Better Bed Manners and Disrobing

Some of the principle sins against good breeding are committed in the process of removing the clothes. In putting them on most people are conferring such a favor on the sensitive eye that lapses of etiquette are more pardonable. Whatever you do, avoid the habit of getting undressed by gravity. The appearance of puddles of male or female clothing on the bedroom floor never caused a tremor of love in the most sensitive person.

 

From Chapter 2 — Getting Undressed

If you were sentenced to spend nine years of your life working at one job for eight hours a day— Sundays included— you would think harshly of the judge. At best you would be forced to consider him a meanie.

Statistics prove, however, that the average one-family man, with a life span of seventy years, spends this amount of time taking off his clothes and putting them on again.*  The amount of time similarly spent by the average woman can be measured only in light years.

Being condemned to the slavery from birth, one would think people could learn how to do the job with a little finesse. On the contrary, clothes seem to be like a delicatessen salad. In the store window they are a thing of beauty. Once start to take them apart and—

  

Avoid the habit of getting undressed by gravity!

To most people undressing is not so much an art as it is coming to pieces. This is a mistake. Failure to correct it has been responsible for the development of a good-sized city in the West, composed of exiled husbands. If the average ignorant bird should hurl his feathers around the nest in imitation of man, there would be no more eggs.

Some of the principle sins against good breeding are committed in the process of removing the clothes. In putting them on most people are conferring such a favor on the sensitive eye that lapses of etiquette are more pardonable.

Whatever you do, avoid the habit of getting undressed by gravity. The appearance of puddles of male or female clothing on the bedroom floor never caused a tremor of love in the most sensitive person. Our researches show that women are particularly prone to this moult-and-walk off process. They have one strange garment they call a step-in. All of them might be called step-outs. They also have a rubber fabric strait-jacket called a vassarette. Getting into it is a job for a contortionist. Getting out of it is a bit easier, if your grandmother was a snake and you inherited the knack of shedding your skin.

Most men are partly sloppy undressers. One group practices what is known professionally as the drop-kick. This consists of allowing the sub-waist clothing to slide down the legs, lifting one foot out of the resulting nest, and propelling the entire mass at the nearest chair with a toe. Avoid it.

An even larger school spends futile years throwing odds and ends of clothes at bedroom chairs. These men argue that bedroom chairs serve no other useful purpose. No one has ever been known to sit on them. We advise against it, however, even if it is done in the purest spirit of sportsmanship.

Regardless of how clothes may be worn they should be taken off unostentatiously. Once off, they should not be treated like Christmas tree decorations. Get them out of sight. Far better to shove them under the bed with the foot than to wake up each morning to the sordid contemplation of their wilted forms. The seeds of many fashionable divorces have been sown by these early-morning vistas. What man can shave with a loving heart while contemplating a bedraggled brassiere hanging on the bathroom scales? What woman, lying in bed because it is too cold to get up, has not wondered sadly how the handsome lad of yesterday can possibly fill out a pair of unions like that?

This brings us to the question of getting dressed, which is so buttoned up with a number of other things, that we will treat it somewhere else, if the matter should come up.

*These figures do not include Nudists, Esquimos (sic), Bedridden People, or Fan Dancers.

Contributor Maura Graber has been teaching etiquette to children, teens and adults, and training new etiquette instructors, for over 30 years, as founder and director of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette.  She is also a writer, has been featured in countless newspapers, magazines and television shows and was an on-air contributor to PBS in Southern California for 15 years. 

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

Bediquette: Retro Etiquette for Bedrooms and Beyond

                    

“Let it never be said that love is an Indolent calling .” —Ovid

Bediquette : A Branch of Public Beducation 

In an earlier treat – we mean, treatise– we took the great American public right upstairs, and showed them the most universal thing in their lives, which is bed. We gave a few elementary ideas on how to get into it, how to lie in it correctly, and how to get out of it.

The darlings have known violent interest in these instructions.

They have been taught for years how to eat asparagus and green corn, and how to write a formal letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. They know what to wear when invited to an afternoon wedding at the White House. Such things are merely etiquette. Hundreds of teachers have written millions of words about them, all those words ending at bedtime.

Our book goes higher. It goes straight into the bedroom. It discusses bediquette, the new social science intended for people so clever that they do not just hang up their good manners every night with their clothes. This is the first complete book on how to be knightly, nightly. We commend this subject to every intelligent reader as an important new branch of public beducation.

