Train Travel Etiquette

As for the chewing-gum monstrosity, it is simply unspeakably hateful. Fortunately for the hygiene and the comfort of travelers, the revolting habit of expectoration in public conveyances is a thing of the past…

A Minor Infliction

Among the disagreeable features of a short suburban journey may be mentioned the habit of munching peanuts or eating fruit or candy, in which ill-bred people indulge. A decorous luncheon eaten at the luncheon hour is not an offense to anyone, but it is a distinct misery to sit near a party of people who are eating peanuts and scattering shells upon the floor, and the odor of oranges and bananas on a train is nauseating to many.

As for the chewing-gum monstrosity, it is simply unspeakably hateful. Fortunately for the hygiene and the comfort of travelers, the revolting habit of expectoration in public conveyances is a thing of the past; prohibited under penalties of fine and imprisonment by modern boards of health, it has had its odious day, and no longer moves fastidious strangers from abroad to write of us as if we were a horde of barbarians instead of a refined and wholesome nation, with standards of purity and excellence to maintain.— From “Good Manners for All Occasions,” 1904

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Etiquette of the Table in 1904

During an entire dinner olives, salted almonds, radishes, and similar relishes may be passed. These are the only articles of food on the table when guests take their seats.

The place plates alone in a modern home with any claim to be thought fashionable may easily cost a hundred dollars a dozen. Very exquisite place plates may be bought for a quarter of that sum, it is true. But that single item gives the clue to the extravagance of much twentieth century table furnishing.

The place plates are supposed to stand under the soup plates, and under any course where it is desired to have them. They often are used at dessert as well as in the beginning of a meal.

A dinner served in courses consists of soup, fish, roast, salad, and dessert. These are the indispensable courses. A ceremonious dinner, however, probably begins with a tiny bit of caviare on a tiny bit of toast.

This is succeeded by fruit: melons, peaches, strawberries, or grape fruit may be served for this course. The fruit must be in perfection, must have been on the ice, must itself tempt the eye as well as the palate.

Next, served on a bed of crushed ice, with silver forks that come on purpose, will be a course of oysters or small clams on the half shell. Oyster plates with hollows for the shell come for this course.

Succeeding the oysters we have a delicate clear soup. The hostess may serve it from a silver tureen, or it may be brought in on soup plates and set before the individual guests.

Next follows fish. This may be served by the host, or it may be arranged in a dainty mince and served in shells to the separate guests. If the former way is chosen, potatoes very daintily cooked may accompany it.

During an entire dinner olives, salted almonds, radishes, and similar relishes may be passed. These are the only articles of food on the table when guests take their seats.

After the fish there may be an entrée or two of some delicate dish, but the roast is now the proper thing in order. It may be turkey, beef, mutton or lamb. Whatever it is the host may carve it, if he please, and the waiter receive the portions from him and carry them to the guests.

In many houses the lady of the house is first served, and next the guest of honor, who is the lady at the right of the host. Ladies are helped before gentlemen.

The carving is often done in the kitchen, or the butler's pantry, the host being altogether relieved from this duty.

With the roast several vegetables are served. A salad follows the roast, and with the salad cheese and small crackers are served.

The dessert follows the salad, and black coffee concludes the repast. A dinner of this kind should be served in very leisurely style. No fuss, no hurry, above all no noise or confusion must characterize a ceremonious dinner.

The dessert usually consists of tarts, ices, fruit, and bon-bons. Frequently there is a final course, after the sweets, consisting of cheese and toasted crackers.

Invited to dinner, one accepts or declines immediately. Good manners forbid delay in responding to a dinner invitation.

Good manners ordain that only extreme illness or a great calamity in one's family or affecting one's own person shall permit one to break a dinner engagement.

If one necessarily falls out of a dinner party, and the place at the last moment has to be supplied, a very intimate friend or a neighbor may be requested to take the vacant place, but the circumstances must be explained, and the agreement to help the hostess out at the eleventh hour constitutes a real social favor.

