Judge — February 1938 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

got a tolerance for and finally a love of lobster eyes, so that it sometimes sulked and refused to open in the morning un- til two or three of these beady spheres were placed in it. In the eighteen hun- dreds, the number of cinders and lobster eyes on a lady's bedside table was a sure indication of whether or not she was widely traveled. Further qualifications for ladyhood are set forth in the following: “No lady wears kid gloves while trav- eling. Avoid saying anything to women in showy attire, with painted faces and white kid gloves. Ladies no longer eat salt fish at a public table. The odor of it is considered extremely ungenteel, and it is always disagreeable to those who do not eat it.” Evidently white did not possess in those days the connotation of purity which it has today. But just why these dainty gloves should have suggested the salt fish with which they are bracketed is hard to determine. However, it seems that ladies did other things while traveling than get cinders in their eyes and eschew salt fish. Mrs. Leslie points out: "If you want to read and have no book you will find in most hotels books belonging to the establishment lying on a table in the ladies’ parlor. These books are intended for the drawing room, and their removal from thence is interdicted. Also never carry away the atlas or the city directory.” This applies also to the encyclopaedia, chandelier, bookcase and beds. Quite naturally Mrs. Leslie cannot list all the hotel equipment. But the real lady, we trust, realized intuitively that the only exception was an occasional bath towel. Our pre-Civil War Emily Post con. tinues: "In ringing for a servant pull the bell cord downward. If you jerk it out hor- izontally and give successively several hard pulls in that direction, the cord is very likely to break, or the knot or tassel to come off in your hand. At the chief hotel in one of the New England cities we saw a printed paper with directions in large type pasted beside every bell- pull in the house; the directions specify. ing minutely the proper mode of bell ringing. Could it be that this house was frequented by persons unaccustomed to bells? Could it indeed? Oh, the shame of it; February, 1938 to stand there like a veritable bumpkin with a knot or tassel in your hand! Further, says Mrs. Leslie: "At a hotel table refrain from loud talking, joggings, nudgings, pinchings etc., which are excessively unladylike and shamefully impudent when (as is often the case) the eye of the jogger is fixed on the object of the jog.” Again Mrs. Leslie does not go into detail owing, no doubt, to lack of space. But it is equally shameful and impudent for a lady to tear, deface, mutilate, de- stroy, maim, torment, hack, tease, beat, sting, bruise or bite either her traveling companions or the premises, regardless of where the eye of the jogger or the object of the jog may be fixed. Concerning other matters, Mrs. Leslie is more specific: "No lady looks worse than when gnawing a bone, even if game or poul- try. Few ladies do it. In fact, nothing should be gnawed in public.” This may, at first glance, seem some. what of a hardship. But there is nothing to prevent a lady from eating the meat in public and then having the bones sent up to her room. If she cannot finish them at one sitting, she can always bury them and dig them up again when she feels hungry. Finally, Mrs. Leslie asserts: "In no consideration let any lady be persuaded to take 2 glasses of cham- pagne. It is more than the head of an American female can bear. And she may rest assured that (though unconscious of it) all present will find her cheeks flush- ing, her eyes twinkling, her tongue un- usually voluble, ber talk loud and silly and her laugh incessant. Champagne is very insidious; and two glasses may throw her into this pitiable condition!” Pitiable, my eye! comicbooks.com