the drawing-room during the evening when her daughters receive their friends, and also accompanies her daughters to every place of

amusement.

In railway traveling, do not address a lady who is unknown to you unless she invite it. You may offer her your newspaper, with a silent bow. An "unprotected" lady ought to call forth a gentleman's finest chivalry.

The etiquette of gifts is of real importance. They often offend when designed to please.

A

In making gifts let them be in proportion to your means. rich man does not thank a poor man for making him a present which he knows the giver cannot afford.

A gift should never be such as to load the person who receives it with a sense of obligation.

It has been well said that we should take only from those to whom, in the converse of circumstances, we would gladly give.

When people are singing, do them the courtesy of listening, or pretending to listen. If you do not like music yourself, remember that others may. Beside, when a person is endeavoring to entertain you, the least you can do is to show your gratitude for the intention.

If you are asked to sing, it is good taste to comply; but take care that you choose something within the range of your powers. Amateurs too often forget the fable of the frog that aped the ox.

"To be pleased," says Lord Chesterfield, "one must please. What pleases you in others will in general please them in you."

There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.

The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.

To sit with your back to a person, without asking to be excused; to lounge or yawn in the presence of others; to sit or stand with the feet wide apart; to hum or sing in suppressed tones; to stand with the arms "akimbo;" to do anything, in short, which shows disrespect or selfishness or indifference, is unequivocally vulgar, and betrays bad breeding.

Manners first, then conversation. As life is not in manners, so it is not in talk. Manners are external; talk is occasional.

Let your talk be always adapted carefully to time and place. Don't prate about homoeopathy to a doctor, or about the blessings of celibacy to a young lady engaged to be married.

Conversation should be a series of pauses linked together by a few suitable words; many people, however, in their anxiety to bring out their words, forget their pauses.

If you speak the right word at the right time; if you are careful to leave people with a good impression; if you do not trespass upon the rights of others; if you always think of others as well as yourself; if you do not put yourself unduly forward; if you do not forget the courtesies which belong to your position, you are quite sure to accomplish much in life which others, with equal abilities, fail to.

It is said that the surest way of losing a friend is by lending him money. So, too, if you want to get rid of a person, the best plan is to lead him into an argument, and confute him in it. He will never forgive you.

Be careful how you exercise your wit. If curses, like chickens, come home to roost, so do epigrams.

Do not applaud the wit which is levelled at your friend; it may next be directed against yourself.

It is always easy to say a rude thing, but never wise.

A man should be careful, says Dr. Johnson, never to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage.

Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate, and may be offensive.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentleman. Do not tell everything, but never lie.

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.

No man speaks concerning another, even supposing it to be in his praise, if he thinks he does not hear him, exactly as he would if he thought he was within hearing.

A sarcasm is like a boomerang; when it leaves your tongue, you never know where it may alight.

What saith Chaucer?

"For when a man hath overgreat a wit,
Full oft him happeth to misusen it."

Sydney Smith is, I think, the only instance of a wit who was also a man of fine manners; but then, Sydney Smith's wit was always good-tempered.

I do not think a wit can be a polite man. your feelings than spoil his repartee.

He will rather wound

Let it be said of you as it was said of Macaulay, that he remembered everything "except an injury."

Never show a factious or peremptory irritability in small things. Be patient, if a friend keeps you waiting. Bear, as long as you can, heat or draught, rather than make others uncomfortable. Do not be fussy about your supposed rights; yield a disputed point of precedence. All society has to be made up of these concessions; they are your unnumbered friends in the long run.

Never show that you feel a slight. That is worldly-wise as well as Christian; for no one but a mean person will put a slight on another, and such a person always profoundly respects the person who is unconscious of his feeble spite. Never resent publicly a lack of courtesy; it is in the worst taste. What you do privately about dropping such an acquaintance must be left to yourself. Society wisely discourages all conspicuous manifestations of personal feeling. Lovers are not expected to "make love" in public, nor married couples to afford extravagant evidence of conjugal tenderness; and the sincerity of the affection may reasonably be doubted which parades itself in public. When our hearts are deeply moved, we do not take the world into our confidence.

One of the most prominent public men of our time said lately: "I have lived sixty-three years in the world, and have come in contact with all ranks and quality of men; but I have never met one who, when I spoke to him with sincerity and courtesy, would not reply to me in a like manner."

Dress so that anybody shall feel you are well-dressed, without being able to explain why.

To dress wholly out of "the fashion" is eccentricity; to dress

in it, servility. Adapt the fashion to yourself, and remember that dress is not meant to be a disguise.

No money, says Dr. Johnson, is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people; and a wife is pleased that she is dressed.

Do not make an ostentation of your dress. Says Goldsmith: "The person whose clothes are extremely fine I am too apt to consider as not being possessed of any superiority of fortune, but resembling those barbarians who are found to wear all the gold they have in the world in a bob at the nose."

Never profess to be that which you are not. Everybody laughs when the plumes are borrowed; but if they are imaginary, the laugh may change into a frown.

The true gentlewoman, says Ruskin, causes all persons whom she approaches to feel perfectly at home with her. Indeed this is the first characteristic of one.

In cities, leaving a card with the corner bent signifies that it was left by its owner in person.

A gentleman leaves his umbrella in the hall, but carries his hat with him, retaining it in his hand, unless invited by the lady of the house to lay it on table or rack. Her not doing so is a token to him that his call should be reasonably brief.

A gentleman must escort a lady who makes him a business call to the outer door, and to her carriage, if she has one.

A married woman must bear in mind that she has in charge not only her own name but her husband's; and her bearing, motions, address, should be that of the wife.

Do not rush into a friendship with everybody you meet. Friendships so quickly made are quickly broken.

A young lady should remember that silence is golden, and not speak too often, or too long, or too glibly. Let what you say be to the purpose, and let it be so said that if we forget the speech we may recollect the manner of it. "Learn to hold thy tongue," says quaint Thomas Fuller; "five words cost Zacharias forty weeks' silence."

Men in conversation should avoid retailing the old and senseless

jokes against women. A gentleman will respect the sex to which belongs his wife, his mother, his sister. These jokes, moreover, have lost their point, because they are no longer true.

Of all bores the greatest is he who carries his pills, powders, and plasters into the society of his friends; who bids the world listen when he sneezes; and thinks his rheumatism a matter of national

concern.

"There is one topic," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, " peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke, I beseech you to hold your peace and not pollute the morning, to which all the house-mates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by corruption and groans."

In calling on a newly-married couple, do not congratulate the lady upon her marriage, but the bridegroom. He, of course, is fortunate in having found any one to accept him; her good luck may be more problematical.

In making calls, do your best to lighten the infliction to your hostess. Do not stay long; and do not enter upon a subject of conversation which may terrify her with the apprehension that you intend to remain until you have exhausted it.

Try, without being too familiar, to make yourself so much like one of the family that no one shall feel you to be in their way, and at the same time be observant of those small courtesies and kindnesses which altogether make up what the world agrees to call good

manners.

Regulate your hours for rising and retiring by the customs of the house. Do not keep your friends sitting up later than usual, and do not be roaming about the house an hour or two before breakfast time, unless you are very sure that your presence in the parlor then will not be unwelcome.

Write in large letters in a prominent place in your mind "Be punctual." A visitor has no excuse for keeping a whole family waiting, and it is an unpardonable negligence not to be prompt at

the table.

If your friends invite you to join them in an excursion, express