Margaret E. Sangster
1904
Please choose the section you would like to read:
Good Manners in the Family
Conversation in the Family
Other little Points of Family Manners
Home-Comings
A Boy's Dress
Hints to Women
Good Manners in the Family
The Chief peril that menaces manners in the family lurks in the sort of familiarity that prevails there. We know one another so thoroughly and are so very sure of one another's love and good will that we do not have formality enough. We are apt to trample on the feelings of the family by too great candor. Every defect is noticed. Every blunder is observed. Every passing mood is taken in earnest. There are people who are lovely to visiting acquaintances and perfectly abominable with their own kindred.
Then, homes are often deadly dull, insipid to weariness. They are deserts of monotony. A little fun is the very best preventive against bad manners that can be imagined. Why not have games in the evening or music? In some houses, the father dozes on the lounge all the evening. The boys skip out of the house the moment supper is over. You see no more of them till a late bedtime. By and by they form undesirable associations--get into bad company, start on the downhill road. It is not too much to say that fun at home would have saved many a lad from ruin. As for the girls, they cannot so easily drift outdoors, but they do not find home the sweetest place on earth.
Conversation in the Family
People are always wishing that they knew how to converse well. There is only one good school on earth for the art of conversation, and that school is the family.
A good listener is a perfect boon, and sure to be appreciated. Nobody is more dreaded than the person of either sex who is known as a "great talker." The voice flowing on and on and on, like the brook that dashes and foams forever over the stones, the tendency to take the floor and hold it, the ability to say clever things, which leads one into many a pitfall, are less to be desired than deprecated.
Sydney Smith, Macaulay, and other famous talkers of their day excelled in monologue, and people were thankful when even these gifted and brilliant ones had "flashes of silence." It is well to be a good talker, but also it is well to be a good listener, and to listen one must look, one must pay attention.
Always look straight at the person who is addressing you. Never, in any circumstances, venture to correct a person in the family who, in describing a situation, or telling a story, makes a slight mistake. Whether Uncle Benjamin or Aunt Sophia came home on Wednesday or on Thursday matters little. What does matter is that the lady who is announcing the fact that they are at home shall not be mortified by an unseemly interruption.
Never use slang. Never mention anything that is disagreeable or that may wound another. Respect the innocent vanities of the man of the house, the little whims and caprices of the mistress.
Never show that you have heard a story before. Stories are as old as the Garden of Eden. In one or another form they have all been told. Listen, smile, enjoy even a thrice-told tale, and do not ruin the narrator's pleasure by showing that it is not new to you.
Never tell a story that is inappropriate; a story dragged in where there is no fitness for it is like a knot of ribbon pinned anywhere on a gown.
Never tell a story at all unless you know that you will not miss the point. Good stories are spoiled when told by people destitute of a sense of proportion or of humor.
It goes without saying that people should sink the shop, that is not talk of their business or profession in public. Yet any careful observer must have noticed that as it is with morals, so it is with manners: we may know perfectly well that to do such and such a thing is a breach of the social code, but if we wish to very much we are very apt to do it.
A young surgeon very much disgusted some ladies of his acquaintance by his bloodthirsty (as it seemed to them) encomiums on surgery. "The knife, the knife is the only thing!" he vehemently exclaimed, yet the young gentleman was well-taught, well-bred, and usually very polite.
The most glaring fault in conversation is the bringing of personal allusions and sneering remarks on every occasion. This is always a sign of ill breeding. To carcature the small peculiarities of anyone, to make anyone uncomfortably conspicuous, is unpardonable.
Conversation should be so managed that no one is left out, so to speak, in the cold. We do not like to sit in a circle where we are made to feel ourselves strangers, and in the family everyone, parents, children, and guests, have a right to know what the talk is about.
"You may have noticed," said a lady, "that I am very silent in my own home. It is because Amy and Ida ever since they came home from college have been so critical that I am afraid to open my mouth."
It is not pleasant for a mother to know that her children are sitting in judgment upon her.
This leads to the reflection that it is not according to good manners for children to reprove parents.
Other little Points of Family Manners
Never take another person's chair without relinquishing it on the person's return. Home-Comings
Home-comingsshould be made festivals. Occasionally when people have been away, having very gay times, they are sensible of flatness and of a lost savor when they return. A Boy's Dress
Give the boy a good suit of clothes if you wish him to appear manly. An ill-fitting, bad-looking garment destroys a boy's respect for himself.
Do not allow your mind to wander. Consider what is being said.
Never supply a word. Wait patiently until the person finds the needed word.
Never tell another person's story.
Never repeat the clever things you said yesterday.
Never make long and involved explanations and apologies. Nobody is interested in these.
Never drop into such expressions as Heavens! Mercy! Gracious! Goodness! My Lord! Law me! These border on profanity.
Never say darn; it is a corruption of damn.
A lady should not cross the legs in company.
A gentleman does not fidget or sit crosswise on his chair, or sit with the legs far apart.
When you do not hear a remark say, "I beg pardon?" never "What?" The latter word is the limit of rudeness.
Do not whisper in company.
Do not open letters in company unless you first ask permission to do so.
To attract attention do not take hold of people; speak to them.
Do not use your handkerchief at the table.
Be sure to rise when an older person enters the room.
Never be ungracious. You do not know how heavy a burden your friend is bearing. The heart knoweth its own bitterness.
Receive every attention, however small, with real gratitude which is warmly expressed.
Not long ago a minister called the attention of his hearers to the warm and loving appreciation of our Lord when Mary broke her precious vase of perfume on His head. He said that to the end of time her act should be a memorial. Are we breaking our alabaster boxes for our loved ones now, or are we waiting until it may be too late to render them any sweet service?
Take special pains to be courteous to the dull, uninteresting, or uncongenial visitor.
Never discriminate between your friends. Anyone invited to your home is entitled to entire courtesy.
Never repeat an unkind or malicious story. Think and say the best of people.
Be forgiving. If anyone has offended you you meet him halfway when he expresses regret.
Think before you speak.
Never absent yourself from prayers in the family.
If Sally has been in town for some weeks the first meal when she comes back should be especially nice, with something that she is fond of, and an air of gala day. Bring out the best china, use the best linen, dress the table with flowers. Coax father to wear a good coat, see that the children have clean faces and hands; don't let Sally find too sharp a contrast between home ways and what she has seen when away.
To require the boy to wear men's cast-off clothing, and go shambling around in a large pair of boots, and then expect him to have good manners, is like giving him the poorest of tools, because he is a boy, and then expecting him to do as fine work with them as a man would with good tools.
Like the man or woman, the boy respects himself, and will do much more honor to his parents, when he is well-dressed in a neatly fitting suit of clothes. Even his mother should relinquish her rights, and let the barber cut his hair.
As a rule, well-dressed children exhibit better conduct than children that are careless in personal appearance. While vanity should be guarded against, children should be encouraged to be neat in person and dress.
The mother should strive also to make her boy manly. Possibly, as a pet, her boy has in infancy had his hair curled. Even now, when he is six or eight years of age, the curls look very pretty. But the mother must forego her further pleasure in the curls; for the boy, to take his place along with the others, to run and jump, to grow manly and strong, must wear short hair. His mother can no longer dress it like a girl's. It will be necessary and best to cut off his curls.
