A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at SchoolBeecher, Catharine Esther
General
A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Home economics
In the first place, in the family, there should be required, a strict
attention to the rules of precedence, and those modes of address
appropriate to the various relations to be sustained. Children should
always be required to offer their superiors, in age or station, the
precedence in all comforts and conveniences, and always address them in
a respectful tone and manner. The custom of adding "Sir," or "Ma'am," to
"Yes," or "No," is valuable, as a perpetual indication of a respectful
recognition of superiority. It is now going out of fashion, even among
the most wellbred people; probably from a want of consideration of its
importance. Every remnant of courtesy of address, in our customs, should
be carefully cherished, by all who feel a value for the proprieties of
good-breeding.
If parents allow their children to talk to them, and to the grown
persons in the family, in the same style in which they address each
other, it will be vain to hope for the courtesy of manner and tone,
which good-breeding demands in the general intercourse of society. In a
large family, where the elder children are grown up, and the younger are
small, it is important to require the latter to treat the elder as
superiors. There are none, so ready as young children to assume airs of
equality; and, if they are allowed to treat one class of superiors in
age and character disrespectfully, they will soon use the privilege
universally. This is the reason, why the youngest children of a family
are most apt to be pert, forward, and unmannerly.
Another point to be aimed at, is, to require children always to
acknowledge every act of kindness and attention, either by words or
manner. If they are so trained as always to make grateful
acknowledgements, when receiving favors, one of the objectionable
features in American manners will be avoided.
Again, children should be required to ask leave, whenever they wish to
gratify curiosity, or use an article which belongs to another. And if
cases occur, when they cannot comply with the rules of good-breeding,
as, for instance, when they must step between a person and the fire, or
take the chair of an older person, they should be required either to ask
leave, or to offer an apology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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