cord
with your own.

A solitary guest is naturally much more dependent on his host (or her
hostess), but on the other hand, he or she is practically always a very
intimate friend who merely adapts himself or herself like a chameleon to
the customs and hours and diversions of the household.

=DONT'S FOR HOSTESS=

When a guest asks to be called half an hour before breakfast, don't have
him called an hour and a half before because it takes you that long to
dress, nor allow him a scant ten minutes because the shorter time is
seemingly sufficient. Too often the summons on the door wakes him out of
sound sleep; he tumbles exhausted out of bed, into clothes, and down
stairs, to wait perhaps an hour for breakfast.

If a guest prefers to sit on the veranda and read, don't interrupt him
every half page to ask if he really does not want to do something else.
If, on the other hand, a guest wants to exercise, don't do everything in
your power to obstruct his starting off by saying that it will surely
rain, or that it is too hot, or that you think it is senseless to spend
days that should be a rest to him in utterly exhausting himself.

Don't, when you know that a young man cares little for feminine society,
fine-tooth-comb the neighborhood for the dullest or silliest young woman
to be found.

Don't, on the other hand, when you have an especially attractive young
woman staying with you, ask a stolid middle-aged couple and an
octogenarian professor for dinner, because the charm and beauty of the
former is sure to appeal to the latter.

Don't, because you personally happen to like a certain young girl who is
utterly old-fashioned in outlook and type from ultra modern others who are
staying with you, try to "bring them together." Never try to make any two
people like each other. If they do, they do; if they don't, they don't,
and that is all there is to it; but it is of vital importance to your own
success as hostess to find out which is the case and collect or separate
them accordingly.

=THE CASUAL HOSTESS=

The most casual hostess in the world is the fashionable leader in Newport,
she who should by the rules of good society be the most punctilious, since
no place in America, or Europe, is more conspicuously representative of
luxury and fashion. Nowhere are there more "guests" or half so many
hostesses, and yet hospitality as it is understood everywhere else, is
practically unknown. No one ever goes to stay in a Newport