SOME FOREIGN SOCIAL CUSTOMS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 823, 14 December 1905, Page 26

SOME FOREIGN SOCIAL CUSTOMS.

His bringing up may have been of the best, and his manners far nearer perfection than is common in this country, yet the young Englishman who goes abroad may find himself in the most teirible scrapes if he does not realise that the customs of other countries are not the same as our own. Fate may take you to the States and a Southern gentleman of the old school may ask you to dinner. In England no one thinks twice of it if you pass a dish or a course, but in the Carolinas or G'eorgia you must never commit such a breach of good manmanners. Help yourself to a little or everything handed to you, and at least taste it. You need not finish your helping but your host would consider it the worst of bad manners if you entirely refused a dish. Further South, in Mexico, and all through Spanish-speaking America, you must never, if asked, refuse a light, lhe veriest peon (peasant) will approach you in the street and with a bow intimate that his cigar has gone out or is unlighted. The proper etiquette is to take your own cigar or cigarette from your mouth and hand it over with a how. The other will then light his cigar and hand yours back, unlighted and foremost, then even if it be the veriest stub you must on no account throw the remains away. Take at least one whiff before doing so, if you do not wish, to fix a deadly insult upon the other. Another point to remember in these same countries is that if your acquaintance offers you a smoke from his own little basket-work case, do not refuse it. It would be the worst of bad f orm to do so. Similar etiquette refers to a glass of wine or aguadiente. Even though you be a teetotaller it is, to say the least of it, good policy to put your lips to the glass. The awkward part of it is—from the British point of view—that . your South American does not consider it for one moment necessary to offer you a clean glass, and he will be as likely as not to stick a knife into you if you refuse to drink from the same glass, or, worse still, either wipe the glass or turn it round so that you may find a place that his lips have not touched. Even in some European countries the etiquette of drinking seems strange to

ourselves. In France it is thought bad manners beyond words to drink a health in water. Also when you pour out wine at a Frenchman’s table be careful to hold the bottle or decanter so that your thumb faces the tablecloth. If you hold the bottle the other way, so that your four fingers are underneath, the blunder is likely to lead to a breach of the entente cordiale. Everyone knows that German students have a strict code of their own. Some slight knowledge of this is more than useful if you visit a German university town. Supposing ycu go into a restaurant where students are sitting, one of these scar-faced . young gentlemen, if he wishes to be civil, will perhaps raise his glass and say Ich komme vor.” At once imitate his action with one word, “Prosit!” Then fell will be well. If you do not respond it is not unlikely that the fire-eating youth s second may call on you for an explanation or an apology. Many young Englishmen become members of these German universities. Each university is divided into several different corps, whose members are outwardly distinguished by the caps they wear. It is one of the strictest rules’ of student etiquette for a member of one corps, when he meets another of the same out of doors, to raise his cap. Failure to do so is an insult, only to be wiped out in blood. It is almost the worst affront which one man can set upon another. . There are some points of foreign etiquette which are absolutely inexplicable to the British mind, and, indeed, it is very doubtful whether the nations to which they are peculiar can themselves offer any explanation. Why, for. instance, ’s it bad form, if you visit a

Frenchman in his own room, to lay your hat on the bed? The fact remains that it is universally considered the worst or manners. Again, in Germany, if you are walking in the garden with a lady, and t occurs to you to pick a flower for her acceptance, be careful to pluck also a leaf or two to make the nosegay complete. Failure to do so is an insult, tor which you may possibly be called to account by her nearest male lelative. Even within the limits of cur own islands there are peculiar to certain bodies or associations poins f etquetiogr, ,P wa or associations points of etiquette wmcn appear to the average man odd. Jhe usual method of printing a visiting card is “Mr. John Smith.” Not so at Cambridge University. There the undergraduate’s card will read ( John bmith, without any prefix. Only if Mr. Smith happened to be the Honourable John Smith would be use the prefix Mr. on h's pasteboard.