When a gentleman is about to be married, he sends cards, a day or two before the event, to all whom he is in the habit of visiting.  These visits are never paid in person, but the cards sent by a servant, at any hour in the morning; or the gentleman goes in a carriage, and sends them in.  After marriage, some day is appointed and made known to all, as the day on which he receives company.  His friends then all call upon him.  Would that this also were performed by cards!

CHAPTER VIII.  APPOINTMENTS AND PUNCTUALITY.

When you make an appointment, always be exact in observing it.  In some places, and on some occasions, a quarter of an hour’s grace is given.  This depends on custom, and it is always better not to avail yourself of it.  In Philadelphia it is necessary to be punctual to a second, for there everybody breathes by the State-house clock If you make an appointment to meet anywhere, your body must be in a right line with the frame of the door at the instant the first stroke of the great clock sounds.  If you are a moment later, your character is gone.  It is useless to plead the evidence of your watch, or detention by a friend.  You read your condemnation in the action of the old fellows who, with polite regard to your feelings, simultaneously pull out their vast chronometers, as you enter.  The tardy man is worse off than the murderer. He may be pardoned by one person, (the Governor); the unpunctual is pardoned by none. Haud inexpectus loquor.

If you make an appointment with another at your own house, you should be invisible to the rest of the world, and consecrate your time solely to him.

If you make an appointment with a lady, especially if it be upon a promenade, or other public place, you must be there a little before the time.

If you accept an appointment at the house of a public officer, or a man of business, be very punctual, transact the affair with despatch, and retire the moment it is finished.

CHAPTER IX.  DINNER.

The hour of dinner has been said, by Dr. Johnson, to be the most important hour in civilized life.  The etiquette of the dinner-table has a prominence commensurate with the dignity of the ceremony.  Like the historian of Peter Bell, we commence at the commencement, and thence proceed to the moment when you take leave officially, or vanish unseen.

In order to dine, the first requisite is—­to be invited.  The length of time which the invitation precedes the dinner is always proportioned to the grandeur of the occasion, and varies from two days to two weeks.  To an invitation received less than two days in advance, you will lose little by replying in the negative, for as it was probably sent as soon as the preparations of the host commenced, you may be sure that there will be little on the table fit to eat.  Those abominations, y’clept “plain family dinners,” eschew like the plague.