If an accident of any kind soever should occur during dinner, the cause being who or what it may, you should not seem to note it.
Should you be so unfortunate as to overturn or to break anything, you would make no apology. You might let your regret appear in your face, but it would not be proper to put it in words.
Never fold your napkin where you are invited for one meal only, nor at a hotel or restaurant, but lay it loosely on the table. By folding it you would intimate that you thought some one else might use it before it had been sent to the laundry. But if you are at a friend’s house for a day or two or longer, then you will do with your napkin as you see the members of the family do with theirs. At the last meal, however, you should lay your napkin on the table unfolded.
If the ladies withdraw after dinner, leaving the gentlemen, rise when they leave the table and remain standing until they have left the room.
The gentleman that is seated nearest the door or that is quickest of movement should open the door for the ladies to pass out and close it after them.
It is no longer the custom for the gentlemen to remain at the table for more than fifteen or twenty minutes, instead of from three quarters of an hour to an hour, as formerly. Indeed, there are those that look upon the custom of remaining at all as a relic of barbarism.
One should remain in the drawing-room from half an hour to an hour after dinner. To leave sooner would betray a lack of good breeding.
If you would be what you would like to be--abroad, take care that you _are_ what you would like to be--at home.
Politeness is as natural to delicate natures as perfume is to flowers.--DE FINOD.
Politeness is a curb that holds our worser selves in check.--MME. DE BASSANVILLE.
The surest way to please is to forget one’s self, and to think only of others.--MONCRIEF.
To be polite, it is sufficient to consider the comfort, the feelings, and the rights of others.--ANONYMOUS.
What if the manners imitated are frippery; better frippery than brutality; and, after all, there is little danger that the intrinsic value of the sturdiest iron will be impaired by a coating of even the most diaphanous gilt.--EDGAR ALLAN POE.
We all judge one another, and very properly, too, by externals. Most men appear like what they are, and there are those that are so experienced in judging their fellows by their appearance and bearing, that they rarely err. It is quite as true that the surest way to appear like a gentleman is to be one, as it is that the surest way to appear like an honest man is to be one. Life is made up of little things, and attention to them is evidence of a great rather than of a little mind. To a large understanding everything is important, and he that most readily descends to little things is also the most competent to compass great ones. In another chapter the subject of appearance is treated of; in this I purpose to treat more especially of bearing.