 CHAPTER XXXI GAMES AND SPORTS The popularity of bridge-whist began a quarter of a century ago, with the older people, and has increased slowly but steadily, until it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that those who do not play bridge, which means auction, are seldom asked out. And the epidemic is just as widespread among girls and boys as among older people. Bridge is always taken seriously. A bumble-puppy game won't do it all, even among the youngest players, and other qualifications of character and of etiquette must be observed by everyone who would be sought after to make up a fore. People Charming to Play Bridge With That no one likes a poor partner, or even a poor opponent, goes without saying. The ideal partner is one who never criticizes or even seems to be aware of your mistakes, but on the contrary recognizes a good maneuver on your part, and gives you credit for it, whether you win the hand or lose. Whereas the inferior player is apt to judge you merely by what you win, and blame your make, if you go down, though your play may have been exceptionally good, and the loss even occasioned by wrong information which he himself gave you. Also to be continually found fault with makes you play your worst, whereas appreciation of good judgment on your part acts as a tonic, and you play seemingly better than you know how. People Disliked at the Bridge Table There is nothing which more quickly reveals the veneered gentleman than the card table, and his veneer melts equally with success or failure. Being carried away by the game, he forgets to keep on his company polish, and if he wins, he becomes grasping or overbearing because of his skill. If he loses, he sneers at the luck of others, and seeks to justify himself for the same fault that he criticized a moment before in another. A trick that is annoying to moderately skilled players is to have an overconfident opponent throw down his hand saying, The rest of the tricks are mine, and often succeed in putting it over when it is quite possible that they might not be his if the hand were played out. Having themselves to be poorer players, the others are apt not to question it, but they feel nonetheless that their rights have been taken from them. A rather trying partner is the nervous player, who has no confidence in his own judgment and will invariably pass a good hand in favour of his partner's bid. If, for instance, he has six perfectly good diamonds, he doesn't mention them because his partner having declared a heart, he thinks to himself, Her hearts must be better than my diamonds. But a much more serious failing, and one that is far more universal, is the habit of overbidding. In poker you play alone, and can therefore play as carefully or as foolishly as you please, but in bridge your partner has to suffer with you, and you therefore are honour-bound to play the best you know how, and the best you know how is as far as can possibly be from overbidding. Remember that your partner, if he is a good player, counts on you for certain definite cards that you announce by your bid to be in your hand, and raises you accordingly. If you have not these cards, you not only lose that particular hand but destroy his confidence in you, and the next time, when he has a legitimate raise for you, you will fail to give it. He disregards you entirely because he is afraid of you. You must study the rules for makes, and never under any circumstances give your partner misinformation. This is the most vital rule there is, and anyone who disregards it is detested at the bridge-table. No matter how great the temptation to make a gambler's bid, you are in honour-bound to refrain. The next essential, if you would be thought charming, is never to take your partner to task, no matter how stupidly he may have thrown the hand. Don'ts for those who would be sought after. Don't hold a post mortem on anybody's delinquencies unless you are actually teaching. If luck is against you, it will avail nothing to sulk or complain about the awful cards that you are holding. Your partner is suffering just as much in finding you a poison vine as you are in being one, and you can scarcely expect your opponents to be sympathetic. You must learn to look perfectly tranquil and cheerful, even though you hold nothing but yar boroughs for days on end, and you must on no account try to defend your own bad play ever. When you have made a play of poor judgment, the best thing you can say is, I'm very sorry, partner, and let it go at that. Always pay close attention to the game. When you are dummy you have certain duties to your partner, and so do not wander around the room until the hand is over. If you don't know what your duties are, read the rules until you know them by heart, and then begin all over again. It is impossible to play any game without a thorough knowledge of the laws that govern it, and you are at fault in making the attempt. Don't be offended if your partner takes you out of a bid, and don't take him out for the glory of playing the hand. He is quite as anxious to win the rubber as you are. It is unbelievable how many people regard their partner as a third opponent. MANORISMS AT THE CARD TABLE Manorisms must be avoided like the plague. If there is one thing worse than the horrible post-mortem, it is the incessant repetition of some jarring habit by one particular player. The most usual and most offensive is that of snapping down a card as played, or bending a trick one has taken into a letter U, or picking it up and trotting it up and down on the table. Other pet offenses are drumming on the table with one's fingers, making various clicking, whistling, or humming sounds, massaging one's face, scratching one's chin with the cards, or waving the card one is going to play a loft in the air in smart Alec fashion as though shouting, I know what you are going to lead and my card is ready. All mannerisms that attract attention are in the long run equally unpleasant, even unendurable to one's companions. Many people whose game is otherwise admirable are rarely asked to play because they have allowed some such silly and annoying habit to take its hold upon them. THE GOOD LOSER The good loser makes it an invariable rule never to play for stakes that it will be inconvenient to lose. The neglect of this rule has been responsible for more bad losers than anything else and needless to say a bad loser is about as welcome at a card table as rain at a picnic. Of course there are people who can take losses beyond their means with perfect cheerfulness and composure. Some few are so imbued with the gambler's instinct that a heavy turn of luck in either direction is the salt of life. But the average person is equally embarrassed in winning or losing a stake that matters and the only answer is to play for one that doesn't. GOLF GOLF is a particularly severe strain upon the amiability of the average person's temper and in no other game, except bridge, is serenity of disposition so essential. No one easily ruffled can keep a clear eye on the ball and exasperation at lost balls seemingly bewitches successive ones into disappearing with the completeness and finality of puffs of smoke. In a race or other test of endurance a flare of anger might even help but in GOLF it is safe to say that he who loses his temper is pretty sure to lose the game. GOLF players of course know the rules and observe them but it quite often happens that idlers, having nothing better to do, walk out over a course and watch the players. If they know the players well that is one thing but they have no right to follow strangers. A person who is nervous is easily put off his game especially if those watching him are so ill-bred as to make audible remarks. Those playing matches of course expect an audience and erratic or nervous players ought not to go into tournaments or at least not in two ball forcems where they are likely to handicap a partner. In following a match onlookers must be careful to stand well within bounds and neither talk nor laugh nor do anything that can possibly distract the attention of the players. The rule that you should not appoint yourself mentor holds good in GOLF as well as in bridge and every other game. Unless your advice is asked for you should not instruct others how to hold their clubs or which ones to use or how they ought to make the shot. A young woman must on no account expect the man she happens to be playing with to make her presence of golf balls or to caddy for her nor must she allow him to provide her with a caddy. If she can't afford to hire one of her own she must either carry her own clubs or not play golf, other games and sports. There are fixed rules for the playing of every game and for proper conduct in every sport. The details of these rules must be studied in the books of the game, learned from instructors or acquired by experience. A small boy perhaps learns to fish or swim by himself but he is taught by his father or a guide, at all events someone, how and how not to hold a gun, cast a fly, or ride a horse. But apart from the technique of each sport or the rules of each game, the etiquette or more correctly the basic principles of good sportsmanship are the same. In no sport or game can any favoritism or evasion of rules be allowed. Sport is based upon impersonal and indiscriminating fairness to everyone alike or it is not sport. And to be a good sportsman one must be a stoic and never show ranker in defeat or triumph in victory or irritation no matter what annoyance is encountered. One who cannot help sulking or explaining or protesting when the loser or exalting when the winner has no right to take part in games and contests. Playing the game. If you would be thought to play the game, meaning if you aspire to be a true sportsman, you must follow the rules of sportsmanship the world over. Never lose your temper. Play for the sake of playing rather than to win. Never stop in the middle of a tennis or golf match and complain of a lame ankle especially if you are losing. Unless it is literally impossible for you to go on you must stick it out. If you are a novice don't ask an expert to play with you especially as your partner. If he should ask you in spite of your shortcomings maintain the humility proper to a beginner. If you are a woman don't ape the ways and clothing of men. If you are a man don't take advantage of your superior strength to set a pace beyond the endurance of a woman opponent. And always give the opponent the benefit of the doubt. Nothing is more important to your standing as a sportsman though it costs you the particular point in question. A true sportsman is always a cheerful loser, a quiet winner with a very frank appreciation of the admirable traits in others which he seeks to emulate and his own shortcomings which he tries to improve. End of Chapter 31. Read by Kara Schellenberg. Chapter 32 of Etiquette. