Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > > > It's in national culture where I was born. :-> It felt as if there > were quizzes and tests every day.
That's how Elizabethan manners worked, as opposed to modern manners, which are pass/fail, with no competing levels of decorum. That is, since the early 18th century you won't have endless exchanges of greetings in which the two parties compete as to which can be the more courteous. C.S. Lewis suggests Addison and Steele as a major source of the modern style. Carrol
