Family Manners

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7865, 29 July 1911, Page 13

Family Manners

The Complaint Box.

UNTKEELTESTG politeness is consideration for others. Conventional rules ore not arbitrary. They have grown up, imperceptibly, Tittle by Jottie, during hundreds of years, just as the common law which obtains in- our courts has grown. Bensons of convenience and comfort oro under good form, end it is that the wheels of family and eocial machinery may run without friction that wo may have .rales for the daily life. , V4a , Mere deportment may be or Jitwte worth. It may bo a vc-noor, easily cracked, soon broken. What we need ia that Eem-tiencss which refuses to wound anotier s feelings, that thoughtful >vo which can take another's (place; in-short, we need canfildoiuteness aa t!he basils of politeness. Thus, at the 'table, good manners requires that -people should- 'be pleasant, not glum and morose. A meat 'taken in silence and hurry, when the first effort of everyone is to gut fed and ijget away, is not a meal whore table manners are correct, , Equally, wherever -people interrupt ■each other rudely -each trying to take -and hold tlho floor, where there as faultfinding or criticism of the food, totfle manners are violated. Any fault-find-ing by anybody, anywhere in the home. | tor any reason, is a doßtetdl, offiack on |Qie home's .tranquility, and, a fractnra icf good manners. ~ A lady was much dis United by the tendency of her husband and children to find -fault. So she- set up a box. The boor, labeled duly, «l in a convenient place, and there every one who had a complaint to make of the food, the housekeeping, _or anything at all. was told bo drop m a J&P of folded paper. The complaint must bo made in writing. ' „ If somebody thought that ibaked beams appeared too often or that there mishJ bo pies and puddings more frequently, he or she could say eo. 1 The bread or butter, if toot quite up to the mark,, could bo mentioned in the liflHo (note of the aggrieved one. Omo Sunday, after the midday dinner, the complaint box was opened. AH complaints were road by the father of the family, and were discussed freely. If they were held to be justified they were passed to the mother, who promised to set them right in the future. If they woro nor justified, the person who made them paid a fine. Fines in the .aggregate went ito a fresh air fund, to send children from town with their mothers into the country.—Margaret E. Snmgester in “Fort Smith (Arkansas) U’imts-Record.”