You can sleep just like Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and on Easy Terms! 

SUZYGOPHOBIA

This is the oldest disease in the world, though it has never held a name until now. You know it. You probably have it. Don't tell us you don't know what it is. You've heard of Claustrophobia, and Hydrophobia, and even Silurophobia, haven't you? Silurophobia means "car fear." We have christened "Suzygophobia" from the Greek word "suzygos" which means "yoke-fellow" or "mate."

Do you have Mate Fear?

Do you have it worst at night?

Do you approach the conjugal bedroom fearing everything that may happen to you in it? Would you rather plunge into a jungle that may contain a tiger than plunge into a bed that she really does contain your mate?

The cure for this awful disease is to leave this book where your ferocious mate will find and read it. Enclose it with a bunch of American Beauty roses, or folded into a bath towel, as your means may permit.

If the book doesn't teach your mate the rudiments of good and gentle behavior, your last recourse is a club. (The Union and The Colony Club are considered to be the two most refined hide-outs in New York.) — From Dr. Ralph Y. Hopton's and Anne Ballio's 1936 “Better Bed Manners”

(1.) Good etiquette, for a man, is what ever makes a woman feel more like a woman, without making her feel weak minded. (2.) Good etiquette, for a woman, is whatever makes a man feel more like a man, without making him feel more harassed and put upon then he normally does anyway. 

Lady Chatterly's Mistress: Men and Women and What to Do About It 

The subject of men and women versus etiquette is absolutely fraught with sex, which is as it should be. It is a good thing from other standpoints, too, for the fact greatly simplifies the approach to this chapter.

1. Good etiquette, for a man, is what ever makes a woman feel more like a woman, without making her feel weak minded.
2. Good etiquette, for a woman, is whatever makes a man feel more like a man, without making him feel more harassed and put upon then he normally does anyway.

These are the touchstones, then, against which to test any puzzling point of intersexual etiquette, whether in the elevator* or in the bed. For today, with each sex doing so many of the same things, and push buttons doing most of the rest, both men and women need occasional reminders as to which team they're on.

It has come to my attention that some people have, as a matter fact, forgotten. That is, some men would rather act like women, and some women would rather act like men, which makes for a certain confusion. But several books have already been written about this, so I won't need to go into it. This chapter will concern itself only with the old-fashioned clear-cut kind of people, of whom there are still many around. It will not concern itself, however, with the sex appeal factor (except in so far as it becomes as a happy side effect of observing points 1 and 2.)

Lady writers in particular are always advising other women on how to attract men: 14 ways to up your sex appeal**. And it is a curious fact that these pieces are often read and followed even by women who don't want any more sex appeal – say a woman who has so much already that she is in perpetual hot water, or a woman who privately considers the whole thing a great nuisance and doesn't really want to get to where all that sex appeal would probably lead her. Like a vegetarian going to a great deal of trouble to make friends with the butcher.

At any rate, before upsetting your applecart to do things those articles recommend. It's wise to take a look at the men attracted to the lady writer who is touting her own wiles. Of course, you seldom get a chance to – although, just once, I did. I met a couple of the men this charm expert had attracted, herself, and decided I'd sooner draw flies. So each to his own, and you can never tell.

Actually, and the glorious fact is that everyone – flat-chested or bulbous,silent or talkative, rosy or sallow, tiny or tall – everyone appeals to someone, as a cursory glance at one's married friends will attest.

But who can make the rules? Some men think sultry perfume is sex appealing; others like a fresh soap and water smell, like a little child's clean hair. Some women find a male mustache fetching; some find it scratchy. Many people haven't the slightest idea what they want until they marry it, or till they don't marry it and wish they had.

So let's get down to where the work is – right into the etiquette of going out together and being out together – before we go on to the matter of living together, around the house and in the bedroom. (Most etiquette books never get into the bedroom, but this one will, because, after all, a great deal of etiquette takes place there, or ought to.)

Before getting mired in some minor details (what woman actually cares much whether a man is on the outside or the inside of an ordinary suburban sidewalk?), we 'll look at some basics: for one thing, the etiquette of the invitation proffered female by the male.

To hear your apt to get some real sparklers: "Want to go anywhere tonight, hon? " Or, "Nothing special you want to do, is there? " these approaches don't make a woman feel womanly, they make her feel either apathetic or domineering. (Now she'll have to think of something.)