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Kim Veebrock. Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home by Emily Post. Chapter 32. Etiquette in Business and Politics. A certain rich man whose appointment to a foreign post of importance was about to be ratified came into the corridor of a Washington hotel and stopped to speak with a lady for a few moments. During the whole conversation he kept his hat on his head and a cigar in the corner of his mouth. It happened that the lady was the wife of a prominent senator and she lost no time in reporting the incident to her husband who in turn brought the matter to the attention of certain of his colleagues with the result that the appointment did not go through. It is not unlikely that this man thinks politics played against him whereas the only factor against him was his exhibition of ill-breeding which proved him unsuitable to represent the dignity of his country. Etiquette would not seem to play an important part in business and yet no man can ever tell when its knowledge may be of advantage or its lack may turn the scale against him. The man who remains planted in his chair when a lady or an older man speaks to him, who receives customers in his shirt sleeves, who does not take off his hat when talking with a lady and take his cigar out of his mouth when bowing or when addressing her, can never be sure that he is not preparing a witness for the prosecution. Etiquette in Smoking. The above does not mean that a gentleman may never smoke in the presence of ladies, especially in the presence of those who smoke themselves, but a gentleman should not smoke under the following circumstances. When walking on the street with a lady, when lifting his hat or bowing, in a room, an office, or an elevator when a lady enters, in any short conversation where he is standing near or talking with a lady. If he has seated himself for a conversation with a lady on a veranda, in a hotel, in a private house, anywhere where smoking is permitted, first he asks, do you mind if I smoke? And if she replies, not at all, or do, by all means, it is then proper for him to do so. He should, however, take his cigar, pipe, or cigarette out of his mouth while he is speaking. One who is very adroit can say a word or two without an unpleasant grimace, but one should not talk with one's mouth either full of food or barricaded with tobacco. In the country, a gentleman may walk with a lady and smoke at the same time, especially a pipe or cigarette. Why a cigar is less admissible is hard to determine, unless a pipe somehow belongs to the country. A gentleman in golf or country clothes with a pipe in his mouth and a dog at his heels suggests a picture fitting to the scene while a cigar seems as out of place as a cutaway coat. A pipe on the street in a city, on the other hand, is less appropriate than a cigar in the country. In any event, he will, of course, ask his companion's permission to smoke. Manners and business. If you had a commission to give and you entered a man's office and found him lulling back in a tipped swivel chair, his feet above his head, the ubiquitous cigar in his mouth, and his drowsy attention fixed on the sporting page of the newspaper, you would be impressed not so much by his lack of good manners as by his bad business policy because of the incompetence that his attitude suggests. It is scarcely necessary to ask, would you give an important commission to him who has no impaired intention of doing anything but take his ease, or to him who is found occupied at his desk, who gets up with a lacquerty upon your entrance, and is seemingly on his toes mentally as well as actually, or would you go in preference to a man whose manners resemble those of a bear at the zoo if you could go to another whose business ability is supplemented by personal charm and this again is merely an illustration of bad manners and good. An advantage of polish. One advantage of polish is that one's opponent can never tell what is going on under the glazed surface of highly finished manners whereas an unfinished surface is all too easily penetrated and since business encounters are often played like poker hands it is surely a bad plan to be playing with a mind reader who can plainly divine his opponent's cards while his own are unrevealed. Manners that can by any possibility be construed as mincing foppish or effeminate are not recommended. But a gentleman who says good morning to his employees and who invariably treats all women as ladies, does not have so much flatter their vanity as win their respect for himself as a gentleman. Again good manners are after all nothing but courteous consideration of other people's interests and feelings. That being true doesn't not follow that all customers, superior officers and employees prefer an executive whose good manners imply consideration of his customers his companies and his employees interest as well as merely his own perfect polish that is unsuspected. The president of a great industry whose mastery of etiquette is one of his chief assets so submerges this asset in other and more apparent qualifications that every plain man he comes in contact with takes it for granted that he is an equally plain man himself. He is plain in so far as he is straightforward in attitude and simple in manner. No red tape is required apparently to penetrate into this president's private office whereas many small men are guarded with pretentiousness that is often an effort to give an account of importance. In this big man's employ there is a special assistant chosen purposely because of his tact and good manners. If an unknown person asks to see Mr. President this deputy sent out as from most offices to find out what the visitor's business is. But instead of being told bluntly the boss doesn't know him and can't see him the visitor is made to feel how much the president will regret not seeing him. Perhaps he is told Mr. President is in conference just now. I know he would not like you to be kept waiting. Can I be of any service to you? I am his junior assistant. If the visitor's business is really with the president he is admitted to the chief executive's office since it is the latter's policy to see every one that he can. He has a courteous manner that makes everyone feel there is nothing in the day's work half so important as what his visitor has come to see him about. Nor is this manner insincere for whatever time one sees him he gives his undivided attention. Should his time be short and the moment approach when he is due at an appointment his secretary enters a purposely arranged ten minutes ahead of the time necessary for the close of the present interview and apologetically reminds him I'm sorry Mr. President but your appointment with the Z committee is due. Mr. President with seeming unconcern uses up most of the ten minutes and his lingering close of the conversation gives his visitor the impression that he must have been late at his appointment and wholly because of the unusual interest felt in his caller. This is neither sincerity nor insincerity but merely bringing social knowledge into business dealing. To make a pleasant and friendly impression is not alone good manners but equally good business. The crude man would undoubtedly show his eagerness to be rid of his visitor after offending the latter self-pride because of his inattentive discursive be late for his own appointment. The man of skill saw his visitor for fewer actual minutes but gave the impression that circumstances over which he had no control forced him unwillingly to close the interview. He not only gained the good will of his visitor but arrived at his own appointment in plenty of time. To listen attentively when one is spoken to is merely one of the rules of etiquette. The man who while someone is talking to him gazes out of the window or up at the ceiling who draws squares and circles on the blotter or is engrossed in his fingernails or his shoes may in his own mind be finessing or very likely he is bored. In the first case the chances are he will lose the game. In the second lots of people are bored, hideously bored and most often the fault is their own. Always they are at fault who show it. Good Manners and Good Mixers. When one thinks of a man who is known in politics and business as a good mixer one is apt to think of him as a rough diamond rather than a polished one. In picturing a gentleman a man of high cultivation one instinctively thinks of one who is somewhat aloof and apart. A good mixer among uncouth men may quite accurately be one who is also uncouth. But the best mixer of all is one who adjusts himself equally well to finer as well as to planer society. Education that does not confer flexibility of mind is an obviously limited education. The man of broadest education tunes himself in unison with whomever he happens to be. The more subjects he knows about the more people he is in sympathy with and therefore the more customers or associates or constituents he is sure to have. The really big man it makes little difference whether he was born with a gold spoon in his mouth or no spoon at all is always one whose interest in people, things and events is a stimulating influence upon all those he comes in contact with. He who says that does not interest me or that bores me defines his own limitations. He who is unable to project sympathy into other problems or classes than his own is an unimportant person though we have the birth of a Cecil and the manners of a Chesterfield. Every gentleman has an inalienable right to his own reserves that goes without saying and because he can project sympathy and understanding where and when he chooses does not for one moment mean that he thereby should break down the walls of his instinctive defenses. It is not the latter type but the gentleman limited who has belittled the name of gentleman in the world of work. Not so much because he is a gentleman as because he is not entirely one. He who is every inch a gentleman as well as every inch a man is the highest type in the world today just as he has always been. The do nothing gentleman is equally looked down upon everywhere. Etiquette in reverse gear Etiquette remember is merely a collection of forms by which all personal contacts in life are made smooth. The necessity for a rough man to become polished so that he may meet man of cultivation on an equal footing has an equally important reverse. The time is gone by when a gentleman by grace of God which placed him in a high born position can control numbers of other men placed beneath him. Every