A good many of our society plays are marred by _gaucheries_ of a serious nature. Glance over your mental list of tea-cup pieces. Clyde Fitch, who rarely offended in this respect, had one woman giving orders to the servants of another woman in "The Truth." Jack Neville, in the Elsie de Wolfe performance of "The Way of the World", whistled merrily while waiting in her parlor for his hostess. True, he didn't whistle very noisily, but that palliation only makes one think of the retort courteous supposed to have been made by a well-bred woman after she had complained of a gentleman who whistled in her ball room. "It was very low", plead the gentleman. "It _was_", answered the lady; "_very_ low."
Cynthia, in the comedy of that name, received her husband while the hairdresser and the manicure were employed with her. Dick Crawford, in "Caught in the Rain", tips a servant in the home of his friend, Mr. Mason. Everybody who visits Montgomery Brewster in the first act of "Brewster's Millions" comments most vulgarly on that hero's newly acquired wealth. Richard Burbank in "Clothes" mistakes Miss Sherwood's piano for a hat rack, while that lady permits herself to be led away from a dance without bidding farewell to her hostess. In "The House of Mirth", a sandless-souled hero, named Lawrence Selden, literally thrust himself past a protesting servant and into the rooms of Augustus Trenor. The young woman impersonated by Edna May in "The Catch of the Season" was given tiffen consisting of a hunk of bread an inch thick and tea in a cup that bore all the ear-marks of belonging to that family of unbreakable things that are used in the second cabin of ocean liners. These, of course, are "trifles light as air", but what shall be said of Charles Richman in dress clothes and light boots in "Mrs. Dane's Defence", of Margaret Dale in decollette and walking hat in "Delancy", and of Mrs. Fiske's laying her handkerchief on the luncheon table in "Becky Sharp?" Above all, what shall be said of the gentleman in "The Triangle" who stabbed his better half with a carving knife at dinner. I may be ignorant of what I seek to teach and quite wrong about these other _faux pas_, but _that_ certainly cannot be condemned too forcibly. It simply isn't done!