Politeness and how to acquire it

From Emily Post's Book of Etiquette:

"Always abroad, and every really well-bred lady or gentleman here, says “please” in asking that something be brought her or him. “Please get me the book I left on the table in my room!” Or “Please give me some bread!” Or “Some bread, please.” Or one can say equally politely and omit the please, “I’d like some toast,” but it is usual and instinctive to every lady or gentleman to add “please.”

In refusing a dish at the table, one must say “No, thank you,” or “No, thanks,” or else one shakes one’s head. A head can be shaken politely or rudely. To be courteously polite, and yet keep one’s walls up is a thing every thoroughbred person knows how to do—and a thing that everyone who is trying to become such must learn to do
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A rule can’t be given because there isn’t any. As said in another chapter, a well-bred person always lives within the walls of his personal reserve, a vulgarian has no walls—or at least none that do not collapse at the slightest touch. But those who think they appear superior by being rude to others whom fortune has placed below them, might as well, did they but know it, shout their own unexalted origin to the world at large, since by no other method could it be more widely published. "


'Nuff said......I think....