Never fail to maintain a firm but easy attitude. The willow, not the lightning-rod, will afford you the best suggestions.

Never walk over people, but around them. Men and women are not stepping-stones or door-mats, save to monarchs and rich corporations.

Never neglect to apologize if you stamp on a man’s corns, or jostle him into an excavation.

Never howl with laughter at any peculiarity of aspect, manner or dress. Be a gentleman always.

Never crush and shoulder your way through groups of ladies at shop-windows, with your cane menacingly twirled aloft, shillelah-fashion. Analogy between a fashionable promenade and Donnybrook Fair is wholly apocryphal.

Never smoke in the street, unless you can afford a good article. Chinese cigarettes, long nines, and black cutty pipes are decidedly in bad form.

Never, if you must smoke, whiffle your smoke in others’ faces, or playfully burn them in the back of the neck, or ask a lady for a light. Walter Raleigh, the father of tobacco-using, even carried his own cuspidor.

Never munch nuts or gorge fruits in public. A lady or gentleman on the afternoon promenade, with a peeled pineapple in one hand, a huge slice of watermelon in the other, and the jaws industriously working, is not an edifying spectacle.

Never forget, if with a lady, that she is under your protection, not you under hers.

Never rush her past an oyster-saloon at a run, or wildly distract her attention from a confectioner’s window. As a woman, she has her privileges.

Never drag her, pell-mell, with you through a mob of fighting roughs.

Never forget to be kind, even while feigning deafness to all insinuations as to refreshment. “Kindness iz an instinkt,” says Josh Billings, “while politeness iz only an art.”

Never neglect to give her at least a portion of your umbrella, when escorting her through the rain. If it should rain cats and dogs, as the saying goes, an adjournment beneath an awning, or front-stoop, might be deemed advisable.

Never, if walking with a tramp, introduce him to every acquaintance you chance to meet. It is a free country, but the line must be drawn somewhere.

Never, if you have occasion to address a strange lady, scrape, cringe and wriggle before her in an agony of politeness. To raise your hat gravely, place your hand on your heart, and yield her a low, sweeping obeisance, with your shoulders shrugged considerably higher than your ears, is sufficient. You are not supposed to be a Corean ambassador in the presence of Jay Gould.

Never address questions to strangers indiscriminately, especially as to their secret and private affairs. Communicativeness is not a necessary outcome of a total lack of sodality.

Never, even in questioning a policeman, fan him with his own club, note down his number, and ask him if he has yet got the hair off his teeth. Though in livery, he may yet be above the brute creation.

Never ask questions at all, but consult this Hand Book.

Never, if suddenly confronted on the promenade by a hostile acquaintance, accept his proposition to fight him in the gutter for a pot of beer. You are not a Prize Fighter.

Never forget to pick up a lady’s handkerchief, if she lets it fall by accident; not with effusive familiarity, but daintily on the end of your cane or umbrella. Common civility is one of the cardinal points of good breeding.

Never pick it up at all, if she drops it purposely. You needn’t set your foot on it, or scowl at her; but coquetry is one of the vices deserving of silent reproof.

Never pick up anything that even your companion may drop, unless he should be very drunk. You may pick him up also, if he should drop.

Never, even if in haste, rush through a crowded thoroughfare at a breakneck gait, with your hair flying, your necktie over your ears, and shouting “Clear the track!” at every jump. Hire a cab, or obtain roller-skates. Repose of manner should never be sacrificed to emotional insanity.

Never pose on street corners, attitudinize before show-case mirrors, or whistle an opera bouffe air while watching a funeral cortege.

Never, if with a lady, ask her to wait for you on the curb while you step into an adjacent bar-room to see a man. The ruse is a transparent one, and, moreover, she may be thirsty herself.

Never hilariously address a stranger with an obvious defect of vision as “Squinty,” nor ask another how many barrels of whisky it has taken to paint his nose. Such familiarities may possibly be resented.

Never, on the other hand, be so over-civil as to be mistaken for a dancing master or a bunco-steerer.

Never forget that a gentleman is a gentleman everywhere. Even McGilder was occasionally taken for one.

Never have your shoes polished in the middle of the sidewalk while hanging on to an awning-beam for support. It may create the impression that all the polish you have is upon your shoes.