Marion Harland's Complete Etiquette

<h2>CHAPTER XXXII<br/> <small>OUR NEIGHBORS</small></h2> <p class="drop-cap">THE fact that people live next door to you does not make them your neighbors in the higher and better sense of that word. There may be nothing in their persons or characters to commend them to you, or for that matter, to commend you to them. “Neighborhood” in literal interpretation signifies nearness of vicinity. You have the right to choose your associates and to elect your friends.</p> <p>Presuming on this truth, dwellers in cities are prone to vaunt their ignorance of, and indifference to, those who live in the same street, block and apartment-house with themselves. If newly come to what is a kingdom by comparison with their former estate, they make a point of seeking society elsewhere than among residents of their neighborhood. “Let us be genteel or die!” says Dickens of Mrs. Fielding’s struggles to eat dinner with gloves on. “Let us be exclusive or cease to live!” says Mrs. Upstart,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</SPAN></span> and refuses to learn the names of her neighbors on the right and left.</p> <p>One of the hall-marks of the thoroughbred is his daily application of the maxim, “Live and let live.” His social standing is so firm that a jostle, or even a push from a vulgarian who chances to pass his way, can not disturb him. When the mongrel cur bayed at the moon, “the moon kept on shining.” If he be a gentleman in heart as well as in blood and name, he has a real interest in people who breathe the same air and tread the same street with himself—interest as far removed from vulgar curiosity in other people’s concerns as the gentle courtesy of his demeanor is removed from the familiar bumptiousness of the forward and underbred.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <div class="sidenote">CHANCE SALUTATIONS</div> <p>Entering ourselves as learners in his school—and we could not study manners in a better—we recognize our neighbors as such. If we live on the same block and meet habitually on the street, a civil bow in passing, a smile to a child, in chance encounters in market or shop, a word of salutation, be it only a “Good morning,” or “It is a fine day!” or, after a few exchanges of this sort—“I hope your family keeps well in this trying weather”—are tokens of good-will and appreciation of the fact that we are dwellers in the same world, town and neighborhood.</p> <div class="sidenote">COURTEOUS INQUIRIES</div> <p>None of these minute courtesies which you owe<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</SPAN></span> to yourself and to your neighbor lays on you any obligation to call, or to invite her to call on you. Failure to comprehend this social by-law often causes heart-burnings and downright resentment. You may thus meet and greet a woman living near you every day for twenty years, and if some stronger bond than the accident of proximity does not draw you together, you may know nothing more of her than her name and address at the end of that time—perhaps the address alone. Unless, indeed, casualty in the way of fire, personal injury or severe illness, makes expedient—and to the humane such expediency is an obligation—further recognition of the tie of neighborhood. In either of the cases indicated, send to ask after the health of the sufferer, and if you can be of service. If there be a death in the house, a civil inquiry to the same effect and a card of sympathy will “commit” you to nothing.</p> <p>We are working now on the assumption that each of us has a sincere desire to brighten the pathway of others, to make this hard business of daily living more tolerable. Of all the passive endurances of life, strangerhood is one of the hardest to the sensitive spirit. Your neighbor’s heart is lighter because you show that you are aware of her existence and, in some sort, recognize her identity. She may not be your congener. Your bow and smile remind her that you are her fellow human being. Stranger</p> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</SPAN></span></p> <p>ships meeting in mid-ocean do not wait to inspect credentials before exchanging salutes.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <p>If your neighbor be an acquaintance whom you esteem, do not let her be in doubt on this point.</p> <div class="sidenote">IN PLANTATION DAYS</div> <p>In ante-bellum days at the South, neighborhood was a powerful bond of sympathy. Miles meant less to them in this respect than so many squares mean to us now. A system of wireless telegraphy connected plantations for an area of many miles. Joy or sorrow set the current in motion from one end to the other. What I have called elsewhere being “kitchenly-kind,” was comprehended in perfection in that bygone time. When the house-mother sent a pot of preserves to her neighbor with her love, and “she would like to know how you all are to-day,” it was the outward and substantial sign of the inward grace of loving kindness, and not an intimation that the recipient’s preserve-closet was not so well-stocked as the giver’s. When opened hamper and unfolded napkin showed a quarter of lamb, or a steak, or a roll of home-made “sausage meat,” enough neighborly love garnished the gift to make it beautiful.</p> <p>Out-of-fashion nowadays?</p> <div class="poetry-container"> <div class="poetry"> <div class="verse">“’Tis true: ’tis true ’tis pity;</div> <div class="verse"><span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And pity ’tis ’tis true.”</span></div> </div></div> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</SPAN></span></p> <div class="sidenote">THE BEST PEOPLE</div> <p>Enough of the old-time spirit lives among our really “best people” to justify the “kitchenly-kind” in proffering gifts that presuppose personal liking and active desire to please a neighbor. A cake compounded by yourself; a plate of home-made rolls taken from your own table; a dainty fancy dish of sweets of home-manufacture, express more of the “real thing” than a box of confectionery or a basket of flowers put up by a florist. It is the personal touch that glorifies the gift, the consciousness that your neighbor thinks enough of you to give of her time and service for your pleasure. The home-made offering partakes of her individuality, and appeals to yours.</p> <hr class="tb" /> <p>Neighborliness does not, of necessity, imply familiarity of manner and speech that may become offensive, or a continuous performance of visits, calls and “droppings-in” that must inevitably become a bore, however congenial may be the association. Those friendships last longest where certain decorous forms are always observed, no matter how close the mutual affection may be. Mrs. Stowe, in one of her New England stories, describes the intercourse between two families as “a sort of undress intimacy.” Reading further, we find that this dishabille companionship involves visits by way of the back door and at all sorts of unconventional hours.</p> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</SPAN></span></p> <div class="sidenote">BACK-DOOR VISITING</div> <p>Such abandonment of the reserves that etiquette enjoins on every household is a dangerous experiment. The back porch is for family use. Your next-door neighbor may not meddle therewith. Personally, I do not want my own son, or my married daughters, to enter my house through the kitchen. If you, dear reader, would retain your footing in the house of the friend best-loved by you, come in by the front door, and never without announcing your presence as any other visitor would. Steady persistence in this rule will avoid the chances of divers unpleasant possibilities. Your hostess—or her husband—or grown son—may be as much in dishabille as the intimacy which, in your opinion, warrants you in running in and up, without knock or ring. You may happen on a love-scene, or a family quarrel, or a girl may be in the hands of the treasure of a hair-dresser who shampoos her twice a month with pure water that looks like peroxide of hydrogen, and “restores” the subject’s dark brown tresses to the guileless flaxen of her forgotten babyhood; or your clattering heels upon the stairway may break the touchy old grandmother’s best afternoon nap.</p> <p>There is but one place on earth where it is safe to make yourself “perfectly at home,” and that is your own house—or apartment—or chamber.</p> <hr class="chap" /></div> <p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</SPAN></span></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />