If it is a question of a cab, the commissionaire at the door is the best person to get one, which he will do for a small fee.

A word of warning.

Consideration due to all women.

Here again a word of warning is needed. There are men who, in their special care of the ladies in their charge, forget that it is no part of the duty of a gentleman to ignore the claims of other women who have not the advantage of belonging to their party. I have seen men who ought to have known better rudely pushing other ladies away from the door of a cab or railway carriage in order that their own womenkind may be well looked after. It is all very well to be attentive and anxious to do one’s best, but it is ill-bred to the last degree to subject to rudeness any ladies who happen to be without a gentleman to look after them.

An instance.

Retribution followed very swiftly in one instance of the kind. At Sandown station one day the second special train for Waterloo was coming in, and the platform was crowded with gaily-dressed women, tired and hot after the walk across the fields on a tropical July day. A lady and small Eton boy were together, and suddenly, when about to open the door of a carriage at the moment the train came to a standstill, found themselves all but thrown down by a sweeping motion of the arm of a young man who was bent on reserving that particular carriage for his party. With out a word of apology to the lady, he shouted to his sisters and friends to “Come on,” still holding back the two who had wished to get in. They entered the next compartment, and as they did so the lady remarked to her companion, “What an extremely ill- mannered person that is!” Meanwhile the party next door were settling down and congratulating themselves on having secured seats, when one of them turned to their over-zealous friend and remarked, “I saw Lady Blank get into the next carriage with her eldest boy.” “Who?” he asked, with a sudden and remarkable rush of colour on his face. The lady to whom he had behaved so rudely turned out to be one from whom he had that very morning received a long-desired invitation to spend a few days at her country house in the following month. This he owed to the good offices of a friend in the F. O., and, delighted at having made such a step in his social career, he had at once written off accepting the invitation. It is scarcely necessary to add that he never made the visit, but had to wire at the last moment one of those conventional excuses that the “unco guid” call fibs, but which are only the transparent devices adopted by society to lubricate some of the more difficult of its processes.

The interval.

Between the acts of a play the modern man thinks it his duty to himself to go out and have a drink, perhaps smoke a cigarette. There was a time when, had any such suggestion been made to a gentleman who had constituted himself the escort of a lady, he would have asked, though perhaps not in Milton’s words—

“And leave thy fair side all unguarded, lady?”

How a man may win golden opinions.

But now the majority of young men visit the bar or the foyer. But who shall say what golden opinions are won by those who do not follow the custom, who refrain from acquiring the odour of tobacco, or whiskey, or brandy while they are in the company of ladies in the heated atmosphere of a theatre? A lady sometimes says to the men of her party, “I see that there is a general stampede going on. Don’t mind me if you would like to go out.” If they go she thinks, “Oh, they are just like the rest.” If they stay she says to her own heart, “How delightful it is to find a man who can do without a B.-and-S. or a smoke for two or three hours!” and up he goes many pegs in her estimation.