is that his mother had never taught him to eat soup without making a noise.

After the soup comes the fish. The young guest may not like fish, but he must pretend to eat it; it is bad manners not to pretend to eat everything set before one at a dinner. A little tact will help anybody to do it. No dish must be sent away with the appearance of having been untasted. It would be an insult to one’s hostess not to seem to like everything she has offered us. And, as the chief duty of social intercourse is to give pleasure and to spare pain, this little suggestion is most important.

On this point Mrs. Sherwood, an acknowledged authority on social matters, says: “First of all things, decline nothing. If you do not like certain kinds of food, it is a courtesy to your hostess to appear as if you did. You can take as little on your plate as you choose, and you can appear as if eating it, for there is always your bread to taste and your fork or spoon to trifle with, and thus conceal your unwillingness to partake of a disliked course.” Fish is eaten with a fork in one hand and a piece of bread in the other. There was once a man who filled his mouth with fish and dropped the bones from his lips to his plate. He disappeared—and nobody asks where he has gone. If a bone does happen to get into the mouth, it can be quietly removed. The guest who puts his fingers ostentatiously into his mouth to take out the fish-bones he has greedily placed there might, under temptation, actually and savagely tilt over his soup plate to scoop up the last drop of the liquid.

The next course, after the fish, is the entrÉe; it may be almost anything. No well-bred man ever asks for a second helping of the sweetbreads, or chops, or whatever dish may form the entrÉe. It is eaten with the fork in the right hand and a piece of bread in the left. In England it is considered ill-bred to pass the fork from the left hand to the right; but we have not as yet become so expert in the use of the left hand, so we use our forks with the right. A guest who asks for a second portion of the entrÉe may find himself in the position of a certain Congressman who had never troubled himself about etiquette. He was invited to a state dinner at the White House. The courses were delayed by this genial legislator, who would be helped twice. When the roasts came on he turned to a lady, and in his amiable way said, with a fascinating smile, “No, I can’t eat more; I’m full—up to here,” he added, making a pleasant motion across his throat. It was probably the same Congressman who, seeing a slice of lemon floating in his finger-bowl, drank its contents, and swore that it was the weakest lemonade he had ever tasted.

The roast comes after the entrÉe. Each course is eaten slowly, because the host wants to keep his guests in pleasant conversation at his table as long as possible. If the host helps our young guest to a slice of the roast, whatever flesh-meat or fowl it may be, the guest must not pass it to anybody else: he must keep it himself; it was intended for him. This rule does not apply to the soup and the fish and the entrÉes as it does to the roast. Suppose a guest wants his beef rare, or underdone, and I pass him the piece given to me by the host, because he knows I like it well-done: the consequence is that the guest next to me gets what he does not like and I get what I do not like. Another thing: Begin to eat as soon as you are helped. Do not wait for anybody; if you do, your food may become cold.

The seat of honor for the men is always on the hostess’ right hand; for the ladies, on the right hand of the host. The lady in the seat of honor is always helped first. She begins to eat at once. There is nobody to wait for then. The rule is that one should begin to eat as soon as one is served. This rule may be followed everywhere, and the practice of it prevents much embarrassment.

After the roast there will probably be an entremets of some kind. It may be an omelette, it may be only a salad, or it may be some elaborately made dish. In any case, your fork and a bit of bread will help you out. When in doubt, a young man should always use his fork—never his knife, as it is used only to cut with, and to help one’s self to cheese. Vegetables are always taken with the fork; lettuce too, and asparagus, except when there is no liquid sauce covering it entirely. Lettuce, when without sauce, asparagus when not entirely covered with sauce, are eaten with the fingers. Water-cress is always eaten with the fingers, and so are artichokes. A dinner ought not to last over two hours; but it may. If our guest yawns or looks at his watch he is ruined socially. He might almost as well thrust his knife into his mouth as do either of them. When he gets more accustomed to the world, he will discern that people object to a view of his throat suddenly opened to them.

But to return to our dinner-party: If the finger-bowls are brought on, the general custom is to remove them from the little plate on which they stand. The little napkins underneath them are not used: these are merely put there to save the plate from being scratched by the finger-bowls. As usage differs somewhat here, the young guest had better watch his hostess and imitate her.

An ice called a Roman punch is served after the roast; it is always eaten with a spoon. If a fork is served with the ice-cream at the end of the dinner, the amiable young man had better not begin to giggle and ask “What’s this for?” If he never saw ice-cream eaten with a fork before, it is not necessary to show it. It is very often so eaten, and if he finds a fork near his ice-cream plate, let him use it just as if it was no novelty. To show surprise in society is bad taste; it is good taste to praise the flowers, the china, the soup. One ought to say that he enjoyed himself, but never to say that he is thankful for a good dinner. It is understood that civilized people dine together for the pleasure of one another’s society, not merely to eat.

When the little cups of black coffee are served, our young guest may take a lump of sugar with his fingers, if there are no tongs. Similarly in regard to olives, he may take them with his fingers and eat them with his fingers. One’s fingers should be dipped in the finger-bowls,—there is a story told of a young man who at his first dinner-party put his napkin into his finger-bowl and mopped his face. The host, who ought to have been more polite, asked him if he wanted a bathtub. The boy said no, and asked for a sponge.

If our young guest be wise he will pay all possible attention to the hostess; the host really does not count until the cigars come around. Then let the young person beware in being too ready to smoke. He may possibly not be offered cigars at all, but if he is, and he smokes in any lady’s presence without asking her permission, the seal of vulgarity is impressed on him.

A guest to whom black coffee is served in a little cup ought not to ask for cream. It might cause some inconvenience; it is not the custom. When a plate is changed or sent up to our host, the knife and fork should be laid parallel with each other and obliquely across the plate. At small dinners, where the host insists on helping you twice, one may keep his knife and fork until his plate is returned to him.