And so, beginning first with a few gilded youths, then including young society, the habit has spread until the obligatory paying of visits by young girls and men has almost joined the once universal “day at home” as belonging to a past age.  Do not understand by this that visits are never paid on other occasions.  Visits to strangers, visits of condolence, and of other courtesies are still paid, quite as punctiliously as ever.  But within the walls of society itself, the visit of formality is decreasing.  One might almost say that in certain cities society has become a family affair.  Its walls are as high as ever, higher perhaps to outsiders, but among its own members, such customs as keeping visiting lists and having days at home, or even knowing who owes a visit to whom, is not only unobserved but is unheard of.

But because punctilious card-leaving, visiting, and “days at home” have gone out of fashion in New York, is no reason why these really important observances should not be, or are not, in the height of fashion elsewhere.  Nor, on the other hand, must anyone suppose because the younger fashionables in New York pay few visits and never have days at home, that they are a bit less careful about the things which they happen to consider essential to good-breeding.

The best type of young men pay few, if any, party calls, because they work and they exercise, and whatever time is left over, if any, is spent in their club or at the house of a young woman, not tete-a-tete, but invariably playing bridge.  The Sunday afternoon visits that the youth of another generation used always to pay, are unknown in this, because every man who can, spends the week-end in the country.

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that not alone men, but many young married women of highest social position, except to send with flowers or wedding presents, do not use a dozen visiting cards a year.  But there are circumstances when even the most indifferent to social obligations must leave cards.

=WHEN CARDS MUST BE LEFT=

Etiquette absolutely demands that one leave a card within a few days after taking a first meal in a lady’s house; or if one has for the first time been invited to lunch or dine with strangers, it is inexcusably rude not to leave a card upon them, whether one accepted the invitation or not.

One must also unfailingly return a first call, even if one does not care for the acquaintance.  Only a real “cause” can excuse the affront to an innocent stranger that the refusal to return a first call would imply.  If one does not care to continue the acquaintance, one need not pay a second visit.