Cover image for

Book of Etiquette

Language English
Published 1921
Word count 39,497
Excerpt

s actually unfair to the young children in the home to set the wrong example by being discourteous to the servants. They will only have to fight, later, to conquer the petty snobbishness that stands between them and their entrance into good society.

THE INVISIBLE BARRIER

In the sixteenth century French women servants were arrested and placed in prison for wearing clothes similar to those worn by their "superiors" It developed that they had made the garments themselves, copying them from the original models, sometimes sitting up all night to finish the garment. But the court ruled that it made no difference whether they had made them themselves or not; they had worn clothes like their mistresses', and they must be punished! We very much wiser people of the twentieth century smile when we read of these ridiculous edicts of a long-ago court, but we placidly continue to condemn the shop-girl and the working-girl if she dares to imitate Parisienne importations.

It is very often the same in the househo