Children should be taught from the time they are little not to talk about
what they like and don't like. A child who is not allowed to say anything
but "No, thank you," at home, will not mortify his mother in public by
screaming, "I hate steak, I won't eat potato, I want ice cream!"

=QUIETNESS AT TABLE=

Older children should not be allowed to jerk out their chairs, to flop
down sideways, to flick their napkins by one corner, to reach out for
something, or begin to eat nuts, fruit or other table decorations. A child
as well as a grown person should sit down quietly in the center of his
chair and draw it up to the table (if there is no one to push it in for
him) by holding the seat in either hand while momentarily lifting himself
on his feet. He must not "jump" or "rock" his chair into place at the
table. In getting up from the table, again he must push his chair back
quietly, using his hands on either side of the chair seat, and _not_ by
holding on to the table edge and giving himself, chair and all, a sudden
shove! There should never be a sound made by the pushing in or out of
chairs at table.

=THE SPOILED CHILD=

The bad manners of American children, which unfortunately are supposed by
foreigners to be typical, are nearly always the result of their being
given "star" parts by over-fond but equally over-foolish mothers. It is
only necessary to bring to mind the most irritating and objectionable
child one knows, and the chances are that its mother continually throws
the spotlight on it by talking to it, and about it, and by calling
attention to its looks or its cunning ways or even, possibly, its
naughtiness.

It is humanly natural to make a fuss over little children, particularly if
they are pretty, and it takes quite super-human control for a young mother
not to "show off" her treasure, but to say instead, "Please do not pay any
attention to her." Some children, who are especially free from
self-consciousness, stand "stardom" better than others who are more
readily spoiled; but in nine cases out of ten, the old-fashioned method
that assigned children to inconspicuous places in the background and
decreed they might be seen but not heard, produced men and women of far
greater charm than the modern method of encouraging public self-expression
from infancy upward.

=CHIEF VIRTUE: OBEDIENCE=

No young human being, any more than a young dog, has the least claim to
attractiveness unless it is trained to ma