ation at Dinner--Drawing Guests Out--Signaling for
Conversation--General and_ Tete-a-tete _Conversation--Putting
Strangers at Ease--Steering Talk Away from Offensive Topics--The
Gracious Host and Hostess--An Ideal Dinner Party._

CHAPTER V

THE TALK OF HOST AND HOSTESS AT DINNER

Sydney Smith, by all accounts a great master of the social art, said of
himself: "There is one talent I think I have to a remarkable degree:
there are substances in nature called amalgams, whose property it is to
combine incongruous materials. Now I am a moral amalgam, and have a
peculiar talent for mixing up human materials in society, however
repellent their natures." "And certainly," adds his biographer, "I have
seen a party composed of materials as ill-sorted as could possibly be
imagined, drawn out and attracted together, till at last you would
believe they had been born for each other."

But this role of moral amalgam is such a difficult one, it must be
performed with such tact and delicacy, that hostesses are justified in
employing whatever mechanical aids are at their command. In
dinner-giving, the first process of amalgamation is to select congenial
people. Dinners are very often flat failures conversationally because
guests are invited at random. Choosing the lesser of two evils, it is
better to run the risk of offending than to jeopardize the flow of talk
by inviting uncongenial people. When dinners are given to return
obligations it is not always easy to arrange profitably the inviting and
seating of guests. But the judgment displayed just here makes or mars a
dinner. A good way out of the difficulty, where hosts have obligations
to people of different tastes and interests, is to give a series of
dinners, and to send the invitations out at the same time. If Mrs. X. is
asked to dine with Mrs. Z. the evening following the dinner to which
Mrs. Z. has invited Mrs. Y., Mrs. X. is not offended.

To see that there is no failure of tact in seating guests should be the
next process of amalgamation. To get the best results a great deal of
care should be bestowed upon the mixture of this human salad. Guests
should be seated in such a way that neighbors at table will interest
each other; a brilliant guest should be placed where he may at least
snatch crumbs of intellectual comfort if his near companions, tho
talkative, are not conversationalists of the highest order; the
loquacious guest should be put next to the usu