man takes his place today according to born position plus the test of his own experience. And just as an unlettered expert in business is only half authoritative to men of high cultivation so also is the gentleman no matter how much he knows of Latin Greek history art and polish of manner handicapped according to his ignorance on the subject of another's expertness. Etiquette in reverse prescribes this necessity for complete knowledge in every contact in life. Through knowledge alone does one prove one's right to authority. For instance a man in a machine shop is working at a lathe. An officer of the company comes into the shop a gentleman in white collar and good clothes. He stands behind the mechanic and curses him out because his work is inefficient. When he turns away the man at the lathe says who was that guy anyway? What business has he to teach me my job? Instead of accepting the criticism he resents what he considers unwarranted interference by a man in another class. But supposing instead of standing by and talking about inefficiency the gentleman had said get out of there a moment. And throwing off his coat and rolling up his silk shirt sleeves he had operated the lathe with a smoothness and rapidity that could only have been acquired through long experience at a bench. The result would be that the next time he came on a tour of inspection that particular man as well as all those who were witnesses of the former scene would not only listen to him with respect but without resentment of his class because his expertness proved that he had earned his right to good clothes and silk shirts and to tell those beneath him how work should be done. The same test applies to any branch of experience. A man who knows as much about any specialty as an expert does himself makes the expert think at once this man is a wonder. The very fact that the first man is not making the subject his specialty intensifies the achievement. Everything he says after that on subjects of which the second man knows nothing is accepted without question. Whenever you know as much as the other man whether you are socially above or below him you are on that subject his equal. When you know more than he does you have the advantage. The self made man and world made manors. It is not in order to shine in society that grace of manner is an asset comparatively few people in a community care a wrap about society anyway. A man of affairs whose life is spent in doing a man's work in a man's way is not apt to be thrilled at the thought of putting on glad clothes and going out with his wife to a pink tea or ball. But what many successful men do not realize is that a fundamental knowledge of etiquette is no less an asset in business or public life or in any other contact with people than it is in society. Just as any expert whether at a machine bench an accountants desk or at golf gives an impression of such ease as to make his accomplishment seemingly require no skill a bungler makes himself and everyone watching him uneasy if not actually fearful of his awkwardness. And as expertness is quite as irritating and personal as in mechanical bungling so there is scarcely anyone who sooner or later does not feel the need of social expertness. Something someday will awaken him to the folly of scorning as soft men who have accomplished manners despising as effeminate youths who have physical grace of being contemptuous of the perfect English of the well-bred gentleman of consoling himself with the thought that his own crudeness is strong and manly and American. The X Markers But let success come to the same inexpert man let him be appointed to high office let him then shuffle from foot to foot never knowing what to do or say let him meet open derision or ill-concealed contempt from every educated person brought in contact with him let a probrium fall upon his state because its governor is a war and let him as such be written of in the editorials of the press and in the archives of history. Will he be so pleased with himself then? Does anyone think of Theodore Roosevelt as soft or effeminate because he was one of the greatest masters of etiquette who ever bore the most exultant honor that can be awarded by the people of the United States? Washington was completely a gentleman and so was Abraham Lincoln. Because Lincoln's etiquette was self-taught it was no less masterly for that. Whether he happened to know a lot of trifling details of pseudo etiquette matters not in the least. Awkward he may have been but the essence of him was courtesy. Unfailing courtesy. No rough uneducated man has command of perfect English and Lincoln's English is supreme. One thing that some men of might forget is that lack of polish in its wider aspects is merely lack of education. They themselves look down upon a man who has to make an X mark in place of signing his name but they overlook entirely that to those more highly educated they are themselves in degree quite as ignorant. Sons of self-made men and yet speak to self-made men of the need of the social graces for their sons and nine out of ten stampede for all the world as though it were suggested to put them in petticoats. Do they think a poor unlettered loud who shambles at the door, who stands unable to speak, who turns his cap in his hands, who sidles into the room and can't for the life of him get out again well trained for the battle of life? Picture that Mr. Strongman who thrusts his thumbs into his armholes and sits tipped back in his chair with a cigar in the corner of his mouth and his heels comfortably reposing on a solid mahogany desk. This is not in criticism of his relaxation. It is his own desk and certainly has a right to put his heels on it if he wants to. Likewise, thumbs and armholes are his own. It is merely a picture that leads to another. Supposing a very great man comes into Mr. Strongman's office one whom he may consider a great man, a president perhaps of a big industry or of a railroad or a senator and shortly afterwards Strongman's own son comes into the room. Would he like to see his son a bashed, awkward, spasmodically jerky like the poor bumpkin who came the other day to ask about removing the ashes or worse yet bold and boisterous or cheeky? Or would he like that boy of his to come forward with an entire lack of self-consciousness? And as his father introduces him as my son, have him put out his hand in frank and easy and yet deferential friendliness and then saying quickly and quietly whatever it was he came to say quickly and quietly make his way out again. Would he be sorry that the big man thought, fine boy that, ability too. Why would he think he had ability? Because the ease and dexterity with which he handled the social incident automatically suggests ability to handle other situations. Atticate and business authority. Another point, does the self-made man stop to realize that his authority in business would be even greater than it is if he had the hallmarks of cultivation? For instance, when he comes in contact with college graduates and other cultivated men, his opinions gain or lose in weight exactly in proportion as he proves to be in their own class or below it. A man unconsciously judges the authority of others by the standard of his own expert knowledge. A crude man may be a genius in business management, but in the unspoken opinion of men of education he is in other contexts inferior to themselves. He is an authority they grant, but in limited lines only. But when a man is met with who combines with business genius the advantage of polished manners and evident cultivation, his opinion on any subject broached at once assumes added weight, doesn't it? All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Laurie Ann Walden. Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home by Emily Post. Chapter 33 Part 1 Dress. Clothes are to us what fur and feathers are to beasts and birds. They not only add to our appearance but they are our appearance. How we look to others entirely depends upon what we wear and how we wear it. Manners and speech are noted afterward and character last of all. In the community where we live, admirableness of character is the fundamental essential and in order to achieve a position of importance, personality is also essential. But for the transient impression that we make at home, abroad, everywhere in public, two superficial attributes are alone indispensable, good manners, and a pleasing appearance. It is not merely a question of vanity and inclination. In New York, for instance, a woman must dress well to pay her way. In Europe, where the title of Duchess serves in lieu of a court train of gold brocade, or in Bohemian circles where talent alone may count, or in small communities where people are known for what they really are, appearance is of aesthetic rather than essential importance. In the world of smart society, in America at any rate, clothes not only represent our ticket of admission but our contribution to the effect of a party. What makes a brilliant party? Clothes. Good clothes. A frumpy party is nothing more nor less than a collection of badly dressed persons. People with all the brains, even all the beauty imaginable, make an assemblage of dows unless they are well dressed. Not even the most beautiful ballroom in the world, decorated like the Garden of Eden, could in itself suggest a brilliant entertainment if the majority of those who filled it were frumps, or worse yet, vulgarians. Rather be frumpy than vulgar. Much. Frumps are often celebrities in disguise, but a person of vulgar appearance is vulgar all through. The Sheep. Frumps are not very typical of America. Vulgarians are somewhat more numerous, but the greatest number of all are the quietly dressed, unnoticeable men and women who make up the representative backbone in every city, who buy good clothes but not more than they need, and whose ambition is merely to be well enough dressed to fit in with their background, whatever their background may be. Less numerous, but far more conspicuous, are the dressed-to-the-minute women who, like Sheep exactly, follow every turn of latest fashion only, and without the slightest sense of distance or direction. As each new season's fashion is defined, all the Sheep run and dress themselves each in a replica of the other. Their own types and personalities have nothing to do with the case. Fashion says wear bolster cases tied at the neck and ankle, or a few wisps of gauze held in place with court plaster, and daughter, mother, grandmother, and all the neighbors wear the same. If emerald green is the fashionable color, all of the yellowist skins will be framed in it. When hobble skirts are the thing, the fattest wobble along, looking for all