ally to the composition of novels, books of travel, or political treatises. Few, also, would care to write upon so trite a subject, if even the desirability of the work were brought under their notice; and this chiefly, perhaps, because an unmerited ridicule has hitherto attached to books of etiquette. People purchase them with an uneasy sense of shame, read them sub rosa, and keep them out of sight. In the same way young persons of both sexes are invariably ashamed when learning to dance. In all this there is more false pride than real bashfulness. People are, in truth, annoyed at having to be taught these minor accomplishments, and—no matter how young they may be, in what seclusion they may have lived, under what early disadvantages they may have labored-would fain have it believed that no social nicety, no fine point of etiquette, no grace of bearing, is other than familiar and natural to them.

No pride can well be more mistaken; no vanity more utterly misplaced. Etiquette is not innate. A modest man is unobtrusive; a good-natured man is obliging; a feeling man is

considerate; and in so far as unobtrusiveness, amiability, and tact are the very foundations of good manners, such persons may be said to be naturally well-bred. But not even a saint could, from his "inner consciousness" alone, evolve a conception of the thousand and one social observances of modern fashionable life.

A knowledge of those social observances is absolutely indispensable for all who aspire to live in society; and it is acknowledged that cannot be expected, like "reading and writing" (as Dogberry has it), to " come by nature." By the children of wealthy parents much of what is set forth in the following pages is insensibly acquired from earliest infancy; but even persons so bred and born may well find themselves uncertain now and then upon a point of ceremonial.

To these and all-to the crême de la crême as well as to the great body of the middle class public, this manual professes to be alike useful and necessary. Applied to by the publishers for a work on Good Society, and convinced of the great importance of the subject, the Author

has not only endeavored to the best of her ability to treat of it under all its aspects; to omit no point, however trivial; to provide her readers with a faithful and judicious guide in every social emergency; but she has approached her task with the sincerest desire to be useful to others and to perform her part in the promotion of that great educational movement which is even now engaging the sympathies and prompting the generous labors of so many wise and noble thinkers.