Manners and Social Usages

Many of our correspondents ask us to define what is meant by the terms good society and bad society. They say that they read in the newspapers of the good society in New York and Washington and Newport, and that it is a record of drunkenness, flirtation, bad manners and gossip, backbiting, divorce, and slander. They read that the fashionable people at popular resorts commit all sorts of vulgarities, such as talking aloud at the opera, and disturbing their neighbors; that young men go to a dinner, get drunk, and break glasses; and one ingenuous young girl remarks, We do not call that good society in Atlanta.