frock time

We had a tea for our library volunteers yesterday, always a delightful Spring ritual to thank all the lovely people who oil our organizational joints throughout the year! And as we were preparing for it I quoted this poem to the colleagues I was working with - a poem from my mother's 2nd grade reader with the brown cover and the pages that were shiny and cracked with turning -

You're going out to tea today
So mind your manners well,
Let all accounts I hear of you
Be pleasant one to tell.

Don't spill you tea
Or crumb your bread
And don't tease one another,
And Tommy mustn't talk so much
Or quarrel with his brother.

Say "If you please"
And "thank you, ma'am"
Be home at eight o'clock
And, Fanny, do be careful
That you do not tear your frock!

At least that's how I remember it being quoted to me! I suppose I read it for myself one day too, but I can hear my mother's voice reciting it over and over upon request.

Just the language of manners, frocks, pleasant accounts.... ah, another era...one I know that had its own problems, but oh the civility of it all!