Children never come in at a ceremonious dinner. Very occasionally they are permitted to enter the room at dessert, but as generally the hour is far beyond their bedtime this is in doubtful taste.— From “Good Manners for All Occasion,” by Margaret Sangster, 1904

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Good Manners for Good Business

Every business is pervaded, more or less, by the influence of good behavior and gentle manners. Hence, who can venture to undertake any business except he first acquaint himself with what is right as to his manners and conduct?

Most of the laws of business are based upon the Golden Rule. One who has gained for himself a practical knowledge of this rule is fit for any business. What one of the learned professions would thrive without the aid of proper behavior in its practice? In the physician's efforts to alleviate pain and disease, how valuable to him is a knowledge of what is proper and right in his social treatment of patients. Who has not heard of a physician unsuccessful in his practice because he did not observe good manners? 

Every successful lawyer soon discovers the benefit of good breeding in his dealings with his clients. Who has not heard it asked about a minister, “Are his social qualities good?” —meaning nothing more nor less than an estimate of a pastor’s ability to exercise good manners and genial behavior among his people. Such knowledge is equally useful to the teacher, who must in turn shape the manners of his pupils. Where do we find more agreeable or more polite men, women and boys, than in the clerks, sales—women and cash-boys of the large mercantile establishments of our cities and towns? 

Every business is pervaded, more or less, by the influence of good behavior and gentle manners. Hence, who can venture to undertake any business except he first acquaint himself with what is right as to his manners and conduct?—From “Good Manners for All Occasions,” by Margaret Sangster, 1904

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Etiquette’s Intrinsic Value

The efficiency and usefulness of a liberal education are dwarfed unless developed under the genial influence of proper decorum. The actual worth, then, of politeness is such as to make every one who would be refined and cultured seek to cultivate it to such an extent as to make it practical in all the walks of life.

To estimate the real value of etiquette, decorum, or good manners, is to measure the breadth and scope of modern civilization. That culture only is valuable, which smooths the rough places, harmonizes the imperfections, and develops the pure, the good and the gentle in human character. The revenge of the savage, the roughness of the barbarous, and the rudeness of even some who claim to be civilized, are all lost in the good will and suavity of gentle manners. 

The efficiency and usefulness of a liberal education are dwarfed unless developed under the genial influence of proper decorum. The actual worth, then, of politeness is such as to make every one who would be refined and cultured seek to cultivate it to such an extent as to make it practical in all the walks of life.

EXCHANGEABLE VALUE

“A man’s manners are his fortune,” is a saying as true as it is old, as valuable as it is true. Many commodities are exchangeable, and money is the pivot upon which they turn. This is not less true of good manners than it is of the theories of the political economist. Who will number the times fortune has smiled upon penniless men who have had a good countenance and a pleasing address at their command? 

Good manners are made a leading business qualification in all pursuits. Neither sex is exempt, and the best posi- tions with the fattest salaries are always commanded by the best mannered, most courteous individuals. Then, as an avenue to wealth and position, good manners constitute a desirable acquisition.

VALUE TO SOCIETY

What is called society would be impossible were it not for the laws and usages of etiquette. So many interests are to be served 1-some to be protected, others to be restrained, and still others to be allowed the privilege of growth and expansion-that all these could not be done without some acknowledged standard of action, of which all may acquire some information both on entering and while in society. 

The best manners are to be found in the society of the good, and they are only the outgrowth of what is actually essential to regulate intercourse among such people. Man can not do without society, and society can not be maintained without customs and laws; therefore we have only to think of the mistakes, the heart-burnings and the mortifications which are the experience of the unrefined and ill-mannered, to see how valuable to society is a knowledge of the rules of decorum. —From “Rules of Etiquette and Home Culture,” 1889

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A Little Bit on Politeness

The very word “politeness” carries with it a hidden meaning of elegance, and of the ease that is acquired by mingling with one’s fellows; for it springs from the Latin polio, “I smooth,” and smoothness is gained, not by seclusion, but by the attrition of the city, by the reciprocity that needs must be exercised where people meet one another often, and there must be mutual concessions, that there may be peace and agreeable living together. 