the world like chandeliers tied up in mosquito netting. If ball-dresses are cut to the last limit of daring, the ample billows of the fat will vibe landly with the marvels of anatomy exhibited by the fin. Comfort, convenience, becomingness, adaptability, beauty are of no importance. Fashion is followed to the letter. Therefore they fancy, poor sheep, they are the last word in smartness. Those whom the fashion suits are smart, but they are seldom, if ever distinguished, because they are all precisely alike. The Woman Who Is Really Sheik The woman who is chic is always a little different. Not different in being behind fashion, but always slightly apart from it. Sheik is a borrowed adjective, but there is no English word to take the place of elegant, which was destroyed utterly by the reporter or practical joker who said elegant dresses. And yet there is no synonym that will express the individuality of beautiful taste, combined with personal dignity and grace, which gives to a perfect costume and inimitable air of distinction. And Mrs. Oldname is just such a person. She follows fashion merely so far as is absolutely necessary. She gets the latest model perhaps, but has it adapted to her own type, so that she has just that distinction of appearance that the sheep lack. She has even clung with slight modifications to the worth ball dress. And her wrapped or fitted bodice has continued to look the smartest in every ballroom, in spite of the Greek drapery and one piece meal bag and all the other kaleidoscopic changes of fashion the rest of us have been through. But the average would-be independent who determines to stand her ground saying, these new models are preposterous, I shall wear nothing of the sort. And keeps her word, soon finds herself not at all an example of dignity, but an object of derision. Fashion has little in common with beauty. Fashion ought to be likened to a tide or epidemic. Sometimes one might define it as a sort of hypnotism seemingly exerted by the gods as a joke. Fashion has the power to appear temporarily in the guise of beauty, though it is the antithesis of beauty nearly always. If you doubt it, look at old fashion plates. Even the woman of beautiful taste succumbs occasionally to the epidemics of fashion, but she is more immune than most. All women who have any clothes since whatever know more or less the type of things that are their style, unless they have such an attack of fashionitis as to be irresponsibly delirious. To describe any details of dress that will not be as queer tomorrow as today's fashions are bound to be, would seem at the outset pretty much like writing about next year's weather. And yet there is one unchanging principle which must be followed by every woman, man, and child that is well-dressed, suitability. Nor does suitability mean merely that you must choose clothes suitable to your age and appearance, and that you must get a ball dress for a ball and a street dress to walk in. It means equally that you must not buy clothes out of proportion to your income or out of keeping with your surroundings. Disproportionate expenditure and bad taste. About fifteen years ago the extravagance in women's dress reached such a high watermark that it was not unheard of for a New York woman to spend a third of her husband's income on clothes. All women of fashion bought clothes when it would not have occurred to them to buy furniture, when it would have seemed preposterous to buy a piece of jewelry. But clothes, clothes, and more clothes, each more hand embroidered than the last, until just as it seemed that no dress was fit to be seen if it hadn't a month or two of someone's time embroidered on it, the work on clothes subsided. Until now we are at the other extreme. No work is put on them at all. At least clothes today are much more sensible, and let us hope the sense will be lasting. The war did at least make people realize that luxuries in trimmings could go too far. Ten years ago the American woman who lived in a little cottage, who walked when she went out or took the streetcar, wore the same clothes exactly that Mrs. Gilding wore in her Victoria, or trailed over a mean rug. The French woman has always been, and the American woman of taste is now, too great an artist to sit in a little room with its cotton print slipcovers, muslin curtains, and geranium pots on the window ledge in anything strikingly elaborate and expensive. Charming as her dress may be in line and cut and color, she keeps it, no matter how intrinsically good it may be, in harmony with her geranium pots and her chins. On the other hand, clothes that are too plain can be equally out of proportion. Last winter, for instance, a committee of ladies met in what might safely be called the Handsomest House in New York, in a room that would fit perfectly in the palace of Versailles, filled with treasures such as those of the Wallace Collection. The hostess presided in a black surge golf skirt, a businesswoman's white shirt waist, and stout walking boots. Her hair brushed flat and tidily back, and fastened as though for riding, her face and hands redolent of soap. No powder, not a nail manicured. Had she been a girl running her living, she could not have been more suitably dressed, but her millions and her palace background demand that her clothes be at least moderately in keeping. One does not have to be dowdy as an alternative to being too richly dressed, and to define differences between clothes that are notable because of their distinction and smartness, and clothes that are merely conspicuous and therefore vulgar is a very elusive point. However, there are certain rules that seem pretty well established. Vulgar clothes Vulgar clothes are those which, no matter what the fashion of the moment may be, are always too elaborate for the occasion, too exaggerated in style, or have accessories out of proportion. People of uncultivated taste are apt to fancy distortions to exaggerate rather than modify the prevailing fashions. For example, a conspicuous evidence of bad style that has persisted through numberless changes in fashion is the overdressed and overtrimmed head. The woman of uncultivated taste has no more sense of moderation than the queen of the cannibals. She will elaborate her hairdressing to start with. This is all right if elaboration really suits her type. And then she will decorate it with everything in the way of millinery and jewelry that she can lay her hands on. Or in the daytime she fancies equally over-weighted hats, and rich-looking fur coats, and the latest addition in the most conspicuous possible footwear. And she much prefers wearing rings to gloves. Maybe she thinks they do not go together? She despises sensible clothing. She also despises plain fabrics and untrimmed models. She also cares little, apparently, for staying at home, since she is perpetually seen at restaurants and at every public entertainment. The food she orders is rich, the appearance she makes is rich. In fact, to see her often is like nothing so much as being forced to eat a large amount of butter, plain. Bo Brummel's remark that when one attracted too much notice one could be sure of not being well-dressed but overdressed has for a hundred years been the comfort of the dowdy. It is, of course, very often true, but not invariably. A person may be stared at for any one of many reasons. A woman may be stared at because she is indiscreet, or because she looks like a leftover member of the Circus, or because she is enchanting to look at. If you are much stared at, what sort of a stare do you usually need? Is it bold or mocking, or is it merely that people look at you wistfully? If the first, change your manner. If the second, wear more conventional clothes. If the third, you may be left as you are. But be sure of your diagnosis of this last. Extravagance, not vulgarity. Ostentation is always vulgar, but Extravagance is not necessarily vulgar, not by any means. Extravagance can become dishonest if carried beyond one's income. Nearly everything that is beautiful or valuable is an Extravagance for most of us. All ways to wear new gloves is an Extravagant item for one with small allowance, but scarcely vulgar. A laundry bill can be Extravagant, flowers in one's city house, a piece of beautiful furniture, a good tapestry. Each is an Extravagance to an income that cannot easily afford the expenditure. To one's sufficient to buy the tapestry, the flowers are not an Extravagance at all. To buy quantities of things that are not even used after they are bought is sheer wastefulness, and to buy everything that tempts you, whether you can afford to pay for it or not, is, if you cannot afford it, verging on the actually dishonest. Dresses for dinners and balls. Supposing since clothes suitable to the occasion are the first requisite of good taste, we take up a few details that are apart from fashion. A dinner dress really means every sort of low or half-low evening dress. A formal dinner dress, like a ball dress, is always low-necked and without sleeves, and is the handsomest type of evening dress that there is. A ball dress may be exquisite in detail, but is often merely effective. The perfect ball dress is one purposely designed with a skirt that is becoming when dancing. A long wrapped type of dress would make Diana herself look like a toy monkey on a stick, but might be dignified and beautiful at dinner. A dinner dress differs from a ball dress in little except that it is not necessarily designed for freedom of movement. Hair ornaments always look well at a ball, but are not especially appropriate, unless universally in fashion, on other occasions. A lady in a ball dress with nothing added to the head looks a little like being hapless in the street. This sounds like a contradiction of the criticism of the Bulgarian, but because a tiara is beautiful at a ball, or a spray of feathers, or a high comb, or another ornament, does not mean all of these should be put on together and worn in a restaurant, which is just what the Bulgarian would do. Whether to wear a headdress, however, depends not alone upon fashion, but upon the individual. If the type of hair ornament at the moment in fashion is becoming, wear it, especially to balls and in a box at the opera, but if it is not becoming, don't. Ladies of fashion, by the way, do not have their hair especially dressed for formal occasions. Each wears her hair a certain way, and it is put up every morning just as carefully as for a ball. The only time it is arranged differently is for riding. An informal dinner dress is merely a modified formal one. It is low in front and high in the back with long or elbow sleeves, or perhaps it is Dutch neck and no sleeves. When trains are in fashion, all older