using part of them is to watch the amazement on the faces of one half
of the guests that the other half is there at all! That is invariably
funny. In the big affairs the chef and the champagne are the real hosts
of the evening. If England went "dry," I think the London season would
join the dodo--people couldn't possibly endure it on ginger "pop" and
cider. But champagne and a good chef could, I believe, make even a
Church Congress seem jolly. They only bring an illusion of
happiness--but what's the odds? A London season is but an illusion of
joy after all.

_Christmas_

Christmas comes but once a year--and the cynic cries, "Thank God!" And
so, perhaps, do the very lonely. But then Christmas is not a festival
for either the cynic or the desolate. The cynic is as welcome at the
annual feast of turkey and plum pudding as Mr. "Pussyfoot" would be at a
"beano"; while the lonely--well, one likes to imagine that there are no
lonely ones at Christmas-time; or, if there are--that somebody has asked
them out, or they have toothache and so wouldn't appreciate even the
society of jolly seraphims. Christmas, except to the young, is
essentially a festival of "let's pretend"--let's pretend that we love
everybody, that everybody loves us, that Aunt Maria isn't a prosy old
bore, that Uncle John isn't a profiteer; that everybody has his or her
good points and that all their bad ones are not sticking out, as they
usually appear to us to be, as painfully apparent as those on the back of
a porcupine should you happen to sit down upon one in a bathing costume!
And it is quite wonderful how this spirit of good will towards all men
can be self-distilled, as it were! You try to feel it, and, strangely
enough, you do feel it--at least, up to tea time. The public exhibition
of ecstacy you give at receiving a present you don't want seems to come
to you quite easily and naturally on Christmas morning. Even Aunt Maria
can pretend enthusiasm quite convincingly at the gimcrack you have given
her which her artistic soul loathes, the while she furtively examines its
base to discover if peradventure you have forgotten to erase the price.
You yourself declare, while regarding the sixpenny pen-wiper, that it is
not the gift so much as the _thought_ which pleases you, and you can
declare this lie to the satisfaction, not only of yourself, but, more
difficult by far, to the satisfaction of the wealthy donor who gave it to
you because she