ONE hears good people speak of politeness with a certain contempt, as if it did not matter in the least whether one's manners were fine, if only one's morals were irreproachable. “His heart is all right, but he is a diamond in the rough,” I heard a friend say of another. It was well that the first statement could honestly be made, but a pity that the second had to be added. For there can be few greater misfortunes on the journey of life than to have either bad manners, rude manners, or no manners at all. 

The very word “politeness” carries with it a hidden meaning of elegance, and of the ease that is acquired by mingling with one’s fellows; for it springs from the Latin polio, “I smooth,” and smoothness is gained, not by seclusion, but by the attrition of the city, by the reciprocity that needs must be exercised where people meet one another often, and there must be mutual concessions, that there may be peace and agreeable living together. 

A rough diamond is valuable, of course, but its value is greatly increased when the tool of a cunning workman has brought out its beautiful possibilities, shown the immortal fire under the shining surface, and made every point a star. Men who have been obliged to dwell apart, to delve in mines, or cut the first roads round steep mountains, or live in the loneliness of lumber camps away from women, sometimes grow rough and curt, or, it may even be, boorish. And this is a very great calamity. Still, if early training is careful, and children learn to practice politeness in the home, the habit is apt to stick, let future circumstances be happy or the reverse. A man need not be discourteous because he has little chance to indulge in the gracious and graceful amenities of life. If, as a small child, good manners were so taught him that they became a part of his very nature he will never forget them.

Men and women in the intercourse of the family and in good society are expected to be kind, gentle, well-bred, and obliging. By good society I do not mean fashionable society. It happens that the very rudest people I ever met belonged to a very exclusive circle in what is called the “smart set” of a cosmopolitan American city. The ladies and gentlemen to whom I refer were away from home attending an exposition in a Southern State. They had been most hospitably entertained and most kindly welcomed, but their air of detachment, of pride, of indifference to those around them, might have befitted folk of the baser sort who had never had a chance to learn propriety, but were glaringly out of place in people who had enjoyed every advantage that wealth, travel, and culture could bestow.

On the other hand, I have seen a man in a leather apron, with hands calloused by labor, and clothing patched and faded, whose manners would have been admired in a court. One seldom encounters gross rudeness among poor and hard-working people. They may not know all about the frills and fripperies and furbelows of conventional and ceremonious politeness, but they are polite to the core, with the politeness that gives the best and warmest chair in the chimney corner to the old and feeble grandparent, that offers a seat at once in the street car to the laundress with her basket, or the mother with her baby, and that puts itself out to show a stranger the way, or relieve a woman of a heavy bag or awkward bundle. 

This is conspicuous in America, where it has always been our boast that our women are worshiped, that women may travel in perfect safety between the Atlantic and the Pacific, and that our streets, in our great towns, are as safe at midnight as at noon, for any woman, young or old, whose duties compel her to be abroad after dark without an escort.

The immense ingress upon our shores of foreign peoples with ideals different from ours has somewhat modified our universal gallantry, yet we are glad to observe that in the assimilating processes of the republic the most ignorant peas- antry acquire our ideas, while there is no excuse whatever for our absorbing theirs.

Mrs. Cynthia Westover Alden, writing on this theme, says pithily in a talk to business women: “Cultivate the manners of good society. I do not refer to society with a big S; that is another thing. The manners of the best people in Oshkosh, or Spring Valley, or Cripple Creek are good enough.” — From “Good Manners for All Occasions,” by Margaret Sangster, 1904

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Mrs. Sangster on Etiquette, 1904

This is a primer of manners designed to make ladies and gentlemen of us all. In her preface, Mrs. Sangster describes it as being like Jack Horner’s historic Christmas pie, and always yielding its plum to the reader who opens its covers. 

GOOD MANNERS FOR ALL OCCASIONS

A Practical Manual, By Margaret E. Sangster

New York:
This is a primer of manners designed to make ladies and gentlemen of us all. In her preface, Mrs. Sangster describes it as being like Jack Horner’s historic Christmas pie, and always yielding its plum to the reader who opens its covers. 

Certain things she overlooks; for instance, she leaves one sadly at sea as to the etiquette of card parties, dances, etc... because she says so many people are divided as to their places as amusements at all; neither does she speak authoritatively upon the question of wines at the table, etc..., since she considers all alcoholic beverages as lying strictly within the domain of a reputable physician. Otherwise her field is as wide and varied as the most exacting student of manner could wish for.