What she would vastly prefer is the approach of a high school boy I know. He phones a girl and says, "I'm going to go see that Western at the Paramount tonight. Want to come? "If she doesn't, fine. He'll call somebody else. This lad will go far.

Some men would counter my thesis here with "yes, but she never wants to do what I want to do. "But this probably isn't so. If he clearly and enthusiastically wants to do it enough, she usually will – that is, if they like each other, and if they don't, what are we talking about?

Anyway, many women like men to fight harder for their rights. There's too much male docility around, these days, and it's taking a lot of fizz out of the battle between the sexes. Take the matter of who was supposed to go first.

Well, he is. Nearly every time. Common sense says so, and so does present-day etiquette, although many men have Ladies First so firmly wedged into their heads they often hang back when they shouldn't.

Women like men to go first. After all, the farmer walking six feet ahead of his wife across the cow pasture showed native gallantry, even when she was carrying the cow. He was blazing the trail around ditches and other unpleasant things she might have stepped in. A woman doesn't mind doing a little toting, so long as he will pioneer.

(If ever saw a well-meaning man trying to get a woman through a revolving door headed him without knocking her hat off and her teeth in , you saw good example of misguided manners. He should have gone through first. Then she'd have followed, on his push.)

Look at some other instances: he goes up a ladder first, for reasons of delicacy and so you can give her an assist at the top. He gets into a cab first, so she need'nt scoot across the wide backseat to make room for him. Scooting is easier for someone and trousers. He goes first down a train corridor because it's going to take biceps to open those stubborn doors between the cars. If he has no biceps, this will develop them. He goes first down the theater if there's no Usher. (If there is, she goes first, close to the wandering pool of light from the ushers torch.) He goes first into a dark nightclub. This could be a nasty bistro, and he'd better lead the way. He goes first into a restaurant, it's no maître d' is there to greet them. Masterfully he finds a table. He climbs into a bus or streetcar first, to help her up. He gets off first, to help her down – unless it's crowded and she's nearest the door, in which case she'll just have to keep her eyes open and her wits about her and move.

An exception is escalators. Here she should go first – and she usually does, automatically, because she's on a high lope for the Dress Sale on Three. But he's supposed to be behind, anyway, to catch her if she slips.

Finally, he gets off a crowded elevator first if he's nearest the door. Women prefer this to being squashed by his gallantly hanging back. He should just get out.

It's all quite simple, you see. He goes first when ever that's easier or safer for her.

Sometimes a man finds it hard to play his proper role with aplomb or even with good will. I asked a worldly man I know what annoys him most in the area of women and etiquette. After considerable thought, he said, "the woman who takes me for a salaried doorman when I hold the door for her in a public building." He thought some more. "And, "he added, "the forty women right behind her who know a good thing when they see it. "

Then, too, when a woman slams full tilt into a man and waits for him to apologize, or hogs the middle of the escalator step so no one can get around her, or forgets that her umbrella points on the average male's eye level, or that her free swinging 10 pound pocketbook is a first-class battering ram – Well, she does her cause no good, for men find it hard to be gallant to a Sherman tank. But many men would enjoy being more courtly, it women would make it easier.

"... Pleasant as they have been, my years in the United States whatever more agreeable if American women had allowed me to kiss their hands... Despite my frustration, I still regard the kissing of a woman's hand as one of those small courtesies necessary for the preservation of the essential margin between men and women, which makes them both, in different ways, superior to each other and, therefore, again in different ways, and on a higher level, truly equal." -Romain Gary

Which isn't to say that she should be an entirely fragile blossom. Take modern car doors. Automotive companies pay high-priced talent to design latches that open at the touch of a pinky, and so Antoinnette might as well use hers. Or, if that is just more than she can bring herself to do, a man can correctly reach across her to open it for her.

A great deal of trivia has crept into intersexual etiquette, and that's a fact. For instance a man – saith the etiquette book – mustn't walk between two women, except when the Trio crosses a street. But if he's the only man they've got why mustn't he? The book says it's because he'd have to turn his face away from one of them in speaking to the other. But this isn't so terrible. Maybe each of the ladies enjoys having a man beside her, and if he weren't, she'd feel like Orphan Annie. Did they ever look at it that way?

Also, a man isn't supposed to take a woman's arm, and except when crossing the street. But if she is wearing spike heels, or if it is spring (as or summer, autumn, or winter) and they are in love, he certainly may. That's what this book says.

