Etiquette: Formulas for Every Situation

There are many books of etiquette in the book stores, most of them reliable. Simple understandable rules are there for study. A formula for every emergency that may arise. Advice about how to set a table, how to use knives, forks and spoons and how to use those which you find at your place when you are a guest in a private house or on some more formal occasion.

She says, “Etiquette Course is Needed”

The troubled parents who wrote me, wanted to know where they could learn correct table manners and the usages of polite society. There are many books of etiquette in the book stores, most of them reliable. Just now Emily Post’s “Etiquette” seems popular. 

Simple understandable rules are there for study. A formula for every emergency that may arise. Advice about how to set a table, how to use knives, forks and spoons and how to use those which you find at your place when you are a guest in a private house or on some more formal occasion.

Read up before accepting any invitation. Then sit down quietly at the table and watch somebody, preferably the hostess. If you are unfamiliar with the silver gadgets you find beside you, talk to somebody until the hostess takes up the one which the first course calls for, and begins to eat. You will find it very simple to follow. Do a lot of watching. That’s the way we all learn.  

People with good table manners learned them from others who had them, sometimes naturally and easily in childhood, sometimes by observation and study later, when the value of beautiful manners began to impress them. If you do not approve of yourself, the way you behave in company, the way you speak, you can at any time learn better ways. It’s strictly up to you. – By Estelle Lawton Lindsey for San Pedro News, 1937

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia