cial Claims--Propriety of
Deportment--False Pride--Awkwardness of being Dressed 124

XII.--MAXIMS FROM CHESTERFIELD.

Cheerfulness and Good Humor--The Art of Pleasing--Adaptation of
Manners--Bad Habits--Do what you are About--People who Never
Learn--Local Manners--How to Confer Favors--How to Refuse--
Spirit--Civility to Women 135

XIII.--ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTES.

Elder Blunt and Sister Scrub Taking off the Hat, or John and his
Employer--A Learned Man at Table--English Women in High Life--
"Say so, if you Please" 139

PREFACE.

This is an honest and earnest little book, if it has no other merit;
and has been prepared expressly for the use of the young people of our
great Republic, whom it is designed to aid in becoming, what we are
convinced they all desire to be, true American ladies and gentlemen.

Desiring to make our readers something better than mere imitators of
foreign manners, often based on social conditions radically different
from our own--something better than imitators of _any_ manners, in
fact, we have dwelt at greater length and with far more emphasis upon
general principles, than upon special observances, though the latter
have their place in our work. It has been our first object to impress
upon their minds the fact, that good manners and good morals rest upon
the same basis, and that justice and benevolence can no more be
satisfied without the one than without the other.

As in the other numbers of this series of Hand-Books, so in this, we
have aimed at usefulness rather than originality; but our plan being
radically different from that of most other manuals of etiquette, we
have been able to avail ourself to only a very limited extent of the
labors of others, except in the matter of mere conventional forms.

Sensible of the imperfections of our work, but hoping that it will do
some acceptable service in the cause of good manners, and aid, in a
humble way, in the building up of a truly American and republican
school of politeness, we now submit it, with great deference, to a
discerning public.

INTRODUCTION.

Some one has defined politeness as "only an elegant form of justice;"
but it is something more. It is the result of the combined action of
all the moral and social feelings, guided by judgment and refined by
taste. It requires the exercise of benevolence,