women should wear them. Fashion or no fashion, no woman who has passed forty, looks really well in a cutoff evening dress. An effect of train, however, can very adequately be produced with any arrangement or trimming that extends upon the floor. The informal dinner dress is worn to the theatre, the restaurant of high class, the concert, and the opera. Informal dinner dresses are worn in the boxes at the opera on ordinary nights, such as when no especially great star is to sing, and when one is not going on to a ball afterward. But a ball dress is never inappropriate, especially without headdress. On gala nights, ball dresses are worn in the boxes and headdresses and as many jewels as one chooses or has. The tea gown Everyone knows that a tea gown is a hybrid between a wrapper and a ball dress. It has always a train and usually long flowing sleeves, is made of rather gorgeous materials and goes on easily, and its chief use is not for wear at the tea table so much as for dinner alone with one's family. It can, however, very properly be put on for tea, and if one is dining at home, kept on for dinner. Otherwise a lady is apt to take tea in whatever dress she had on for luncheon and dress after tea for dinner. One does not go out to dine in a tea gown except in the house of a member of one's family or a most intimate friend. One would wear a tea gown in one's own house in receiving a guest to whose house one would wear a dinner dress. When in doubt There is one rule that is fairly safe to follow. When in doubt, wear the plainer dress. It is always better far to be underdressed than overdressed. If you don't know whether to put on a ball dress or a dinner dress, wear the dinner dress. Or whether to wear cloth or brocade to a luncheon, wear the cloth. On the street Your tea gowns, since they are never worn in public, can literally be as bizarre as you please. And if you are driving in a closed motor, you can also wear an original type of dress. But in walking on the street, if you care to be taken for a well-bred person, never wear anything that is exaggerated. If skirts are short, don't wear them two inches shorter than anyone else's. If they are long, don't go down the street dragging a train and sweeping the dirt up on the underflouncings. Let us hope that fashion never comes back. Don't wear too much jewelry. It is in bad taste in the first place. And in the second is a temptation to a thief. And don't under any circumstances distort your figure into a grotesque shape. Country clothes Nothing so marks the person who doesn't know as inappropriate choice of clothes. To wear elaborate clothes out of doors in the country is quite as out of place as to parade sports clothes on the streets in town. It is safe to say that sport clothes are appropriate country clothes, especially for all young people. Elderly ladies, needless to say, should not don sporting eccentricities nor wear sweaters to lunch parties. But sensible country clothes, such as have for many decades been worn in England of homespun or surge or jersey cloth or whatever has replaced materials, are certainly more appropriate to walk in than a town costume even for a lady of seventy. Young people going to the country for the day wear sports clothes, which if seen early in the morning in town and again late in the afternoon, merely show you have been to the country. But town clothes in the country proclaim your ignorance of fitness. Even for a lunch party at Golden Hall or Great Estates, everyone who is young wears smart country clothes. Shoes and slippers. Sport shoes are naturally adapted to the sport for which they are intended. High-heeled slippers do not go with any country clothes, except organ-dee or muslins or other distinctly feminine summer dresses. Elaborate afternoon dresses of painted chiffons, embroidered moles, etc., are seen only at weddings, lawn parties, or at watering places abroad. A suggestion to those who mind sunburn. No advice is intended for those who have a skin that either does not burn at all or turns a beautiful smooth Hawaiian brown, but a woman whose creamy complexion bursts into freckles as violent as they are hideous at the first touch of the sun need no longer stay perpetually indoors in daytime or venture out only when swathed like a turk if she knows the virtue in orange as a color that defies the sun's rays. A thin veil of red orange is more effective than a thick one of blue or black. Orange shirt-waists do not sound very conservative, but they are mercifully conserving to arms sensitive to sunburn. Young Mrs. Gilding, whose skin is as perishable as it is lovely, always wears orange on the golf course. A skirt of burnt orange surge of homespun or linen and shirt-waists of orange linen or crepe de sheen. A hat with a brim and a harem veil pinned across her nose under her eyes of orange marquissette, which is easier to breathe through than chiffon allows her to play golf or tennis or to motor or even go out in a sailboat and keep her skin without a blemish. Constant style, who also has a skin that the sun destroys, wears orange playing tennis, but for bathing wears a high neck and long-sleeved bathing suit and makes her face up, also the backs of her hands with theatrical grease-paint that has a good deal of yellow in it and flesh-colour ordinary powder on top. The grease-paint withstands hot sun and water, but it is messy. The alternative, however, is a choice between complexion or bathing, as it is otherwise prohibitive for the sun afflicted to have both. End of Chapter 33 Part 1 Chapter 33 Part 2 of Etiquette This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org recorded by Laurie Ann Walden. Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home by Emily Post. Chapter 33 Part 2 Dress Riding Clothes. The distorted circus mirror clothes seen on men who know no better are not a bit worse than the writing clothes seen on actresses in our best theatres and moving pictures who ought to know better. Nothing looks worse than writing clothes made and worn badly, and nothing looks smarter than they when well made and well put on. A writing habit, no matter what the fashion happens to be, is like a uniform in that it must be made and worn according to regulations. It must, above all, be meticulously trig and compact. Nothing must be sticking out a thousandth part of an inch that can be flattened in. A writing habit is the counterpart of an officer's uniform. It is not worn so as to make the wearer look pretty. A woman to look well in a habit must be smart, or she is a sight. And nothing contributes so much to the sights we see at present as the attempt to look pretty instead of looking correct. The criticism is not intended for the woman who lives far off in the open country and jumps on a horse in whatever she happens to have on, but for those who dress for looks and ride in the parks of our cities or walk on the stage and before the camera in scenes meant to represent smart society. To repeat, therefore, the young woman who wants to look pretty should confine her exercise to dancing. She can also hold a parasol over her head and sit in a canoe, or she can be pretty anywhere she will, so long as it is not on a horse in the park or hunting field. To mention hunting field is superfluous. The woman who can ride well enough to follow the hounds is too good a sportswoman, too great a lover of good form to be ignorant of the proper outline necessary to smartness of appearance in the saddle. In smartest English society it is not considered best form for a young girl to ride a stride in the hunting field or in the park after she is grown. A high-born English girl rides a stride as a child, but as soon as she is old enough to be presented at court she appears at a meet or in the row in a lady's habit, trigly-perfect in fit and on a side saddle. In America this is an extreme opinion, and it is only among the most fashionable that a young girl having all her life ridden in a man's saddle finds the world a joyless place and parents cruel when she is no longer allowed to ride like a boy. But she becomes, in spite of her protests, another who looks divine on a horse. And you can look divine, too, if you choose. On second thoughts the adjective must be qualified. No one looks divine on a horse who is not thin as a shingle. But since diet produces a shingle shape and every one strong-minded or vain enough can diet, you need only care enough to count your calories slim as you please. Next the best habit possible. And best habits are expensive and there are no second best. A habit is good or it is bad. Whatever the present fashion may be, have your habit utterly conventional. Don't wear checks or have slant pockets or eccentric cuffs or lapels. Don't have the waist pinched in. Choose a plain dark or dust color. A night blue that has a few white hairs in the mixture does not show dust as much as a solid dark color. And the medium-weight, close material holds its shape better than a light, loose weave. You may wear a single white carnation or a few violets in your buttonhole, but no other trimming. Keep the idea of perfect clothes for men in mind. Get nothing that the smartest man would not wear and you can't go wrong. Get boots like those of a man, low-heeled and with straight line from heel to back of top. Don't have the tops wider than absolutely necessary not to bind. And don't have them curved or fancy in shape. Be sure that there is no elbow sticking out like a horse's hawk at the back of the boot. And don't have a corner on the inside edge of the sole. And don't try to wear a small size. When you put your habit on. First, hair. Never mind if you look like Madame Racamié with your hair fluffed and like a skinned rabbit with it tight back. Tight, flat back it must go. Brush it smooth as you can, braid it or coil it about level with the top of your ears and wind it in a doormat, not a knob in the back. If you have a great quantity of hair, you should take all the inner part of it, coil it on top of your head so it will go under your hat out of your way. Then take the outer edge of it and braid or wind it as flat as possible. A large bun at the back of the head is almost as bad as hair drawn over the ears at the side. If you have short hairs likely to blow, you must wear a hunting hair net. And if it is bobbed, it must be drawn back into a silk riding net and made to look trim. Correct riding clothes are not fashion but form. Whether coat skirts are long or short, full or plain, and wastes, or square, the above admonitions have held for many decades and are likely to hold for many more. Gloves must be of heavy leather and at least two sizes bigger than those ordinarily worn. A hat must fit the head and its shape must be conventional. Never