ly eager
for your news, or enthralled with your conversation; who looks at you with
a kindling of the face, and gives you spontaneous and undivided attention,
is the one to whom the palm for the art of conversation would undoubtedly
be awarded.

CHAPTER VIII

WORDS, PHRASES AND PRONUNCIATION

=PHRASES AVOIDED IN GOOD SOCIETY=

It is difficult to explain why well-bred people avoid certain words and
expressions that are admitted by etymology and grammar. So it must be
merely stated that they have and undoubtedly always will avoid them.
Moreover, this choice of expression is not set forth in any printed guide
or book on English, though it is followed in all literature.

To liken Best Society to a fraternity, with the avoidance of certain
seemingly unimportant words as the sign of recognition, is not a fantastic
simile. People of the fashionable world invariably use certain expressions
and instinctively avoid others; therefore when a stranger uses an
"avoided" one he proclaims that he "does not belong," exactly as a
pretended Freemason proclaims himself an "outsider" by giving the wrong
"grip"--or whatever it is by which Brother Masons recognize one another.

People of position are people of position the world over--and by their
speech are most readily known. Appearance on the other hand often passes
muster. A "show-girl" may be lovely to look at as she stands in a
seemingly unstudied position and in perfect clothes. But let her say "My
Gawd!" or "Wouldn't that jar you!" and where is her loveliness then?

And yet, and this is the difficult part of the subject to make clear, the
most vulgar slang like that quoted above, is scarcely worse than the
attempted elegance which those unused to good society imagine to be the
evidence of cultivation.

People who say "I come," and "I seen it," and "I done it" prove by their
lack of grammar that they had little education in their youth.
Unfortunate, very; but they may at the same time be brilliant, exceptional
characters, loved by everyone who knows them, because they are what they
seem and nothing else. But the caricature "lady" with the comic picture
"society manner" who says "Pardon _me_" and talks of "retiring," and
"residing," and "desiring," and "being acquainted with," and "attending"
this and that with "her escort," and curls her little finger over the
handle of her teacup, and prates of "culture," does not belong to Best
Society, and _never_ will! The offense