At a garden party the food is often much more prodigal than at a tea in town.  Sometimes it is as elaborate as at a wedding reception.  In addition to hot tea and chocolate, there is either iced coffee or a very melted cafe parfait, or frosted chocolate in cups.  There are also pitchers of various drinks that have rather mysterious ingredients, but are all very much iced and embellished with crushed fruits and mint leaves.  There are often berries with cream, especially in strawberry season, on an estate that prides itself on those of its own growing, as well as the inevitable array of fancy sandwiches and cakes.

At teas and musicales and all entertainments where the hostess herself is obliged to stand at the door, her husband or a daughter (if the hostess is old enough, and lucky enough to have one) or else a sister or a very close friend, should look after the guests, to see that any who are strangers are not helplessly wandering about alone, and that elderly ladies are given seats if there is to be a performance, or to show any other courtesies that devolve upon a hostess.

=THE ATMOSPHERE OF HOSPITALITY=

The atmosphere of hospitality is something very intangible, and yet nothing is more actually felt—­or missed.  There are certain houses that seem to radiate warmth like an open wood fire, there are others that suggest an arrival by wireless at the North Pole, even though a much brighter actual fire may be burning on the hearth in the drawing-room of the second than of the first.  Some people have the gift of hospitality; others whose intentions are just as kind and whose houses are perfection in luxury of appointments, seem to petrify every approach.  Such people appearing at a picnic color the entire scene with the blue light of their austerity.  Such people are usually not masters, but slaves, of etiquette.  Their chief concern is whether this is correct, or whether that is properly done, or is this person or that such an one as they care to know?  They seem, like Hermione (Don Marquis’s heroine), to be anxiously asking themselves, “Have I failed to-day, or have I not?”

Introspective people who are fearful of others, fearful of themselves, are never successfully popular hosts or hostesses.  If you for instance, are one of these, if you are really afraid of knowing some one who might some day prove unpleasant, if you are such a snob that you can’t take people at their face value, then why make the effort to bother with people at all?  Why not shut your front door tight and pull down the blinds and, sitting before a mirror in your own drawing-room, order tea for two?

[Illustration:  “THE PERFECT EXAMPLE OF A FORMAL DINNER TABLE OF WEALTH, LUXURY AND TASTE, WHICH INVOLVES NO EFFORT ON THE PART OF THE HOSTESS OF A GREAT HOUSE BEYOND DECIDING UPON THE DATE AND THE PRINCIPAL GUESTS WHO ARE TO FORM THE NUCLEUS OF THE PARTY.” [Page 177.]]

CHAPTER XIV