Evening star., 1935-05-05

L. a IN .p ps1s: s:' Wit" ''''" ''@' '''o
MY Dear Mrs. Post: Do you really con-
slider these impossible young people described
IN your articles representative of Best So
ciety7' Hello everybody, this is George
McGTegor' 10 the pseposterous introduction
made by that smart Aleck youngest New
Yorker whom you not only fail to rebuke. but
actually excuse a. being friendly and 60 ON
to explain that among the youngest men,
ben of the fashionable world Mister and Miss
are never said except to outsiders.'
"One wonders, Mrs. Post. just how far you
approve of all the other free and easy things
this lack of dignity implies. and one is afraid
that your effort to be broad minded and mod
ern. if persisted in, may lead you into leniency
toward vulsarity and bad taste. and into for
getting that dignity is the first requisite of
Manners"
In answering this, l am rather at loss to
mderstand how saying that young people of
today call each other by their first names
and are casual about certain quite superficial
formalities. which yesterday enacted. can be
interpreted as leniency toward the free and
easy things" (whateves those may be- as well
a. "vulgarity and bad TASTE" But in case
ether readers may have been given similar
impression, think it d important that con-
slider the manners of our youngest moderns in
somewhat greater detail.
To begin with my apparent approval of first
names on the ground of friendliness. let me
say that do not at all approve of promiscu-
ous use of FIRST names. In fact, in this same
article to which this reader took exception,
stated plainly that first names are universal
only between those who belong in the same
small group of intimate friends.
"Outsidess," meaning the whole world out
side of an immediate circle, are always called
Mrs.. Miss or Mister, even though no one
could seriously ask that the world of today 60
back to the formalities of yesterday. Modern
young people can scarcely be expected to be-
lieve that such peimness as that of yesterday
could exist, when belle called even her most
devoted beau Mister" until she became en-
gagged to him. This was one extreme.
At the other extreme are those of the pres
ent day who find no objection whatever to the
promiscuous use of first names by all and
sundry - worse yet. to the use of nick names.
On the subject of nick names. by the way.
be careful: Buvvy or Bubbins, Sisser or Toots
are all sweet enough when said to a very young
child, but nick names have way of clinging
for life; and college professor called Bubbins,
and a grandmother called Toots is something
else again.
Somewhere between these two extremes lies
the happy medium of good taste today.
Beyond earliest youth the use of first names
should imply degree f. don't know how
toexpress it except as kinship. if fkinship might
mean link of deep association with family or
friends or college that makes bond. or else
long tested friendship.
But to answer point in the letter with
which I agree: am sure it is true that the
general trend of the times does affect all of US
who come into close contact with its move
ment. Moreover, it is true that would not
want to be 50 biased by yesterday that l
could not understand or even perceive today.
I should hate not to take part in this
kaleidoscopically changing world; nor would l
be Of use to myself or to anyone else were
to shut my eyes and close my ears and i'm
agine that society at the turn of the century
was alone fit to serve az a pattern Such up-