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Show VARIOUS ' MODES OF GREETING. Characteristic Phrases Used in Salutations. Salu-tations. (London Globe.) It has often been pointed out, somewhat some-what fancifully perhaps, that the modes of greeting current in differnt countries are sometimes nationally or racially characteristic. The Spaniard or the Italian says, "How do you stand?" which may be referred eUher to stateliness or laziness. The French-can, French-can, careful, ""of deportment, asks, "How do you carry yourself?" The Dutchman, fond of the table, salutes ; you with "May you eat a hearty din- ! ner;" while the Englishman, the man of action, says, "How do you do?" More markedly characteristic are some of the equivalent phrases used among non-European peoples. The peasant of southern China, for instance, asks, tenderly, "Have you eaten you rice'.'" and at Cairo they inquire, Sympathetically, Sympatheti-cally, "How do you sweat?" Our English, "How do you do?" is a direct translation of the medieval French. form of greeting, "Comment le faitesvos?" and seems to have come into common use toward the end of the seventeenth century. Curiously enough, its general acceptance appears to have coincided with the dying out of the "old mode of greeting ladies, which was emphatically known as saluting, and which seems to modern ideas so extraordinarily familiar and intimate that is, by kissing. Englishmen English-men are sometimes inclined to regard with rather a superior air the more effusive methods pf salutation, especially especi-ally between men, common on the continent; con-tinent; but for centuries England was the land of kisses. When a man greeted a woman, whether it was for the first or the hundredth time, he kissed her. Chaucer alludes to the custom as existing ex-isting in his day. In the "Sompnour's Tale," the Frere, when the mistress of the house enters the room where he and her husband are sitting together Ariseth up ful curtisly. And hire embraceth in his arms narwe, And kisseth hire swete, and chirketh as a sparwe , With his lippes. I Two hundred, years later, Erasmus, I In one of his graphic letters from England, wrote very appreciatively of i the custom. "If you go any place," j he tells his correspondent,- with reference ref-erence to English ladies, "you are i-ceived i-ceived with a kiss by all; if you depart de-part on a journey, you are dismissed with a kiss: you return, kisses are exchanged. ex-changed. They come to visit you, a kiss the first-thing; they leave you, you kiss them all afound. Do they meet you anywhere, kisses in abundance." abun-dance." It was no wonder that Erasmus Eras-mus told his friend that if he-had once had experience of the custom "on my honor, you would wish not to reside here for ten years only, but for life." This mode of salutation continued in fashion, more or less, through the seventeenth sev-enteenth century and into the eighteenth; eigh-teenth; but occasionally - there were protests. Buhyan- condemned it severely se-verely in his "Grace Abounding," and other serious writers followed his load. Like other fashions, it died out gradually, gradu-ally, first among the "quality," as io-ciety io-ciety people were then called in town, and later among country folk. In the Spectator for Dec, 5, 1711, there Is an amusing letter from a country gentleman greatly perturbed by th-: behavior of a young exquisite from London. The worthy young squire lived on his own estate; was hospitable, and. acrording't'o his own account, was, ever reckoned among the ladies the best company in the world." "I ii-jvjs" came- in public," he continued, "but i saluted them, though in groat :is-semblies, :is-semblies, all around, where it was seen how genteelly I avoided hampering my spurs in their petticoats, while I move d "among them: and, on the oth.v haul,! how prettily they curtsied and received re-ceived me, standing in proper rows, j and advancing as fast as th:y saw their elders, or their betters, dispatched I by. me." The good man evidon'.ly .kissed every lady in the room. But a change came over his neighbors and friends, he complains, by reason of the advent of a "courtier o town gentleman." gen-tleman." This beau, frsh Hvm the fashionable circles . f London, instead t of kissing the ladles in the hearty old English way, .simply bowed profoundly to each in turn, and with such grac-.' and assurance was ibis done that he won all hearts, and kissing at once went out o? fashion. 'There .s .10 young gentlewoman," laments the poor s.quire. "within several miles ..f thi.-i place that has been kissed ever since lis first appearance ap-pearance among us." From all this it is clear that, in the days of Queen Anne, the once universal niodj of saluting a lady was no longer fashionable fash-ionable in town, and was Hearing its end in the country. The excessively familiar salutation was succeeded by bows and curtsies of ! great dignity and alarming profundity: and these again became less and less I ceremonious until the whirligig' of time has brought back the reign of famil-I famil-I iarity in another way, in ih? s-ome-; what casual and offhand "How do you j do?" which, nine tims out of ten, I implies no interest whatever in the i person addressed, but is simply a j meaningless formula of greeting. The still more meaningless "Good morning" morn-ing" is of later date than "How do you do?" The earlier forms, which long preceded the latter phrase, were "Good morn" and "Good morrow," which both date from the fourteenth century. The latter is no longer in I use in actual conversation, though poets have a weakness for it. The speckled, thrush Good-morrow gave from brake and brush, says Scott, in the "Lady of the Lake;" and" Longfellow, in "Evangeline." describing de-scribing the gathering of the villagers of Acadian Grandpre, says: Many a good-morrow and jocund laugn from the young folk Made the air lighter. Another old elliptical form of greeting, greet-ing, now -long obsolete, was "Good time of day." In "Richard III," Hastings salutes the Duke of Gloucester with "Good time of day unto my gracious lord," but this was too cumbrous a form of salutation to make much headway. head-way. Our modern "How do you do?" is found too long by many hurried speakers, speak-ers, and gets -abbreviated, into "How do do" and the like absurdities. Other variants arc such phrases as "How are you?" and "How goes it?" The latter is a liberal equivalent of the German form of "How do you- do?", and .sls i of the common French salutation. "Comment ca vatil." In some rural parts of England "How goes it?" is shortened into "How goa?" Another salutation phrase which is . now regarded re-garded as colloquial, if not vulgar, but was formerly in respectable- literary use, is "What cheer?" "Heere Master: what oheere?" cries the boatswain in the opening scene of "The Tempest:" and the greeting was in use a century and a half before Shakespeare's day. Colloquial phrases are continually undergoing un-dergoing change and modification, and so "How do you do?" itself may some day be regarded as hopelessly vulgar, while some other form of saluir-ticn is frequent in'the mouths of th. ' rc sr.et-1 both themselves and t - j ua- --j : |