wear a hat that would be incorrect on a man and don't wear it on the back of your head or over your nose. Wear your stock as tight as you comfortably can, or too tight. Tie it smartly so as to make it flat and neat and anchor whatever you wear so securely that nothing can possibly come loose. And if you want to see a living example of perfection in riding clothes, go to the next horse show where Miss Bell Beach is riding and look at her. What clothes to take for a weekend? Unless fashion turns itself upside down, which it is of course perfectly capable of doing, elaborate clothes, except evening ones, are entirely useless even in Newport. We have all of us abandoned Paris fashions for country wear in favor of those of England. The Valenciennes insertions and trailing chiffons of some years ago, still seen at watering places in France, have been entirely superseded by country clothes. In going to any fashionable house in the country you should take a dinner dress for each evening with stockings and slippers to match. You need a country dress for each day, or if the weather is uncertain, a thick one and two thin ones, with a long coat, and a dress suitable for church. This one can perfectly well be a country dress, but not a sports one. If you are not too young and are going to stay in an informal house where you will probably be the only guest, and where it is likely no one will be asked in, a teagound or two should be taken. If you are going especially for a ball, but not given by your hostess, needless to say you take a ball dress and an evening wrap. In the autumn or winter, a fur coat will do double service for coat and wrap. Do not take a big trunk full of all the things you don't need. Don't take sports clothes for all occasions if you are not a sportswoman. But if you do ride or play tennis or golf or skate or swim, be sure to take your own clothes and don't borrow other peoples. There are plenty of ingeniously arranged weekend trunks, very compact in size, that have a hat compartment holding from two to six hats, and plenty of room for a half a dozen dresses and their accessories. When the income is limited, no one can dress well on nothing a year. That must be granted at the outset. But a woman who has talent, taste and ingenuity can be suitably and charmingly dressed on little a year, especially at present. First of all, to mind wearing a dress many times because it indicates a small bank account, is to exhibit a false notion of the values in life. Anyone who thinks well or ill of her in accordance with her income cannot be too quickly got rid of. But worthwhile people are influenced in her disfavor when she has clothes and number and quality out of proportion to her known financial situation. She is often everlastingly to wear black, but nothing is so serviceable, nothing so unrecognizable, nothing looks so well on every occasion. A very striking dress cannot be worn many times without making others as well as its owner feel bored at the side of it. Here comes the zebra, or the cockatoo, is inevitable if a dress of stripes or flamboyant color is worn often. She who must wear one dress through a season and have it perhaps made over the next, would better choose black or cream color. Or perhaps a certain color suits her, and this fact makes it possible for her habitually to wear it without impressing others with her lack of clothes. But whether her background be black or cerise, it should invariably blend with her whole wardrobe so that all accessories can be made to do double or quadruple service. Supposing you are a young woman with more beauty than wealth, let us also suppose you have three evening dresses, a blue, a pink, and a green. At the moment you can wear flesh-colored slippers in stockings with everything, which rather weakens the argument. However, a blue fan does not look well with a pink or green dress, nor do the other combinations. Supposing, however, you had instead a cream-colored dress, a flesh-colored, and an orchid one. Flesh-colored slippers look much better with cream and orchid than with either green or blue at any rate. A watermelon-pink fan is lovely in nightlight with all three, so is a cream one. Or perhaps by changing both fan and slippers a different effect is produced since the colors of your clothes are background colors. But nothing really can compare with the utility and smartness of black. Take a black-tooled dress, made in the simplest possible way. On plain it is a simple dinner dress. It can have a lace slip to go over it and make another dress. With a jet harness, meaning merely trimming that can be added at will, it is still another dress. Or it can have a tunic of silver or of gold trimming. And fans, flowers and slippers in various colors, such as watermelon or emerald, change it again. In fact, a black-tool can be changed almost as easily as though done with a magician's wand. To choose daytime clothes that go with the same hats, shoes, parasols, wrist bags, and gloves, is equally important. A snuff-colored dress and a gray one need entirely different accessories. Russet shoes, chamois gloves, and sand-colored hat go also with henna, raspberry, reds, etc. But gray must have gray or white shoes, gloves, and hat, which also go with blues, greens, and violets. Don't get too many clothes. Choose the clothes which you must have carefully. And if you must cut down, cut down on elaborate ones. There is scarcely anywhere that you cannot fittingly go in plain clothes. Very few, if any, people need fancy things. All people need plain ones. A very beautiful Chicago woman, who was always perfectly dressed for every occasion, worked out the cost of her own clothes this way. On a sheet of paper, thumb-tacked on the inside of her closet door, she put a complete type-written list of her dresses and hats, and the cost of each. Every time she put on a dress, she made a pencil mark. By and by, when a dress was discarded, she divided the cost of it by the number of times it had been worn. In this way, she found out accurately which were her cheapest and which her most expensive clothes. When getting new ones, she has the advantage of very valuable information since she avoids the dress that is never put on, which is a bigger handicap for the medium-sized allowance than many women realize. What to Wear in a Restaurant Restaurant dress depends upon the restaurant and the city. Because women in New York wear low-neck dresses and no hats, does not mean that those who live in Newtown should do the same if it is not Newtown's custom. But you must never wear an evening dress and a hat, and never wear a day dress without one. If in the city where you live people wear day clothes in the evening, you can only very slightly differ from them. It is never good form to be elaborately dressed in a public place, except in a box at the opera or at a charity ball. At a wedding, a garden party, or afternoon tea. These are the occasions when elaborate day dresses are appropriate. But if you have very few clothes, you can perfectly well wear any sort of day dress that may be in fashion. A coat and skirt is not appropriate since a skirt and shirt waist is and always has been a utility combination. Unless, of course, the waist is of a color to match the skirt so that it has the appearance of a dress. You need, however, seldom worry about your appearance because you are not as dressed as the others. The time to worry is when you are more dressed than anyone else. For a garden party, a country dress is quite all right, though if you have a very elaborate summer dress, this is the only time you can wear it. No one has to be told what to wear to church. As small country churches at the seashore, people go to church in country clothes. Otherwise, as everyone knows, one puts on town clothes and gloves. At a formal luncheon in town, one sees every sort of dress from velvet to tailor-made. Certain ladies, older ones usually, who like elaborate clothes, wear them. But younger people are usually dressed in worsted materials or silks that are dull in finish, and that, although they may be embroidered and very expensive, give an effect of simplicity. One should always wear a simpler dress in one's own house than one wears in going to the house of another. A few general remarks. The fault of bad taste is usually in overdressing. Quality, not effect, is the standard to seek for. Machine-made posman tree on top of conspicuous but sleazy material is always shoddy. Cut and fit are the two items of greatest importance in women's clothes as well as in men's. But fashion changes too rapidly to make value of material always wise expenditure for one of slender purse. Better usually have two dresses, each cut and made in the whim of the moment than one which must be worn after the whim has become a freak. In men's clothes the opposite rule should be followed since good style in men's clothes is changing. To buy things at sales is very much like buying things at an auction. If you really know what you want and something about values you can often do marvelously well. But if you are easily bewildered and know little of values you are apt to spend your good money on trash. A woman of small means must either be or learn to be discriminatingly careful or she would better have her clothes made at home or if she is of model type buy them ready made. The ready to wear clothes in the Mrs. Department are growing every year better looking. Unfortunately and for some inexplicable reason the usual women's department does not compare in good taste in selection of models with the former. And it is unusual to find a dress that a lady of fashion would choose except among the imported models for which store prices are as a rule higher than those asked by the greatest dressmakers. Evening clothes are still usually unbuyable by the over fastidious except for a certain flapper type and an undistinguished one at that. And the ultra smart woman is still obliged to go to the private importers for her debutante daughter's ball dresses as well as her own or else into her own sewing room. Fashion and fat. For years the thin even the scrawny have had everything their own way. The woman who is fat or even plump has a rather hopeless problem unless fashion goes to turkey for its next inspiration which is so unlikely it is almost possible. Two things the fat woman should avoid. Big patterns and the stiff tailor made. Fat women look better in feminine clothes that follow in the wake never in the advance of modified fashion. Fat women should never wear elaborate clothes or clothes in light colors or heavily feathered hats. The tendency of fat is to take away from one's gracility. Therefore anyone inclined to be fat must be ultra conservative in