The Online Bookshelf-Social Life, Or The Manners And Customs Of Polite Society

Note merely an etiquette book, but containing The Rules Of Etiquette for All Occasions and Forming a Complete Guide to Self-culture in Conversation, Dress, Deportment, Correspondence, The Care of Children and the Home , profusely illustrated in the style of the Police Gazette.

From the chapter on Introductions and Salutations: "As a rule, introductions, to be agreeable, should be desired before being given; and since we are, or should be, in a measure, the endorsers of those whom we present to our friends, a due degree of care should be exercised in so doing, lest inadvertently we force upon another what may prove an undesirable acquaintance."


From The Art of Conversation: "Beware of evil speaking. In the eyes of all right-minded persons much that you have said recoils upon your own head, for no one has quite the same opinion of an individual after having listened to a series of scandalous stories from his lips. Hence, for your own sake, as well as for that of others, eschew the vice of evil speaking as a very pestilence."

From Courtship and Marriage: "The passion of love generally appearing to everyone save the man who feels it, so entirely disproportionate to the value of the object, so impossible to be entered into by any outside individual, that any strong expressions of it appear ridiculous to a third person. For this reason it is that all extravagance of feeling should be carefully repressed as an offense against good breeding."


And should you be unsure of the appropriate form of invitation to an afternoon tea or (how daring of you!) a masquerade, Miss Cooke explains it all for you.