sidering those only whose
owners belong equally to best society and where, though luxuries vary from
the greatest to the least, house appointments are in essentials alike.

This is a rather noteworthy fact: all people of good position talk alike,
behave alike and live alike. Ill-mannered servants, incorrect liveries or
service, sloppily dished food, carelessness in any of the details that to
well-bred people constitute the decencies of living, are no more tolerated
in the smallest cottage than in the palace. But since the biggest houses
are those which naturally attract most attention, suppose we begin our
detailed description with them.

=HOUSE PARTY OF MANY GUESTS=

Perhaps there are ten or perhaps there are forty guests, but if there were
only two or three, and the house a little instead of a big one, the
details would be precisely the same.

A week-end means from Friday afternoon or from Saturday lunch to Monday
morning. The usual time chosen for a house party is over a holiday,
particularly where the holiday falls on a Friday or Monday, so that the
men can take a Saturday off, and stay from Friday to Tuesday, or Thursday
to Monday.

On whichever day the party begins, everyone arrives in the neighborhood of
five o'clock, or a day later at lunch time. Many come in their own cars,
the others are met at the station--sometimes by the host or a son, or, if
it is to be a young party, by a daughter. The hostess herself rarely, if
ever, goes to the station, not because of indifference or discourtesy but
because other guests coming by motor might find the house empty.

It is very rude for a hostess to be out when her guests arrive. Even some
one who comes so often as to be entirely at home, is apt to feel
dispirited upon being shown into an empty house. Sometimes a guest's
arrival unwelcomed can not be avoided; if, for instance, a man invited for
tennis week or a football or baseball game, arrives before the game is
over but too late to join the others at the sport.

When younger people come to visit the daughters, it is not necessary that
their mother stay at home, since the daughters take their mother's place.
Nor is it necessary that she receive the men friends of her son, unless
the latter for some unavoidable reason, is absent.

No hostess must ever fail to send a car to the station or boat landing for
every one who is expected. If she has not conveyances enough of her own,
she must order public ones and have