MANNERS OF TO-DAY.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1868, 12 March 1913, Page 7

MANNERS OF TO-DAY.

A DE LUXE AGE. "De luxe is the motto of the age, " says the Daily Mail. "In other days we may have possessed the thing, to-day we flaunt and flash the word. We pick out the letters in stars of fire, and the tinsel show never fails in its irresistible appeal. Music halls are all now 'entertainment de luxe.' Picture houses are 'cinemas de luxe.' We demand that our literature and our drama be constantly cheerful and elegant; in other words de luxe. If they disturb our after dinner temper unnecessarily we dismiss them as unpleasant. We cannot abide the gloom and the mud of an English winter, so we hasten away by an express de luxe to a place in the sun to dwell in an hotel de luxe." NOT ENOUGH WALKING.

"The taxicab strike has revealed the taxicab habit. To many men 'taking a taxi' comes as naturally as eating. But the habit," says a do Jtor to the Daily Mail, '' is not to be encouraged. " 'Tubes, trains, motor omnibuses, and taxicabs are assisting to undermine the system,' he said. 'We don't walk enough. We are corsed with too much convenience. Nobody thinks of walking a mile. " 'lf you ask a policeman the way to a certain point he will say, "Take number so and so omnibus." Yet in provincial cities people think nothing of walking a mile from their homes to their work. The average Londoner will not walk a quarter of a mile if a motor omnibus is in sight.' "

MOTOR CARS AND THE HUNT. The Duke of Beaufort has issued the following letter regarding the use of motor cars in his country £" I am reluctantly obliged to ask those who have been following my hounds in motor cars to kindly refrain from ] doiflg so, as'they have unwittingly interfered much with our sport through heading foxes, and on one or two occasions with neighbouring packs some of the hounds have been seriously injured. ' There is no objection to motor cars coming to the meet, but'l appeal to all sportsmen not to follow the hounds during the day in them." CLOTHES AND MANNERS. - "Mr Granville has dulled the edge of our gratitude to him for his splendid production of 'Twelfth Night' by destroying the convention which requires the wearing of dress clothes in the stalls,'' says the Pall Mall. '' The contagion, we hear, is spreading through the land of the theatre, and motley—a drab motly of tweed—is soon to be the 'only wear.' Really, this is not a time to encourage slovenliness in dress. The motor car has already had a sufficiently pernicious influence in this direction. "What the precise psychological influence of the 'claw-hammer' coat is, we cannot define, but when solitary Englishmen find that it conduces to the maintenance of their self respect to dress for dinner every night in the midst of the jungle, there is evidently something more in it'than mere vanity or snobbery. To be properly dressed is a sign of respect to one's neighbours. Clothes and manners are to this degree linked together.''