"A now famous Hollywood actor reveals his lower white-collar origins every time he sits down. He pulls up his trousers to preserve the crease." – Vance Packard

Consider Men's Hatiquette. It's simple, but many words have been wasted on it. Actually, all that matters is that he make sure his hat* is off whenever there's a roof or ceiling overhead – except for long covered thoroughfares like public halls and terminals, and in the Jewish Temple, and on special ceremonial or costumed occasions.

Elevators are a moot point. Taking off his hat is a gracious gesture. But in a closed-packed elevator it can create more distress then joy you must elbow people and knock their hats off in the process.

He never has to take his hat off in the street, unless the flag goes by or stops. Not when a lady goes by or stops. The merest flick of the brim will suffice. And if it's a raw day, practical intersexual etiquette demands that he keep it securely on. Should he catch cold in his sinuses, some woman will probably have to nurse him or put up with him, and thus he has'nt proved to be so gallant in the long run. – From Peg Bracken’s, “I Try to Behave Myself”

Compiled and submitted by the late-Demita Usher of Social Graces and Savoir Faire

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

More Retro Etiquette for the Bedroom

When she wants to climb down in the morning, don't forget to ask in French, “So soon?”

   

My last contribution, the previous post on Etiquipedia, was two chapters from the first volume of a two volume book.  The first two chapters were originally published in the 1934 book, “Bed Manners.”  These two chapters are from the 1936 sequel, “Better Bed Manners.” I do hope you find them as interesting and as entertaining as I do.

From “Better Bed Manners”

In Bed With an Etiquette Teacher

The great etiquette teacher's dinner party was coming to an end.  Without bustle or confusion, each guest was saying goodnight and thank you to the host.

Deft servants helped the ladies to adjust their wraps, and the gentleman to find their hats and coats in the coat-room. What a well-managed party it had been! How delicious the sherry with the soup, the white wine with the fish, the red wine with the joint! How beautifully the napkins had been folded, each containing a dinner roll! How correctly the knives have been laid at the right hand of each plate!

Yes, it had been a lovely party. Not a flaw in it anywhere. As each guest said "good night and thank you" in well modulated tones, the great teacher of etiquette made some graceful, correct little remark like: "Dear Mrs. Dusenpeffer, so good of you to come." All the men wore white ties and waistcoats with their tail coats. All the ladies were perfectly dressed for the evening -- none more perfectly than the great teacher herself.

In her restrained yet expressive voice, when the last guest had gone, she said: "Goodnight, Bung," to the butler. And then, because it is a mark of breeding to be appreciative of good service, she added: "Everything was well done, indeed."

"Good night, madam," replied the excellently trained butler, with a slight bow. It would not have been correct for him to thank his mistress for a compliment. All that remained for him to do was to put out the two cats, Etty and Quetty, and then retire for the night to his own butler's pantry, where convention required him to guard the silver.

The great etiquette teacher and poor Harry’s solar plexus.

The great teacher walked gracefully upstairs. No human eye was on her, but a true lady never slouches. Mentally she reviewed her party. She had caught the Archbishop eating asparagus with his fingers. She scratched him off her mental list for her next dinner. And that flighty Mrs. Constant Wreeder. She had hurried into the dining room without waiting for Mr. Crumplewaite to offer his arm.

The great teacher sighed. Well, her own manners have been above criticism -- surely an inspiration for every guest. She shut the door of her bedroom. And with it, she shut every thought of good manners out of her mind.

Instead of getting undressed, she just came to pieces.

Her underclothes laying in a puddle on the floor.

She put her hair in curlers and smeared her face with cold cream.

She looked at her husband, who was happily reading himself to sleep and said "Well, Harry, is your firm going into bankruptcy or not?" 

Then she asked him to get up and shut the window.

Then she turned on the radio.

Then she turned it off, and brought the conversation back to her husband's financial affairs.

Midway in this disagreeable chat, she saw a mosquito on the ceiling. In a sudden effort to kill it, she trod heavily on poor Harry's solar plexus.

A bit later she was sound asleep on her back, snoring loudly.

In the morning she jumped up, dragging the bedclothes off Harry's form. Without bothering to tuck him up, or even to notice if she had waked him, she breezed over to her desk. A happy thought had  struck her. "Well bred people," she wrote, "demonstrate the exquisite courtesy of good manners at every moment in their lives."

