THE WAYS OF MODERN SOCIETY

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4396, 29 June 1901, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE WAYS OF MODERN SOCIETY

A rather humourous sketch of London Society, by Mr G. P. Pillai, appears in the “Universal and Lpdgate Magazine." There is even a correct style (says the writer) to hold one’s walking-stick. It should be held at an angle of 46 degrees, with the ferrule uppermost and forward. The laugh, wo are told, is a test of good-breeding, and the Society woman has to cultivate an elegant mode of laughter. Nature, which often asserts herself in boisterous laughter, must not bo allowed to have her own way. Society also demands that lies should he told on certain occasions, or, at any rate, that the truth should be concealed. When declining an invitation you ought not to use the threadbare formula, “Owing to previous engagement.” It is better to assign some reason, and a lie comes in handy. When dinner parties are given, it is required that they should consist, numerically, of never less than the Graces, and never more than the Muses. The most extraordinary thing is that all these rules of etiquette are observed by Englishmen and Englishwomen wherever they happen to be, whatever be the nature of the climate under which they dwell. Starched shirt-fronts and stiff collars are dictated by etiquette in England because they are also necessitated by the weather. In a cold country, like England, to be dressed as English etiquette requires is certainly not altogether uncomfortable; but thev are positively uncomfortable in India, and yet they would hav e it! It is usual in England for a man to be swathed in three coats of flannel; there are men who would cling to flannel in India as they have to cling to it in England.