Etiquette — Sawt al-Mara

The word has become current on every tongue... It means, among other things — and above all among the peoples of Europe and America — "high refinement"... and, in consequence, how we are to conduct ourselves with people.

And this word "etiquette" has a charming story...

The story goes that a Scottish gardener in the service of one of the kings of France was greatly pained to find, every day, that the rose beds of the royal garden lay at the mercy of the court, which trampled them in its comings and goings... So he resolved to put an end to it... He laid down certain rules — "etiquette" — showing the courtiers the paths it was permissible to use; but the courtiers

were forever overstepping the bounds of this "etiquette" imposed by the old gardener, so at last he carried the case up to the king, who ruled that the court must respect the gardener's "etiquette"...

With time, people began to widen the meaning of this word until it became a fundamental rule in people's relations with one another; and a breach of

it became a breach of general good manners.

The well-bred person holds so fast to the rules of "etiquette" that at times he becomes tiresome and dull about it.

In America these days people talk a great deal about a thick, green-bound book written by "Emily Post" under the title "Etiquette." We have looked over a copy of this book, and it proves to be a compendium of the principles of "etiquette" which the author has spent twenty-five whole years preaching to the select classes of America.

"Emily Post" says: The privileges of the classes are determined not so much by birth as by superior breeding and by sound principles of upbringing in people's relations.

But will "Emily Post's" rules of "etiquette" hold firm, when the circumstances people have passed through since the two past wars have turned social conditions upside down?... In this worldwide whirl, no old rule can hold firm; and this is what has moved the author, over the past twenty-five years, to revise her book more than once.

And here, Madam, are a few of "Emily Post's" "teachings" in the art of etiquette...

• No self-respecting lady may sit in a car on the left of the man escorting her... In Europe, according to "etiquette," they say that any lady on the "left" is not a lady in the true sense.

• A well-bred girl never goes