Broken Engagement Gift Etiquette

A “hope chest” is also known as a “glory box” or “cedar chest.” It is a very traditional piece of furniture, which was historically used by young, unmarried women to collect household goods, linens, and more, all in anticipation of marriage. Handcrafted versions are still produced today and are often made from solid wood like cedar or cherry.

When You Don’t Walk Up the Aisle…

Dear Mrs. Post: When an engagement ends before the march to the altar, what happens about the hope chest? That is, my fiancé or, I should say, my ex-fiancé, gave it to me last Christmas, and I have been storing my linens in it. Am I supposed to make some attempt to send it back to him?

Answer: I think that this is one thing that you might be expected to keep. He can hardly give a left-over hope chest to another girl, and it has really become more personal to you, than to him, since you have been filling it with things made and collected by you. However, ask him whether he would like it. If he wants it, then send it back to him. — Emily Post, 1941

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of  The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

An Etiquette Blunder from 1923

Someone is in the wrong. The woman just sitting down in the automobile? Or the gentleman entering behind her? Do you know who?

BLUNDER

Is the lady or man guilty of a breach of etiquette? What?!?

BLUNDER CORRECTED

In entering an. automobile it is incorrect for the first one who gets in to sit near the door forcing others to crawl over to their seats. - By Betty Thompson, Modesto Morning Herald, 1923

🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Courtesy in Public

“Women desiring to cut acquaintances or make it clear to them that they do not wish to continue greeting them display poor breeding when they deliberately stare in response to a salutation. It is much better to keep the eyes averted as the person approaches and keep them that way until after they have passed.” - Bebe Daniels

Nice People and How They Act

Girls, do not lean on the arm of your escort when walking on the street, unless you are lame.

A gentleman always offers his arm in escorting a lady at night, but when escorting two he offers his arm only to one. Both walk on the same side of him; he does not walk between. At all times he walks on the side where he can afford the greatest protection from vehicles or obstructions.

It is the woman's privilege to bow first when meeting men acquaintances.

Women desiring to cut acquaintances or make it clear to them that they do not wish to continue greeting them display poor breeding when they deliberately stare in response to a salutation. It is much better to keep the eyes averted as the person approaches and keep them that way until after they have passed.

If a strange man offers assistance in case of accident, it is desirable that a woman should ask his name and address in order that she or some member of her family can express her appreciation.

It is the woman's privilege to bow first when meeting men acquaintances.

Women desiring to cut acquaintances or make it clear to them that they do not wish to continue greeting them display poor breeding when they deliberately stare in response to a salutation. It is much better to keep the eyes averted as the person approaches and keep them that way until after they have passed.

If a strange man offers assistance in case of accident, it is desirable that a woman should ask his name and address in order that she or some member of her family can express her appreciation.

When acting as escort a man should pay all fares and fees in street cars or taxicabs. Whenever a person offers her a seat it is his due to tip his hat and her to thank the courteous one.

In leaving a car or cab or bus the man goes out first and offers his assistance to his companion.

There is no rule of etiquette making it necessary for a man to offer his seat to a woman in a public conveyance, unless she is elderly, lame, has a child in her arms or is carry ing packages. -By Bebe Daniels, 1922

  🍽️Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber of The RSVP Institute of Etiquette, is the Site Editor of the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Etiquette Advice to Wives of 1938

Etiquette for a Wise Wife

WHAT is etiquette? How can a girl improve her manners and become a more likable social creature? Those questions come to me in almost every mail. I think a new book has all the answers.

Margaret Fishback combines rare good judgment and a sense of humor in her “Safe Conduct.” She speaks of etiquette in modern terms.

“In etiquette there is certainly no last word. no supreme authority on any subject,” she writes. “Etiquette is, rather, the behavior of the majority in any given age or place, plus a fundamental civilized desire to please.”

Miss Fishback pokes fun at some of the “ladylike” books of etiquette that teach snobbery instead of simple good manners. And she also gives some brutally honest advice to wives who hate to see their hard-working husbands take a night off now and then to be with “the boys.”

This section expresses my own feelings so well, that I quote from it, urging all loving and sometimes misguided wives to listen attentively.

“One of the things that frighten so much good masculine material out of the fold of matrimony is the sight of a once-free spirit whose wife has him under her thumb. There are many wives-loving, affectionate ones too- who have a particular aversion to seeing their husbands enjoy any good time without them.

“It isn't a matter of good times involving other women. What these wives resent is the innocent masculine evening, when the boys just want to get together and drink too much and push one another around and play poker and sing raucously and tell boarding-school jokes.

“A wife should try to be sympathetic toward this valiant effort of man to regain his lost youth. She should let him have his fling every little while, if he wants to, instead of smiling the martyred I'll-be-all-right-tomorrow smile, with the terribly, terribly hurt look in her eye that means she is grieved to find he should ever want to spend an evening away from his loving wife and the family hearth.

“The wife who puts on that kind of act is likely to become one of those I-never-have- any-fun women, who are such hair shirts to the masculine sex. Most of this species have nice homes, and books to read, and friends to play with, while Pop is out bread-winning. Yet they complain of their hard lot, which is bad marital strategy, because at first it bewilders a man, then the injustice of it irritates him, and that's when the bickering begins.

“So, after you snare your man, remember the girls who are still on the town, and don't frighten the surviving eligible males. If, after wedlock, a man may still call his soul just half his own, the other half will be dedicated with his compliments to the wife who continues to be as starry-eyed when her Benedict appears at the end of a hard day at the office, as she was during courtship.

“The perfect woman is the one who doesn't nag, or play the martyr, or deliberately incite jealousy, or display a jealous heart.” –San Bernardino Sun, 1938

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