d
his personal supervision upon the repast placed before them, is
unworthy to have friends."

A dinner, to be excellent, need not consist of a great variety of
dishes; but everything should be of the best, and the cookery should
be perfect. That which should be cool should be cool as ice; that
which should be hot should be smoking; the attendance should be
rapid and noiseless; the guests well assorted; the wines of the best
quality; the host attentive and courteous; the room well lighted; and
the time punctual.

Every dinner should begin with soup, be followed by fish, and include
some kind of game. "The soup is to the dinner," we are told by Grisnod
de la Regniere, "what the portico is to a building, or the overture to
an opera."

To this aphorism we may be permitted to add that a _chasse_ of cognac
or curacoa at the close of the dinner is like the epilogue at the end
of a comedy.

Never reprove or give directions to your servants before guests. If a
dish is not placed precisely where you would have wished it to stand,
or the order of a course is reversed, let the error pass unobserved by
yourself, and you may depend that it will be unnoticed by others.

If you are a mother, you will be wise never to let your children make
their appearance at dessert when you entertain friends at dinner.
Children are out of place on these occasions. Your guests only
tolerate them through politeness; their presence interrupts the genial
flow of after-dinner conversation; and you may rely upon it that, with
the exception of yourself, and perhaps your husband, there is not a
person at table who does not wish them in the nursery.

The duties of hostess at a dinner-party are not onerous; but they
demand tact and good breeding, grace of bearing, and self-possession
in no ordinary degree. She does not often carve. She has no active
duties to perform; but she must neglect nothing, forget nothing,
put all her guests at their ease, encourage the timid, draw out the
silent, and pay every possible attention to the requirements of
each and all around her. No accident must ruffle her temper. No
disappointment must embarrass her. She must see her old china broken
without a sigh, and her best glass shattered with a smile. In short,
to quote the language of a clever contemporary, she must have "the
genius of tact to perceive, and the genius of finesse to execute; ease
and frankness of manner; a knowledge of the world that nothing
can surprise;