How to Invite Somebody to Bed

You “date yourself” far more by what you say than by the way you look. The use of worn out language (especially slanguage) is fatal to the best efforts of your barber and tailor, your gymnasium instructor, and all the others who try to make you seem youthful and sprightly.  And if you're a lady -- why, you may spend your allowance ten times over at the modiste's and the beauty parlor, and still be recognized for a grandmother if you use a grandmother's wise-cracks.

If you say: “Let us retire!” you date from the 1870's.

If you say: “Let's hit the hay!” you date from the 1880's.

If you say: “How about pounding your ear?” or speak of your bed as “the feathers,” you are using slang of nearly as ancient vintage.  To speak of going to bed as “flopping” is also not very new. In fact there is nothing safer and more modern to say than “Let's go to bed.”

But people do get tired of saying this over and over again, especially if they have to say it several times every evening, before good results are attained. Comical bishops in English novels usually vary it by making up a phrase such as "Let's all go to Bedfordshire!" But this is also old.

“Let's hit the selected South American horsehair, full of correctly tempered hour-glass springs, and magically insulated with fleecy felt,” probably would not have struck gold on the music charts as did “Let's Spend the Night Together”

To be thought young and dashing you need a wholly new piece of slang. It is always piquant to make it up yourself, and not depend on seeing it in the newspaper, or overhearing it at a party. Here is the way to proceed:

It was funny to call a bed "the hay" for a few years after the mattress was stuffed with hay. But your mattress is now stuffed with selected South American horsehair, full of correctly tempered hour-glass springs, and magically insulated with fleecy felt. If you don't believe us, cut it open. Or read the advertisement of that mattress.

You would surprise and perhaps charm also anybody, even your husband, if instead of saying "Let's hit the hay!" you said "Let's hit the selected South American horsehair, full of correctly tempered hour-glass springs, etc. etc.". But maybe this is too long to learn by heart -- and it certainly won't sound funny twice.

What you need, to refresh your way of speaking, are some good, reliable words that mean dead. Are short list includes bunk, berth, palett, crib, cot, shakedown, lit (French) and palang (Hindu.) Then you want a few good words that mean "lie down," "yawn," "snore," "take a rest," and so forth.  You might trust the dictionary, but never trust a dictionary too far. Or you will find yourself saying to some startled person, who never went to school in Boston, something that he or she won't understand. 

Only if your wife was a Boston girl can you say: “I am somniferous. Are you statuvolvent? Shall we oscitate in our palang?” It is really simpler to say: “Let's go to bed.”

Contributor Maura Graber has been teaching etiquette to children, teens and adults, and training new etiquette instructors, for nearly a quarter of a century, as founder and director of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette.  She is also a writer, has been featured in countless newspapers, magazines and television shows and was an on-air contributor to PBS in Southern California for 15 years. 

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

A Book of Retro Bedroom Etiquette

Claudette Colbert wasn't taking any chances in the motel room, alone with Clark Gable ~ "Even the kindest people are savage at night." Sir Walter Scott

 I have an odd habit of giving away copies of the 1936 book, "Bed Manners and Better Bed Manners." This, and its 1934 predecessor, "Bed Manners." It's not that I don't want the book. I just bought another copy a month or so back. It's that I try to show my etiquette instructor trainees that there is a whole world of etiquette out there to ponder.  The world of etiquette isn't just tea parties or sending out notes of thanks. It surrounds us. It is kinetic. And it is also, sometimes, hysterically funny. Take for example the sales pitch that permeates the first two chapters that I have posted here. I will post more of this tomorrow.   

Much human misery would be eliminated if fathers took their boys aside and talked with them frankly about many things.

Acknowledgement 

This book is based upon Harford Powel's epoch-making article entitled "Bed Manners," which appeared in Vogue. As Mr Powel said, the subject has never before been discussed in print, and deserves the careful study which we have given it. We extend thanks to numerous readers who have helped us by describing the heinous errors in good taste and etiquette committed by their husbands, wives, sweethearts, college roommates, etc. May this little book fill your nights with sunshine.

Ralph Y. I Hopton, PhD
Anne Balliol

How to Use This Book

What? A new etiquette book in a world already groaning under the weight of thousands of etiquette books? Yes. Because this book pioneers in a new field of good manners in good form.

