Hundred-year-old Etiquette

Etiquette, by Agnes H. Morton, appears to be written with the arcane and wordy pompousness of a middle-schooler with a thesaurus, armed with italics.

As the subtitle suggests, this book is about etiquette for the average (i.e. lower-class) person. It is about doing stupid shit that you don’t want to do, like leaving pieces of paper with your name on it for someone who isn’t home when you show up, because it’s polite and a sign of being “well-bred.”

The coolest part has to be that it was clearly printed using a letter-press during that time. You can feel the ink on the pages and almost each page looks unique in some small way.

Most of it is pretty mundane, “how to be a lady” stuff. However, there is some sort of racial weirdness at one point:

The head should be bowed during the prayers, and the eyes at least cast down, if not closed. To sit and stare at a minister while he is praying is a grotesque rudeness worthy of a heathen barbarian, yet one sometimes committed by the civilized Caucasian.

Let me get this straight: while the world may not end if an official White Person vulgarly watches a minister pray, it is simply unbecoming of such an esteemed race. Oookay. I suppose it gets a pass because it was written in 1892?

(You can find the entire book online!)