order to counteract the effect. Very tight clothes make fat people look fatter and thin people thinner. Satin is a bad material since highlights are too shimmeringly accentuated. Heavy ankles needless to say should never be clothed in light stockings in dark shoes. Long pointed clothes accentuate a thick ankle and so does a short skirt that has a straight hem. A ragged edge is most flattering. Dress, stockings, and slippers to match are unavoidable in evening dress but when possible a thick ankle should have a dark stocking or at least a slipper to match the stocking. People should select colors that go with their skin. And elderly women should not wear grass green or royal blue or purple or any hard color that needs this complexion. Swarthy skin always looks better in colors that have red or yellow in them. A very sallow person in pale blue or apple green looks like a well developed case of jaundice. Pink and orchid are often very becoming to older women and pale blue or yellow to those with fair skin. Because a woman is no longer young is no reason why she should wear perpetual black unless she is fat. Clothes for traveling in Europe. Ideal traveling clothes are those which do not wrinkle or show rain spots and to find which these are it is necessary to take a sample of each material, sprinkle it with water, and twist it to see how much abuse it will stand. Every woman knows what she likes best and what she considers suitable. Two alternating traveling dresses at least will be necessary and two or three semi evening dresses to put on for dinner. One very simple half dinner dress of black that has a combination of trimmings such as described earlier in this chapter is ideally useful. Tourists do not put on evening clothes except in very fashionable centers such as London, Paris, Monte Carlo or Doville and then only if staying at an ultra fashionable hotel. To be overdressed is always in bad taste so that unless you are going to visit or make several day stops the one black evening dress selected would answer every possible purpose. If you intend staying for a long time in one place you take all of your seasons clothes and if you are going to visit in England or to stay anywhere in the country you will need country clothes but not on ordinary touring. For motoring space is precious and clothes should be chosen with the object of packing into small dimensions. Motoring in Europe is cold a very warm long wrap is necessary An old fur one is much the best and a small close hat that does not blow. It is something like this. You have been hypnotized before and you vow you won't be again. You make up your mind that you are going to get a black dress and a dark blue and nothing else. You enter the lower reception hall and mount the bronze ballastrated stairs halfway when already Mademoiselle Marie is aware of your approach. She puts you not only as though you are the only customer she has ever had but as though your coming has saved just saved in time the prestige of the house. She tells you breathlessly that you are just in time to see the parade of models. She puts you where you may have an uninterrupted view. She then begins her greetings all over again by asking not alone after all the members of your family and an extraordinarily long list of friends but makes a solicitous inquiry after every dress that she has ever sold you. Did Madame like her white velvet? She coos. Was it not most useful? Was not her black lace charming? And the bisque cloth? Surely Madame has found great satisfaction in wearing the bisque cloth. But your ears are as stone to her blandishments. As a travelling suit, bisque-coloured cloth had not been serviceable. Black lace with a cerise velvet under-petticoat might be effective at our Menonville but it had seemed queer to say the least at the tennis match in August. No, you are at last immune from any of those sudden attacks of new-fashioned fever that result in a loss of judgment. You open your little book and consult your list. I should like, you say, a navy blue surge trimmed with black braid or satin or something like that. A black crepe to sheen absolutely plain. I really need nothing else. You do not look at Mademoiselle Marie's crestfallen face. You watch the procession of the models. But the old spell works. Besides zebra stripes and gold shot with cerise and purple, you think an emerald green charmouse is really a perfect substitute for the plain black crepe to sheen you had in mind. You show that you are hypnotised by remarking absently, it is the colour of the grass. Instantly, Mademoiselle Marie, the most skilled venduce in Paris becomes radiant. Listen, Madame, she says to you in that confidential, yet humbly ingratiating manner of hers. Let me explain, Madame, the idea of dress this year is altogether idyllic. Never has there been such charming return to nature. The great originator of our house has taken his suggestion, but yes, from the little animals of the fields and woods, from nature herself. Our dresses this year are intended to follow the example of all the little animals dressed to match their backgrounds. Is not that thought exquisite ? Is not that delicious ? Is an emerald lizard conspicuous in the tropics ? Is a zebra even seen in patches of sun and shade ? And in the snow, think of all the little animals who put on white coats in winter. Obviously white is the colour intended for winter wear. And for the spring, green. Emerald green, assuredly. It is as Madame herself said, the colour of the grass. The emerald charmouse on a lawn in summer would be a poem of harmony. The cerise for afternoons at sunset. This orange shading into coral embroidery to wear beside the fire. The dark blue chiffon embroidered in silver is for night. All the colours that Madame at first found so bright, they are but the colours of a summer flower garden. What would Madame wear in a flower garden ? Black, crepe de sheen ? Assuredly not. See this shell-pink chiffon. How lovely it would look under trees of apple blossoms. Blue and orange. Oh, what an escape. And now if Madame will permit me to suggest, the green but assuredly, and the orange and coral, and the pink chiffon garden dress, and the zebra for travelling, and the blue and silver. However, to be serious, people do go to Paris to buy their clothes. Beautiful clothes. Of course they do. Especially those who go every year. But the woman who goes abroad perhaps every four or five years is apt to be deficient in Atlantic sense. Match backgrounds like charming little animals? Never. Oh, a very big never again. And yet the next time shall you not find an attemptation to go just out of curiosity to find out what the newest artfully enticing little tune of the Pied Pipers of Paris will be. End of Chapter 33 Part 2 CHAPTER 34 OF ADDICT CHAPTER 34. THE CLOTHES OF A GENTLEMAN CHAPTER 34. THE CLOTHES OF A GENTLEMAN CHAPTER 34. THE CLOTHES OF A GENTLEMAN It would seem that some of our great clothing establishments and an eye to our polyglot ancestry have attempted to incorporate some feature of every European national custom into a harmonious whole, and have thus given us that abiding horror the freak American suit. You will see it everywhere on Broadway of every city and Main Street of every town, on the boardwalks and beaches of coast resorts, and even in remote farming villages. It comes up to hit you in the face year after year in all its amazing variations, waistline under the armpits, trick little belts, what-nots in the cuffs, trousers so narrow you fear they will burst before your eyes, pockets placed in every position, buttons clustered together in a tight little row or reduced to one. And the worst of it is few of our younger men know any better until they go abroad or wardrobe a subject for jest and derision. If you would dress like a gentleman you must do one of two things. Either study the subject of a gentleman's wardrobe until you are competent to pick out good suits from freaks and direct your misguided tailor or at least until your perceptions are trained go to an English one. This latter method is the easiest and by all odds the safest. It is not anglomania but plain common sense to admit that just as the Rue de la Paix in Paris is the fountainhead of fashions for women Bond Street in London is the home of irreproachable clothes for men. And yet curiously enough just as a woman shopping in Paris can buy frightful clothes or the most beautiful a man can in America by the worst clothes in the world and the best. The ordinary run of English clothes may not be especially good but they are on the other hand never bad whereas American freak clothes are distorted like the reflections seen in the convex and concave mirrors of the amusement parks but not even the leading tailors of Bond Street can excel the supremely good American tailor whose clothes however are identical in every particular with those of London whose right to be called best is for greater perfection of workmanship and fit. This last is a dangerous phrase fit means perfect set and line not plaster tightness. However let us suppose that you are either young or at least fairly young that you have unquestioned social position and that you are going to get yourself an entire wardrobe. Let us also suppose your money is not included so that it may also be seen where you may not or may if necessary economize. Formal evening clothes. Your full dress is the last thing to economize on. It must be perfect in fit, cut and material and this means a first rate tailor. It must be made of a dull faced worsted either black or night blue on no account of broad cloth. Aside from satin and collar which can have lapels or be cut shawl shaped and wide braid on the trousers it must have no trimming whatever. Avoid satin or velvet cuffs, moir neck ribbons and fancy coat buttons as you would the plague. Wear a plain white linen waistcoat not one of cream colored silk or figured or even black brocade. Have all your linen faultlessly clean always and your tie of plain white lawn tied so it will not only stay in place but look as though nothing short of a backward somersault could disarrange it. Your handkerchief must be white, gloves at opera or ball, white, flower in buttonhole if any, white. If you are a normal size you can in America buy inexpensive shirts and white waistcoats that are above reproach but if you are only tall or otherwise an outsize so that everything has to be made to order you will have to pay anywhere from double to four times as much for each article you put on. When you go out on the street wear an English silk hat not one of the taper crowned variety popular in the movies and wear it on your head not on the back of your neck. Have your overcoat of plain black or dark