Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-03-29
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES 3. TRAcEWELL.

| shirt may not be q clean shirt. One
should have on q fresh shirt, OF course
With this provision satisfied, one may
and does, sit around the home In shirt
sleeves whenever one feels like 1t. Even
in magnificent mansions where rooms
are so ornate that no one would feel
like it. usually there are separate living
quarters or apartments where the in
mates may do as they please-be ordi-
nary human beings, in other words.
In public even the least formal man
is somewhat on parade. Consider at
tentively yonder magnificent person,
high hat and all. Certainly one cannot
conceive Of him strutting down Penn
sylya1ia avenue in bathrobe and slip
pers, but one may be very sure that he
often wears them at home in the privacy
OF his bed room and bath. Probably
even then he calls 1t o ''lounging robe. =
Maybe it has a silk facing and all that
but it is really a bathrobe disguised.
X X X
How many thousands Of women daily
throw their legs over the side of chairs
pick up novels and read, the while eat
| ing candy or other foodstuffS?
Not one of them would take such
an unconventional pose in hotel lobby
and sign which would adjure them tc
refrain would be right, in so far as the
mere restriction was concerned, but
wrong in the underlying sneer which
1t would cast on the practice at home
The pose is charming in itself and
| for itself. We do not see how the most
relentless critic Of the sex could find
| fault with it.
X X X
| The novels OF Alexandra Dumas
pere. are filled with boudoir scenes OF
the old French nobility in which kings
and queens think, talk and act like
regular fellows" as it were. Surely
| these representations must have beer
true to life; for, after all, those kings
/ and queens were men and women. I'm
agine how they would have felt visit
| ing some great art gallery, If they had
discovered big sign staring them In
| the face:
IF you don't act like kings and
queens at home, don't do it here. We
want you to feel ut home"
Even royalty, one may suspect, must
have its moments of relaxation, anC
surely this Is one of the divine accom-
pliShmentS of a real home-to permit
formal or inhuman state into their in
formal and intensely human status.
Even in the home there are certain
things one doesn't do in certain rooms
One does not shake the furnace in the
living room, nor wear in the latter the
rough cotton gloves which he dons tt
wrestle with the iron monster. Thus
| informality is driven from floor to
floor and from room to room.
What an absurdity it would be to find
sign posted by the piano: IF you
trim your fingernails in your bed room
do it here. We want you to feel al
homer The injunction Is correct. but
the nasty Slur lies in the impoSsibility
Of answering it: for ordinarily one does
not use the living room for such pur-
pose. But the point is that If, upon
some occasion or other, one wanted to
so use it, he might do so with impunity
in his own home, free from the indig-
nifty of insulting signs.
Such signs, like generalities in the
search for truth, are likely to be false
in quantity as well as in quality. They
overlook the one essential fact that you
cannot make a gentleman out of q man
by sneering at him. If he has any red
blood in his veins, gentleman or no gen.
tleman, he is likely to do the very thing
you do not want him to do out of sheer
spite