The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-05-17
By GRACE NOBLE.

The young woman from Brownsville,
Ga, or Diggins' Corners, Ia, or Hells
Fork, Nevada, who is sent to a fash
ionable finishing school SUDDENLY finds
herself PROSTATE in the presence of a
strange god, Good Form"
She realizes that during the groom
ing process which must precede her
social campaign, there will be no time
for her to consult her monitor in the
Talks With Girls column, which,
heretofore, has represented her sole
schooling in etiquette. Neither will
her pride permit her to ask questions
on so delicate and personal a topic as
manners. She must learn by. absorp
ton rather than by precept; and she
decides on the instant that while alge-
braic principles may be important, the
question of which fork she shall use
for her oysters and which for the
entree is really essential.
Under the old regime of finishing
schools, the manners of the boarding
school miss were stamped with a GER
tain shipper and affectation, which,
presumably, set her apart from those
who were denied the blessings OF
eight months or more at THE Misses
Jones Select School for Young
Ladies'" To-day, the well-mannered
graduate of similar institutions is
model of simplicity. Her manners are
not a garment, but part of herself.
Her bearing must be that of the wo-
man to the manner born, and she must
not suggest veneering attained in
one term.
To gain this end, the daily life in
the school is marked by the most rigid
adherence to the rules of polite So
ciety. The little elegance of speech
and bearing which the awkward, con-
scious girl gradually acquires come
from contact, not from lectures on
how to leave the room and how to
hold your teacup, as might be imagln-
ed from the wild stories printed about
tae social training school for daugh-
tiers of the newly rich.
One of the First Lessons.
One of her first lessons-always by
EXAMPLES in the good manners of
clothes, the art of appropriate dress
ing. She learns to put the correct
value on lines, and reduces furbelows
to their true ranks. She discovers that
a shopping tour or a church service is
elaborate frock. She is taught that
a pedestrian skirt. tailor finished, and
a tulle picture hat form a bad combi-
nation. The importance of dinner bod
ices is duly impressed upon her mind,
until she no longer imagines that be-
cause she dons a decollete waist for
dinner, she must be booked for party
later in the evening.
The new pupil discovers that while
the chaperon sometimes tempers the
JOY of a matinee party, she is good
form" At the fashionable church
where her principal has elected that she
shall have a pew or sitting. she
learns the etiquette of the sacred edi-
fice--how to pass quietly, unostenta-
tiously, down the aisle to say nothing
of the question of precedence IN en-
tering and leaving the pew.
During a sudden and inexplicable
pause in the general conversation, she
hears her own voice in assents which
she realizes are different from those
employed all around her. She decides
10 cultivate the broad "a" an adapta-
first she drawls her "as" after a FASH
ion that is true burlesque. but. in time
this. with other crudities Of speech,
disappears.
The shades of Directing.
She must bow correctly. whether she
is saluting equals or superiors. She
finds that there are a dozen shades In
greeting. for the young and the old,
the intimate friend and the casual ac-