Even in the rough city, Post spots smooth manners
Three times on one block of Park Avenue a different follower of the spiritual group Falun Gong tries to hand Peggy Post an information leaflet. Each time Post, politely, declines. "I've learned to say, 'No, thank you,' and keep moving," she confides.
This woman is definitely not a New Yorker. A New Yorker would say nothing. A New Yorker on the way to work doesn't care zip about these ubiquitous protesters who are all over the sidewalks these days either meditating or reenacting with fake blood and painted-on bruises the atrocities imposed on them by the Chinese government.
A real New Yorker doesn't make eye contact. She just keeps walking.
"Well," says Post, "when people are stressed and they encounter strangers, it doesn't bring out the best in people."
But what about real New Yorkers? Are we people too?
She pauses for a passing fire truck siren before answering. (A real New Yorker, by the way, wouldn't pause; she'd shout right over it.)
"Of course New Yorkers are people too," Post says, merrily. "They're just in more of a hurry than other people."
Post is the inheritor of an elite New York family that for three generations has been the steward of America's etiquette. Her great-grandmother-in-law was the late Emily Post, who wrote the book in 1922. Understandably, as they fought the good fight against bad manners, the Posts left New York. But last week Peggy Post was back, appraising the streets, the subways and the first floor of Bloomingdale's, and answering the perennial question: Is New York the rudest city in America?
"It's really not," says Post, who lived here in the 1970s before moving to the suburbs and then to Florida with her husband, Allen, a businessman. "It's just that there is so much excitement here, so much going on."
Perhaps, but it seems like a worthy exercise to see what happens when the relentlessly gracious Post has to confront the infamously discourteous New York.
Over the last month she has visited 11 American cities promoting the latest version -- the 17th edition -- of "Emily Post's Etiquette." She stopped in New York last week and for a couple of hours cruised the very city where Emily lived and apparently glided through high society.
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The rush-hour test
Immediately after she gets past the phalanx of Falun Gong-ers, a bicycle messenger addresses Post, who is 59 and looking trim in black slacks and a lavender sweater.
