established by practice alone could set them right, that this code
of Modern Etiquette has been prepared. To them it is offered as
supplying a need which it is their misfortune, rather than their
fault, to experience, in the hope that it will be found to contain
a complete guide for them in the open paths and by-paths too of
good society.

Before beginning to lay down the rules and ordinances of
Etiquette, it will be well to say a few words upon Etiquette
itself.

Etiquette is, in point of fact, nothing more nor less than the
law, written and unwritten, which regulates the society of
civilized people, distinguishing them from the communities of
barbarous tribes, whose lives are hard and their manners still
harder. It is to a well disciplined and refined mind the
fundamental principle of action in all intercourse with society,
and they are interested in maintaining it in its integrity, and
bound to heed and obey its simplest as well as more formal
precepts. The real law-giver is the general convenience, speaking
with authority and the experience of many years; and it will be
found that even in those cases, where the meaning of its rules may
be somewhat obscure at first sight, there is an underlying reason
for the regulation laid down.

Etiquette, like every other human institution, is of course liable
to abuse; it may be transformed from a convenient and wholesome
means of producing universal comfort into an inconvenient and
burdensome restraint upon freedom and ease. It may become the
first consideration, instead of more properly the second, as is