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Berlin Manners

Berlin Manners image
Parent Issue
Day
17
Month
July
Year
1894
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Two young girls were made miserable by an unwritten law which laid me low not long ago, writes a lady correspondent in Berlin. They were calling npon Qerinau women, and as they entered the room they saw that the least comfortable seat was the sofa, whero they nat urally seated themselves. One after auother of the older women surveyed them nntil they beicarae intensely uncomfortable, not knowing what dire accident conld possibly have befallen them. At last the hostess rose majestioally, saying: "Yonng ladies, will yon be so kind ae to get up and give your seats to these older ladies?" The poor things were orashed. My own encuuuter with the sofa regulation was funnier than it was crushing. I went to a musieale given by a countess. l'wo daughters of titled houses had been 3ordial in their overtures, and I was baving a beautiful time w'atching littio differences of marnier aud wondering if all young women were expected to oourtesy and ki.ss thé hands of married women, as my vis-a-vis was doing. As the evening wore on I concluded what well bred people were, after all, the same everywhere. When supper was announced, there was a slight confusión in the placing of the guests, and I found myself in a smaller room with a few others, amoug them the most important woman of the assembly. The table had been drawn to a sofa, and there is where I made my mistake. My new friend, the countess' daughter, motioned me to the sofa, which scemed the best solutiou of the entanglement iuto which our hostess had led us in a moment of flurry, for a Germán does not approach the ease and surety of an American hostess. At the same time the woman of importance took a seat on the sofa also. As she apparently spoke neither English nor French, and as I had not been here long enough to have acquired fluency in Germau, her attempt at a conversation was soon given up. When our hostess came to see if we were all happy, our lady of importance asked who I was, and on receiving a whispered reply sat up very straight and threw herself back on the sofa, exclaiming, "Ah mais c'est trop!" Iwasseized with a horrible fear that my hostess had told her that I was an American reporter, and I was intensely uncomf ortable in spite of my companion's friendliness. After that the great lady was very stiff, and I fear I was even stiffer. Looking again to see if she had fainted, I saw her calmly eating with her knife and no longer feit uncomf ortable. If she scorned me for any reason, I certainly should be ashamed of her at my own table. I learued several days later from an American woman versed in Germán proprieties that my unpardonable offense had been in presuming to sit on the sofa beside my lady without a European title of high rank to back me up.

Article

Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News