Saturday, June 6, 2009

Etiquette for 1874 - And Today?

The cover for this book is really much darker, but this gives you a better view of the pictures and wording on the front. This book was purchased by our grandfather, James Brooks Wasden in "Butte City, Montana" in 1897, a year before he married our grandmother. I'm so glad that he wrote in the flyleaf so that we would have that information. Since he was there to work in the mines, and those workers were usually a pretty rough lot, he may have felt the need to learn more about the social order of things in the polite world - who knows? Anyway, I can remember Mother borrowing the book from Grandma when we were fairly young, and we read gems from it's pages that seemed so antiquated that we had many laughs about the contents. I fell heir to the book, and have enjoyed leafing through it from time to time. Ann is preparing for a little stint that required something different, so I typed some of the more interesting bits for her, and thought I might include a few here for your entertainment:
ON WRITING LETTERS OF ADVICE:
“To what do you attribute your success?” “To an admonition given me by my father, when a boy, which was this:
“First, to attend strictly to my own business. Second, to let other people’s business alone. Observing this, I incurred no ill will by inter-meddling with others,….”
“Be very sparing of letters of advice. As a rule, you will have enough to do to attend to your own affairs:…”

SLEEP. Give yourself the necessary amount of sleep…Avoid feather beds…To maintain robust health, sleep with a person as healthy as yourself, or no one..

I will add more from time to time.

2 comments:

Ann said...

Love it!

Shannon said...

That is the best advice I've had in a LONG time!