es; if you
yourself had known every detail of cooking and service, of course you
would not have attempted to give the dinner in the first place; not at
least until, through giving little dinners, the technique of your
household had become good enough to give a big one.

On the other hand, supposing that you had had a very experienced cook and
waitress; dinner would, of course, not have been bungled, but it would
have lacked something, somewhere, if you added nothing of your own
personality to its perfection. It is almost safe to make the statement
that no dinner is ever really well done unless the hostess herself knows
every smallest detail thoroughly. Mrs. Worldly pays seemingly no
attention, but nothing escapes her. She can walk through a room without
appearing to look either to the right or left, yet if the slightest detail
is amiss, an ornament out of place, or there is one dull button on a
footman's livery, her house telephone is rung at once!

Having generalized by drawing two pictures, it is now time to take up the
specific details to be considered in giving a dinner.

=DETAILED DIRECTIONS FOR DINNER GIVING=

The requisites at every dinner, whether a great one of 200 covers, or a
little one of six, are as follows:

Guests. People who are congenial to one another. This is of first
importance.

Food. A suitable menu perfectly prepared and dished. (Hot food to be
_hot_, and cold, _cold_.)

Table furnishing. Faultlessly laundered linen, brilliantly polished
silver, and all other table accessories suitable to the occasion and
surroundings.

Service. Expert dining-room servants and enough of them.

Drawing-room. Adequate in size to number of guests and inviting in
arrangement.

A cordial and hospitable host.

A hostess of charm. Charm says everything--tact, sympathy, poise and
perfect manners--always.

And though for all dinners these requisites are much the same, the
necessity for perfection increases in proportion to the formality of the
occasion.

=TASTE IN SELECTION OF PEOPLE=

The proper selection of guests is the first essential in all entertaining,
and the hostess who has a talent for assembling the right people has a
great asset. Taste in house furnishings or in clothes or in selecting a
cook, is as nothing compared to taste in people! Some people have this
"sense"--others haven't. The first are the great hosts and hostesses; the
others are the mediocre or the failures.

It is usually a