• Author: Sherlock, Chelsa
• Editor: B-7413
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume 5
• Page Number:
• Date: 1 12 1916
• Tags:
• advice
• proverb

ETIQUETTE By Chelsa Sherlock. Etiquette is a customary form of action; nothing more, nor less. People who are anxious about their manners seldom have the simon-pure article at heart. Etiquette is an odd delusion, of the age. It is impossible for anyone to set up a formula for good behavior. Iron clad rules never fit and some ignorant boor will break them and down goes your little god of fashion. For a while elbows on the table were an evidence of poor manners. Then an ignorant fool came along having money galore and rested his pins on the table. Immediately the whole fashionable world fell in line and the pendulum swung the other way. Which goes to prove that etiquette is largely a matter of form, and the theory of manners is a fetish. Etiquette is alright in its place, but its place is limited. Americans always have had a hard time with Etiquette and Dame Fashion. We do not need manners as much as we need more sense. When Elbert Hubbard wore long hair, used slang and wrote advertisements, people said some mean things about him, but there are hundreds of good, honest people who are trying to be Elbert Hubbards now. When Christ plucked grain on the Sabbath and mingled with the Underworld, He was henceforth marked for slaughter. When Lord Byron told Society that it was dead wrong, the world commenced to breed cynics and pessimists by the carload. It was a forgotten preacher who said: "How prudently some men creep into nameless graves while a few forget themselves into immortality!" Society etiquette and manners are like war, and belong principally on the other side of the Atlantic where they had their birth. The man who lives according to the impulses of his better self—who forgets himself in the doing of a kind act, will fit into any circle. The man who lives by a code of rules isa helpless creature when he gets outside of his community. And, lastly, let it be your rule, if you must have one: Never to do that which, if done at all would cause sorrow or offense to another.