universal question, What is the etiquette of good society?

Not a few people have tried to answer these questions, and have
broken down in the attempt. Many have made valuable manuals, as
far as they went; but writers on etiquette commonly fail, for one
or two different reasons. Many attempt to write who know nothing
of good society by experience, and their books are full of
ludicrous errors. Others have had the disadvantage of knowing too
much, of ignoring the beginning of things, of supposing that the
person who reads will take much for granted. For a person who has
an intuitive knowledge of etiquette, who has been brought up from
his mother's knee in the best society, has always known what to
do, how to dress, to whom to bow, to write in the simplest way
about etiquette would be impossible; he would never know how
little the reader, to whose edification he was addressing himself,
knew of the matter.

If, however, an anxious inquirer should write and ask if "mashed
potato must be eaten with a knife or a fork," or if "napkins and
finger bowls can be used at breakfast," those questions he can
answer.

It is with an effort to answer thousands of these questions,
written in good faith to Harper's Bazar, that this book is
undertaken. The simplicity, the directness, and the evident desire
"to improve," which characterize these anonymous letters, are all
much to be commended. Many people have found themselves suddenly
conquerors of material wealth, the most successful colonists in
the world, the heirs of a great inheritance, the builders of a new
empire. There is a true refinement manifested in their questions.