Under table manners, one learns that he should not make a noise while eating, that his chair should not be placed too close to the table, neither too far away; that he should not express a decided preference for any particular article of food unless requested to do so; that it is not elegant to tuck one's napkin under one’s chin; that except in the case of very old ladies or gentlemen eating with one’s knife is not to be tolerated, and many other important things. 

Passing on to the etiquette of children, one learns with actual relief that well-behaved children do not play with a guest's dress, hat, or purse: neither are they permitted to sit on a sofa beside a guest unless particularly invited by the guest to do so. Indeed, in most cases they are not permitted in the room with visitors at all.

A gentleman in society does not quarrel with other guests in a house, and it is not considered elegant to try to be witty, although a pleasing and sprightly conversation may be tolerated. Even en familie quarrels and squabbles should be avoided at the dinner table. Never ask personal questions in society, and in talking to a person look at him, but avoid staring. 

In church one should remember not to eat lozenges or peppermints, nor to fan violently and create a cold current on the back of one's neighbor's neck. Be attentive to old people in the house of God.

It is not etiquette for saleswomen to gossip behind the counter, nor for stenographers to lunch with their employers.

Ladies should try to have their dresses fit well, and in traveling there are fastidious people who prefer to carry their own toilet articles rather than to use those designed for the general-public.

The book is a stout volume, and these are only unassorted items taken from it at random. Mrs. Sangster has gone to great pains to classify all her manners. For instance, on Page 23 she gives Good Manners for Traveling” and on Page 205 we have “Good Manners When All by Ourselves.” There are chapters on “Mourning and Funeral Etiquette and on “The Etiquette of the Visiting Card.”

She tells when is the proper time to: use moth balls and when to buy preserves; when to use the typewriter in correspondence, and when to write in: long hand; and she also gives recipes for cleaning jewelry and old laces, and a little résume of manners in different periods, of history. It should prove an exceedingly valuable book for diamonds in the rough. – The Christian Herald, 1904

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One’s Manner vs Manners

“A man who thrusts his knife into his mouth or sticks a piece of bread on the point of a fork into the platter of roast meat or chicken, may have every virtue in the calendar, yet the fly in the pot of ointment spoils the sweetness of the whole. He offends the accepted canons of good society.” 

From the Society and Gossip Section

A Piece from Margaret Sangster

“The word ‘politeness’ carries with it a hidden meaning of elegance find of the ease that is acquired by mingling with one’s fellows,” says Margaret Sangster in “Good Manners for All Occasions,” published in the Christian Herald. “It springs from the Latin polio (smooth), and smoothness is gained not by seclusion, but by the attrition of the city, by the reciprocity that needs must be exercised where people meet one another often, and there must be mutual concessions that there may be peace and agreeable living together.

“A rough diamond is valuable, of course, but its value is greatly increased when the tool of a cunning workman has brought out its beautiful possibilities, shown the immortal fire under the shining surface and made every point a star. A man who thrusts his knife into his mouth or sticks a piece of bread on the point of a fork into the platter of roast meat or chicken, may have every virtue in the calendar, yet the fly in the pot of ointment spoils the sweetness of the whole. He offends the accepted canons of good society.

“A subtle distinction exists between manner and manners. The first is often inherited; it is made up of innumerable little peculiarities that belong to the race and family. In a well known romance the hero is a man well born and of aristocratic traditions, but illiterate and unversed in the ways that had been the natural expression of character in his family for generations. He is a day laborer on the soil that was once his and that has been wrested from him by fraud. Yet though his manners are sometimes flawed by ill temper and discontent, his manner is noble. It is the grand manner of his father. 

“Manner shows what spirit we are of. It is the temper of the steel. Manners have to do with our dally conduct. A man or woman who is familiar with etiquette to the least detail, may have an awkward, defiant or self-conscious manner that will be a fearful handicap in business success and detract from the enjoyment one may look for in hours of leisure.” — Los Angeles Herald, 1905

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