ds of good health. In this case we find, as we do
in a number of others, that what good manners declares should be done is
heartily endorsed at the same time by good sense. It is only among
people of blunted sensibilities that nice table manners count for
nothing; for

There's no reproach among swine, d'you see,
For being a bit of a swine.

Among business men it is often perplexing to know whom and when to
invite. Generally speaking, the older man or the man with the superior
position takes the initiative, but there are an infinite number of
exceptions. Generally speaking, also, the man who is resident in a place
entertains the one who is visiting, but there are infinite exceptions to
this as well, especially in the case of traveling salesman. All courtesy
is mutual, and it is almost obligatory upon the salesman who has been
entertained to return the courtesy in kind. Such invitations should be
tendered after a transaction is completed rather than before. The burden
of table courtesy falls upon the man who is selling rather than the one
who is buying, probably because he is the one to whom the obvious profit
accrues.

Social affairs among the wives of business men which grow out of the
business relations of their husbands follow the same rules as almost any
other social affairs. Nearly always it is the wife of the man with the
higher position who issues the first invitation, and it is permissible
for her to invite a woman whom she does not know personally if she is
the wife of a business friend of her husband.

The biggest hindrance to the establishment of good manners among
business men is the everlasting hurry in which they (and all the rest of
us) live. There must first of all be leisure, not perhaps to the extent
advocated by a delightful literary gentleman of having three hours for
lunch every day, but time enough to sit down and relax. Thousands of
business men dash out to lunch--bad manners are at their worst in the
middle of the day--as if they were stopping off at a railroad junction
with twenty minutes to catch a train and had used ten of them checking
baggage. And they do not always do it because they are in a hurry. They
have so thoroughly developed the habit of living in a frenzied rush that
even when they have time to spare they cannot slow down.

Pleasant surroundings are desirable. It is much easier to dine in a
quiet spacious room where the linen is white and the china is thin, the
sil