New-York tribune., 1922-09-03


-M| sonal contacts in life are
made smooth"
Is this not admirable? | had feared.
as the result of my wide and almost
continuous reading on this subject,
that the author of "Blue Book of
Social Usage" would maintain at the
very least that the rules of etiquette
were categorical imperatives flung full
born and complete out of the whirling
mists of chaos, and that their object
was to teach US to be kind to dumb
animals and to fit US for an existence
beyond the grave. They do, so often.
Every other writer that l have en-
countered on etiquette, ethics, meta
physics and similar pastimes either
boldly states or implies that his own
particular hobby is so self-evident that
only fiend in human form would ques-
tion it; that all nature hourly hymns
it; that the little birds and the flower
let's and the green grass respectively
sing, nod and wave for it alone, and
that references to it can be found in
Upanishad, the Egyptian Book of the
Dead and the Code of Hammurabi. Not
so Mrs. Post.
IF you analyze the precepts laid
down by etiquette" says she, you will
find that for each there is a perfectly
good reason" Exactly! The reason
why plenty of young women act thus
and so and not otherwise is mother
The reason why no lady, even of any
kind, may go to dinner or supper in
restaurant alone with a gentleman,
though he be ninety and crippled, is
Mrs. Grundy. What Mrs. G. tells you
do, do it, and do it quick. And don't
argue. This may not be Ibsen, but
it's etiquette
NOW let it be said at, once that Mrs.
l Post is very delightful writer
humorous, wise, witty. worldly, sympa
thetic, human. She hates what is hate
full in Mrs. Grundy, and I'll wager that
she has had her doubts Cor has she y
about the dignity of Best Society (the
capitals are hers), although she affects
for it a profund admiration. The fun
in her book, and it is endless, inheres
not in her own attitude toward her
subject, which she is clearly entitled
to and which she knows thoroughly,
but in the subject itself-men and
women behaving themselves, and
much better, it seems to me, than is at
all necessary.
The author of etiquette" has sue
ceeded best in those passages in which
she has adopted scientific point of
view. Fabre tells us that the female
mantis devours the male Immediately
after the nuptials. Mrs. Posts bride and
bridegroom partake together of lobster
Newburg, supreme of chicken and aspic
of foie gras, consuming, you will no.
tice, only fellow-creature outside the
family. Where the French sayant tells
US that certain grasshoppers can live
without a brain Mrs. Post leaves us
in no doubt that she has observed an
analogous phenomenon in her own field.
A comparative study of the uselessness
of the cervical gangiion in the grass
and the fnale-hopper in relation to
the complete functioning of the or
ganism is yet to be made. One feels
that entomology is still in its infancy.
Who, wonder, ought to read this
heart all the forms by which every
contact in life is made smooth Can
the socially lost be saved by perusing
even 627 pages of advice? Although
Mrs. Post promises that one can learn
TO eat asparagus, | hsve heard it as
serted that either one always knew or
never can know ! prefer to think that
Titherington Smith came into the
world, if not exactly trailing a portion
OF asparagus, at least well aware that
it is not good form ''to take long
dropping stalk, hold it mp in the air,
and catch the end of it in your mouth
like fish," and that when the stalks
are thin, it is best to cut them in half
with the fork, eating the tips like all
fork food and doing the fish act only
with the other end.
Supposing the saved do know what
to do. Do they do it? For me the
mood of fiction was persistent through
out the book, heightened as it was by
constant illusions to the Topluftys,
the Worldlys, the Bobo .Gildings, the
Oldnames and Titherington SINith, a
nomenclature which relates the. book,
though unconventionally, to the Greek
comic epic and the Restoration drama.
Owing to this. use of label-names,
fancy that Etiquette" is something
like Pilgrims Progress" might have
been if Christian had been more like
Titherington Smith.
rTS0 BE lady. as is commonly known,
y is no small undertaking. Life is so
complicated. What to do. for Instance.
about coal heavers Turn TO page T
("When to shake hands") and read:
Strictly speaking, it is always her
place to offer her hand or not an she
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