More Solutions to Social Problems, 1910

A young man, aged 21, who is attending college, sends a girl a letter, asking her to reply, and the girl's father doesn't want her to correspond with the young man while he is at college. Should the father or the girl answer his letter? 

Rude Behavior

Dear Mrs. Adams: Is a man who persists in hugging and kissing a young lady already engaged to be married, when calling on her sister, a gentleman? Would you deem him a man worthy of the companionship of respectable people!?– T. B. W.

No; he cannot be called a gentleman, because he has not conducted himself in a respectable and well-behaved manner, and is not worthy of the society of well-bred persons.

Not Out of Place

Dear Mrs. Adams: 1. Please inform me if it is out place for a girl of 17 years to go with boy of the same age? 

2. A young man, aged 21, who is attending college, sends a girl a letter, asking her to reply, and the girl's father doesn't want her to correspond with the young man while he is at college. Should the father or the girl answer his letter? 

3. If a girl of 18 has a liking for a young man of 24, who has called on her but once, and is now going to a small town, would it be improper for her to telephone him and congratulate him on his new position? 

4. When writing to a friend, how should a girl begin her letters, Dear Friend, or Dearest Friend, and how should she sign her name? –Unsigned

1. While a boy and girl of such an age should not monopolize each other's time, it would not be out of place for them to be good friends and occasionally go out together. 

2. The girl may write the young man a letter telling him what her father wishes her to do.
3. It would hardly be becoming for the girl to take such a personal interest in a man with whom she is not very well acquainted.
4. The form of salutation used in a letter depends upon the relation between the writer and the recipient. Both of the forms you mention are quite informal. The same rule holds good in the closing of the letter as in the opening. The forms with "sincerely" are always good.— San Francisco Call, 1910

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

Etiquette and Chivalry Breached

It’s such a shame that cads often arrive in nice packaging. – 

“Is their chivalry toward woman a loose garment for occasional wear?”

Masculine "Chivalry?" Hardly!

Three cases of social decorum have recently been recorded in the news columns, which, because of their similar nature and their similarity in offensiveness, merit attention together: 

• At Bayside, a clubman passing the night at a friend's house sought to enter the room of a young girl. The household was awakened by the girl's cries and the intruder expelled from the premises and disgraced so far as the publicity of his expulsion can disgrace him. 
• At Cape May a number of young men, "at least one of them belonging to a prominent Philadelphia family," invaded the home of George G. Browning in his absence, and insulted his wife and daughters. 
• At Bar Harbor a lieutenant in the United States Navy, making a call on a young widow, conducted himself in such a manner that his behavior is now the subject of a Court of Inquiry. 

In each of these breaches of decorum the offender, it will be observed, was a man of social standing. What is the explanation of the laxity of morals shown? Is the summer time at the seashore a period of license, or does it happen that some of our "gentlemen" are so only in the outward veneer of good manners? Is their chivalry toward woman a loose garment for occasional wear? These three offenses of almost simultaneous occurrence are very painful to record.—New York Evening World, 1903

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