A book I think would be great reading, in case anyone is interested, would be a biography of the life of Emily Post, who as everyone knows, was the give-all and end-all of proper etiquette. If you wanted to set one foot out of your baronial home to mingle with the affluent well-heeled, you’d better have read Emily Post’s words of decorum first so you didn’t make an unforgivable and unforgettable gaffe, such as using your dinner fork in your salad. When we young girls arrived at the longed-for age of 18, we were all given a brand-new “Emily Post’s Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage” as a gift, either the 1942 or the 1947 version.

I forget. Can you imagine how thrilled we were getting that stupid book? Did we really care how to get a fishbone delicately out of our throats while wearing gloves, while the boys just simply hocked them out onto their plates? Can you imagine how enraged we girls were by getting that book from hell when we’d made it plainly clear we were expecting a convertible? Did the boys get brand new Emily Post books as a gift on their 18th birthdays? You know the answer. It’s no.

They got far more important things like gold pen and pencil sets, engraved watches, and trips. I’m sorry to say I’ve lost my original Emily Post book, although one can easily get another. They’re actually still in print.

And yes, they really do have their place in the world. But I do still have my “Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette,” given to.