blue material for you must wear an overcoat with full dress even in summer. Use a plain white or black and white muffler colored ones are impossible. Wear white buckskin gloves if you can afford them otherwise gray or khaki and leave them in your overcoat pocket. Your stick should be of plain Malacca or other wood with either a crooked or straight handle the only ornamentation allowable is a plain silver or gold band or top but perfectly plain is best form. And lastly wear patent leather pumps shoes or ties and plain black silk socks and leave your rubbers if you must wear them in the coat room. The Tuxedo The Tuxedo which is the essential evening dress of a gentleman is simply the English dinner coat. It was first introduced in this country at the Tuxedo Club to provide something less formal than the swallowtail and the name has clung ever since. To a man who cannot afford to get two suits of evening clothes the Tuxedo is of greater importance. It is worn every evening and nearly everywhere whereas the tailcoat is necessary only at balls, formal dinners and in a box at the opera. Tuxedo clothes are made of the same materials and differ from full dress ones in only three particulars. The cut of the coat, the braid of the trousers and the use of a black tie instead of a white one. The dinner coat has no tails and is cut like a sack suit except that it is held closed in front by one button at the waistline. A full dress coat naturally hangs open. The lapels are satin faced and the collar left in cloth or if it is shawl shaped the whole collar is of satin. The trousers are identical with full dress ones except that braid, if used at all, should be narrowed. Cuffed trousers are not good form nor should a dinner coat be double breasted. Fancy ties are bad form. Choose a plain black silk or satin one. Wear a white waistcoat if you can afford the strain on your laundry bill, otherwise a plain black one. By no means wear a grey one nor a grey tie. The smartest hat for town wear is an opera but a straw or felt, which is proper in the country, is not out of place in town. Otherwise in the street the accessories are the same as those already given under the previous heading. The house suit The house suit is an extravagance that may be avoided and an old tuxedo suit worn instead. A gentleman is always supposed to change his clothes for dinner, whether he is going out or dining at home alone or with his family. And for this latter occasion some inspired person evolved the house or lounge suit, which is simply a dinner coat and trousers cut somewhat looser than ordinary evening ones, made of an all silk or silk and wool fabric in some dark color lined with either satin or silk. Nothing more comfortable or luxurious could be devised for sitting in a deep easy chair after dinner in a reclining position that is ruinous to best evening clothes. Its purpose is really to save wear on evening clothes and to avoid some of their discomfort also because they cannot be given hard or careless usage and long survive. A house suit is distinctly with the name of its size and is not an appropriate garment to wear out for dinner or to receive any but intimate guests in at home. The accessories are a pleated shirt with turned down stiff collar and black bow tie or even an unstarched shirt with collar attached, white of course. The coat is made with two buttons instead of one because no waistcoat is worn with it. Formal afternoon dress. Formal afternoon dress consists of a black cutaway coat with white pique or black cloth waistcoat and gray and black striped trousers. The coat may be bound with braid or even in better taste, plain. A satin-faced lapel is not conservative on a cutaway but it is the correct facing for the more formal and elderly frock coat. Either a cutaway or a frock coat is always accompanied by a silk hat and best worn with plain black waistcoat and a black bow tie or a black and white four-in-hand tie. A gray silk ascot worn with the frock coat is supposed to be the correct wedding garment of the bride's father. For details of clothes worn by groom and ushers at a wedding, see chapter on weddings. Shoes may be patent leather although black caskins are at present the fashion, either with or without spats. If with spats, be sure that they fit close. Nothing is worse than a wrinkled spat or one that sticks out over the instep like the opened bill of a duck. Though gray cutaway suits and gray top hats have always been worn to the races in England, they do not seem suitable here as races in America are not such full-dress occasions as in France and England. But at a spring wedding or other formal occasions, a sand-colored double-breasted linen waistcoat with spats and bow tie to match looks very well with a black cutaway and almost black trousers on a man who is young. The Business Suit The business suit or three-piece sack is made or marred by its cut alone. It is supposed to be an everyday inconspicuous garment and should be. A few rules to follow are Don't choose striking patterns of materials. Suitable woolen stuffs come in endless variety, and any which look plain at a short distance are safe, though they may show a mixture of colors or pattern when viewed closely. Don't get too light a blue, too bright a green, or anything suggesting a horse-blanket. At the present moment trousers are made of cuff, sleeves are not, lapels are moderately small, padded shoulders are an abomination. Peg-topped trousers equally bad. If you must be eccentric, save your efforts for the next fancy dress ball, where you may wear what you please, but in your business clothing be reasonable. Above everything, don't wear white socks, and don't cover yourself with chains, fobs, scarf pins, lodge emblems, etc., and don't wear horsie shirts and neckties. You will only make a bad impression on everyone you meet. The clothes of a gentleman are always conservative, and it is safe to avoid everything that can possibly come under the heading of novelty. Jewelry In your jewelry let diamonds be conspicuous by their absence. Nothing is more vulgar than a display of ice on a man's shirt front or on his fingers. There is a good deal of jewelry that a gentleman may be allowed to wear, but it must be chosen with discrimination. Pearl-shirt studs, real ones, are correct for full dress only, and not to be worn with a dinner coat unless they are so small as to be entirely inconspicuous. Otherwise you may wear enamel studs that look like white linen, or black onyx with a rim of platinum, or with a very inconspicuous pattern in diamond chips, but so tiny that they cannot be told from a thread-like design in platinum, or others equally moderate. Waistcoat buttons, studs and cufflinks, worn in sets, is an American custom that is permissible. Both waistcoat buttons and cufflinks may be jeweled and valuable, but they must not have big precious stones or be conspicuous. A watch chain should be very thin, and a man's ring is usually a seal ring of plain gold or dark stone. If a man wears a jewel at all, it should be sunk into a plain gypsy hoop, setting that has no ornamentation and worn on his little, not his third, finger. In the country. Gay-colored socks and ties are quite appropriate with flannels and golf-tweeds. Only in your riding clothes you must be again conservative. If you can get boots built on English lines, wear them. Otherwise, wear leggings, and remember that all leather must be real leather in the first place, and polished until its surface is like glass. Have your breeches fit you. The coat is less important. In fact, any odd coat will do. Your legs are the signature of attention in riding. Most men in the country wear knicker-bockers with golf stockings, with a sack or a belted or a semi-belted coat, and in any variety of homespuns or tweeds or rough, worsted materials. Or they wear long, trousered flannels. Coats are of the polo or ulster variety. For golf or tennis, many men wear sweater coats, shirts are of cheviot or silk or flannel, all with soft collars attached and to match. The main thing is to dress appropriately. If you are going to play golf or golf clothes, if tennis, wear flannels. Do not wear a yacht in Capuchure unless you are living on board a yacht. White woolen socks are correct with white buckskin shoes in the country, but not in town. If some semi-formal occasion comes up, such as a country tee, the time worn conservative blue coat with white flannel trousers is conveniently good. Other hints. The well-dressed man is always a paradox. He must look as though he gave his clothes no thought, and as though literally they grew on him like a dog's fur, and yet he must be perfectly groomed. He must be clothes shaved and have his hair cut and his nails in good order, not too polished. His linen must always be immaculate, his clothes in press, his shoes perfectly done. His brown shoes must shine like old mahogany, and his white buckskin must be whitened and polished like a prize bull terrier at a bench show. Ties and socks and handkerchief may go together, but too perfect a match betrays an effort for effect which is always bad. The well-dressed man never wears the same suit or the same pair of shoes two days running. He may have only two suits, but he wears them alternately. If he has four suits, then he should wear each every fourth day. The longer time they have to recover their shape the better. What to wear on various occasions The appropriate clothes for various occasions are given below. If ever in doubt what to wear, the best rule is to air on the side of informality. Thus, if you are not sure whether to put on your dress suit or your tuxedo, wear the latter. Full dress One. At the opera. Two. At an evening wedding. Three. At a dinner to which the invitations are worded in the third person. Four. At a ball or formal evening entertainment. Five. At certain state functions on the continent of Europe in broad daylight. Tuxedo. One. At the theater. Two. At most dinners. Three. At informal parties. Four. Dining at home. Five. Dining in a restaurant. A cutaway or frock coat with striped trousers. One. At a noon or afternoon wedding. Two. On Sunday for church in the city. Three. At any formal daytime function. Four. In England to business. Five. As usher at a wedding. Six. As pallbearer. Business suits. One. All informal daytime occasions. Two. Traveling. Three. The coat of a blue suit with white flannel or duck trousers for a lunch or to church in the country. Four. A blue or black sack suit will do in place of a cutaway at a wedding. But not if you are the groom or an usher. Country clothes. One. Only in the country. To wear odd tweed coats and flannel trousers in town is not only inappropriate but bad taste. End of Chapter 34 . . . . . . .