ETIQUETTE, USAGE, ETC.

AN answer to the following letter might be given among "notices to correspondents," but, as it touches a general principle worth saying a word upon, we quote it as a text to a little sermon on propositions of acquaintance. A "subscriber" thus addresses us :

"Will you give me your opinion upon a point which has caused no little discussion in our family circle? A party of ladies are passing through New York. While stopping at a hotel, we call upon them; they are strangers personally, but connected in a family relation, which makes our call upon them desirable. We find them out, and leave our cards. They leave town immediately, but send cards, with written messages of regret. We subsequently visit the town in which they reside. Shall we send cards apprising them of our visit, call upon them, or wait for them to discover it by some sort of magnetism?

Being an old man, and rather antedeluvian in my ideas of etiquette, one daughter governs me sometimes, and then again another. Upon this point I agreed to leave the adjustment of the affair to your decision, to which my daughters both agreed, having full confidence in your judgment.

Yours, truly

A CONSTANT SUBSCRIBER."

326

IMPORTED SUPERFLUITIES.

To get rid of imported superfluities of etiquette is the first thing to do, (we venture to premise,) for the proper understanding or regulation of American politeness. Things are right or necessary in London and Paris, which are wrong or ridiculous in New York. Most of our books on etiquette, moreover, being foreign reprints, or compiled from foreign authorities, the ordinary notions of politeness, even in America, are formed upon the standards which regulate Courts and aristocracies.

In countries where there are barriers in society which cannot be passed, there is reason in putting many difficulties and ceremonies in the way of making new acquaintances. A shop-keeper, or tradesman of any description, is looked upon in London, for instance, as an impossible visiting acquaintance for any one of the gentry. A merchant who is a millionaire, and who is just tolerated in Court society for his immense wealth, is an inaccessible acquaintance for smaller merchants. Artists are courted and invited, and their wives rejected and overlooked by the same circles. Literary men are, individually, on a footing with nobles and diplomatists, while their relatives are inferiors whom they would not dare to introduce to these their noble intimates. Those who live upon their incomes, and those who live by industry in business, are two classes impassably separated. It is understood and admitted, that it would be an inconvenience and an impropriety for the barriers between these divided ranks to be crossed. The etiquettes and ceremonies, therefore, which, in old countries, form the trench of non-acquaintance, are to prevent contact which the custom of ages has decreed to be unfit and irreconcilable.

That books of etiquette, based upon these mouldy distinctions, are unsuitable guides for the politeness of our young and fresh

MAKING ACQUAINTANCES.

republic, the reader need not be told.

327

Retaining all the common

others, which European

sense, and all the consideration for etiquette contains, there is still a large proportion of rubbish and absurdity, which we should at once set aside-our slowness to do this, by the way, being the national fault which Lord Carlisle, in his late lecture on America, described as " a tame and implicit submission to custom and opinion."

To our correspondent's query we would say, (briefly) that any proposition of acquaintance, from one respectable American to another, is a compliment to the receiver. No such proposition is likely to be made, except by such as know the proper conditions of acquaintance to exist, nor is it likely to be declined, except by those who are so doubtful of their own position that they fear to receive acquaintances except through the medium of those above them. By any standard that can be tolerated in a republic, (we should suppose,) it is perfectly proper to leave a card, or to send a card with an invitation, to any one whom you may wish, or think it would be reasonable, to propose acquaintance. One or the other of two people must make the advance; and we fancy that the probability of a first step of this kind being repelledcompliment as it is-is very much overrated. The one who declined it, if it ever occurred, would be the one, probably, whose station in society was the least secure (reasonable equality of apparent respectability, and no covert objection between the parties, of course, presupposed.)

The same reasoning applies, we think, to speaking without introductions. Any two persons who have a mutual friend might not be suitable acquaintances, in England-but they are, in America. Two guests at a party given by a third person, are sufficiently introduced, for this country, by the fact of meeting

328

IMPROVEMENT OF BARRIER.

under the roof of a fellow-countryman who invited both as his equals. As they stand together in the crowd, or have opportunity for a polite service, one to the other, it is absurd, as well as injurious to the master of the house, to make the party stupid by waiting for formal introduction before any act of civility or agreeableness. America should improve on that point of English etiquette. Our correspondent's more particular inquiries are easily answered, according to the principles we have thus laid down. The first call upon those who had arrived from another city, was a courteous propriety. It is always such, to call, unintroduced, upon strangers in town, with motives of hospitality. The call was as courteously acknowledged, and, on going to the city where those lived who had thus responded to their politeness, the residents should have been apprised of the arrival of the strangers, by cards enclosed in an envelope, or left at the door. The response is thus delicately left at the option of the persons called on; but the case would be very rare in which it were not acknowledged by an immediate call, or a note explanatory of illness or other hindrance.

Fastidiousness, for a republic, (we may add,) is quite sufficiently guarded, by the easy falling off, from acquaintance, of those who find that they are not congenial. Where the only distinctions are made by difference in character and refinement, the barriers are better placed inside than outside an introduction.

SOCIETY, THIS WINTER.

THERE is a new feature in the gay life of New York-cne of those endless varieties of lighter shading which compensate for the as endless sameness of the main outlines of society—and, while the novelty is, in itself, a refreshing improvement, we are not sure that the increasing knowingness, of which it is but one pencilling in many, will better, altogether, the tone of our American picture of gayety. We refer to the definite separation, which has come about this winter, between Conversation-dom and Boys-and-girls-dom-the prevalence of soirées where "the children are not asked," and of balls where none are invited but those who dance."

Society has hitherto been a game with but one stake in it— matrimony; and, that it should be unattractive, to those for whom success had removed this only interest in its chances, was, perhaps, primitively, quite as well. Young mothers went to bed instead of going to balls, and young fathers rested from the cares of business, instead of adding a gay man's waking night to a busy man's waking morning-a "burning of candle at both ends" which could ill be afforded. The only sufferers, by this underdone state of society, have been the intellectually gay, who need