Every etiquette book written up to now has a missing chapter, which would be the most valuable of all if the writer had only dared to print it. Such a chapter would follow the section on Table Manners, and the section on Party Manners. It would be called Bed Manners, and fully instruct you how to behave in a nice way between bedtime and breakfast time.

Of course, you may be living all alone on a desert island, to which you have fled to escape your creditors, your wife, or the like. If so, it doesn't matter how you behave at night. Only the owls and the fireflies can see you, and it makes no difference to them if you snore, mutter in your sleep, kick the clothes off the bed, or commit any other breach of social etiquette.

But probably you are not alone, or don't want to stay that way.

Civilized life is full of strange adventures. Some people explore the jungles, others work in laboratories with deadly germs, others get a kick out of polo, or mountain climbing, or cruising in deep water in tiny boats like cockleshells.

But the strangest adventure of all is to find yourself locked in a bedroom with a person of the opposite sex, with whom you are required to go to bed and get up for thousands and thousands of nights. This is called "marriage." It may have happened to you already. Or it may happen just when you least expect it and are least prepared.

Did Cleopatra own a dreaded vassarette?

Very well. How are you going to act? How are you going to make the other person act? The schools of America teach many valuable subjects like geometry, ancient history, football and algebra, but they do not teach bed manners. As a result, our young graduates plunge into marriage with no idea how to behave. They can read the etiquette columns in the newspapers and the etiquette books in the library until they are black in the face, and still fail to find a single word of advice on this important topic.

During the past year, to prove our point, we have studied more than one million words written by every authority on etiquette in America. We have listened to the radio as well. Make this test yourself, and what do you get?

You get a lot of information about visiting cards, and lawn fetes, and the right way to eat asparagus, and how to write a letter to a United States Senator, and how to set the table for a formal luncheon. This is all good, as far as it goes. But it never goes past bedtime. You might think these authorities wanted you to sit up all night in the parlor, writing formal letters, or practicing the correct way to grip asparagus, or something.

Now, you know better than that. You know that you can't sit up all night for more than a very few nights without feeling very tired and wanting to get some sleep. Very well. This little book which you are now reading tells you, in a few practical lessons, everything you need to know about good form in the bedroom.

Knowledge is power.

Grasp it firmly, and you will be able to remodel the behavior of the person who sleeps with you. This person has no doubt been behaving very badly, for lack of good, practical information, such as this book supplies. If this is not checked, at once, it will lead to quarrels, injured feelings, and eventually to divorce. You probably will not be able to afford a divorce this year. Avoid all such expense by leaving this book in plain sight, where your bedfellow will see it and absorb its lessons. If it doesn't work a cure, nothing can.

If you wish to do good in your community, like a good citizen, you should extend the usefulness of this book by giving it to every married couple who are beginning to crack under the strain. In the very next home on your street, you may have reason to know that the husband is a boor. Or the wife may behave is if she has been brought up in the monkey cage at the zoo. Your course of action is obvious. Buy a copy of this book and leave it on their pillow. They may be surprised when they see it, but they will thank you in the end, when they learn how much happier it will make them.

You have a duty to young people, too. Instead of letting them grow up and marry in blind ignorance of the natural pitfalls caused by imperfect bed manners, you must see that a copy of this book goes to every prospective bride and groom in town. A young woman who finds it in her bridal shower will appreciate your kind thoughts. So will the college student who receives it as a graduation gift from you.

Another splendid use of this book is as a gift to your physician. He meets dozens of discontented married people in his daily rounds. He will want to prescribe this book to all of them, as soon as he has read it, digested it, and learn what it can do to make his own married life bearable, even happy.

One word of warning. This is the first and only book ever printed about Bed Manners. The subject is a vast one. The happiness of many million people depends on it. Therefore, do not attempt to read this book rapidly. Meditate each chapter before you take up the next one. You must think as you read. You can do this in the privacy of your home, or in the subway, or out riding with friends, or in odd moments at the office or factory where you work.

For this reason, you cannot rent this book at a library, and gallop through it, and expect to get its full benefit. Own your own copy it all times. Carry it around with you, and give its magic a full chance to work.

Contributor Maura Graber has been teaching etiquette to children, teens and adults, and training new etiquette instructors, for nearly a quarter of a century, as founder and director of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette.  She is also a writer, has been featured in countless newspapers, magazines and television shows and was an on-air contributor to PBS in Southern California for 15 years. 

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