Chapter I: Front Matter

[Transcriber's Note:

This project uses utf-8 encoded characters. If some characters are not readable, check your settings of your text reader to ensure you have a font installed that can display utf-8 characters.

Italics delimited by underscores.]

Never:

_A Hand-Book for the Uninitiated
and Inexperienced
Aspirants to Refined Society’s
Giddy Heights
and Glittering Attainments._

MRS. MARY J. HOLME’S NOVELS

Over a MILLION Sold

THE NEW BOOK
Queenie Hetherton
_JUST OUT_.

For Sale Everywhere

Price, $1.50.

NEVER

Never:

_A Hand-Book for the Uninitiated
and Inexperienced
Aspirants to Refined Society’s
Giddy Heights
and Glittering Attainments._

“Shoot Folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise.”
_Pope._

BY MENTOR.

NEW YORK: COPYRIGHT, 1883,

BY _G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers_.

Stereotyped by
SAMUEL STODDER,
42 DEY STREET, N. Y.

_Prelude_.

_This little book is cordially recommended to all parties just hesitating on the plush-padded, gilt-edged threshold of our highest social circles._

_In purely business affairs, it may not be as useful as_ Hoyle’s Games, _or_ Locke on the Human Understanding, _but a careful study of its contents cannot but prove the “Open Sesame” to that jealously-guarded realm,--good society,--in which you aspire to circulate freely and shine with becoming luster_.

_“It is easier for a needle to pass through a camel’s eye,” says Poor Richard, or some one else, “than for a poor young man to enter the mansions of the rich.” And I, the author of this code of warnings, as truly say unto you, that a contemptuous disregard of the same will be likely to lead you into mortification and embarrassment, if not into being incontinently kicked out of doors._

_While intended chiefly for the young, not the less may the old, the decrepit, and the infirm like-wise rejoice in the possession of the rules and prohibitions herein contained, and hasten to commit them to memory._

_But the memory is treacherous._

_It would, therefore, be well for such persons to carry the Hand Book constantly with them, to be referred to on short notice wherever they may chance to be--in the street-car, in the drawing-room, on the promenade, on the ball-room floor, at table, while visiting, and so on._

_In this way the Hand Book will be like the magic ring that pricked the wearer’s finger warningly whenever about to yield to an unworthy impulse. Its instructively reiterated “Never” will become, indeed, a blessing--not in disguise, but rather in guardian angel’s habiliments._

_It will be, in truth, a bosom companion in the happiest sense of the term, a mutely eloquent monitor of deportment, a still, small voice as to what is in good form and what is not._

_Contents._

PAGE

Making and Receiving Calls 11

At Breakfast 23

At Luncheon 31

At Dinner 36

While Walking 49

In the Use of Language 57

Dress and Personal Habits 73

At Public Entertainments 86

Never.