In spite of the tea you are invariably given on such occasions, I think calls—­formal calls—­are some of the most dreadful experiences Mrs. Grundy obliges you to undergo.  I dislike them immensely, and always get out of them if possible.  I hope servants do not afterwards record the expression of my countenance when they tell me their mistress is “out.”  It is radiant with an unholy joy!

These dreadful “at home” days, too, are so provoking.  If you know a dozen people in a neighborhood, you can only call on one at a time.  They all have different days!  This may seem slightly impossible; but it is not indeed.  While one lady’s house is open to visitors on the first and third Wednesdays in the month, another is on view on the second and fourth, and so on.  Not two people agree!

Small talk, I think, is never so small as on these occasions.  The poor weather is thorougly worn out, a few mutual friends are picked to pieces, and of course there is a discussion about dress.  Sometimes you hear some sad account of the lady’s second cousin’s daughter, and you have immediately to clothe your countenance in a sober garb.  You must look grieved, and all the while not caring one straw if the cousin’s daughter has fits or gets insane, or anything else she cares to do.  You have never heard of her before, and therefore have not the slightest interest in her eccentricities.  I always feel so terribly inclined to laugh, just because I ought to be doing the other thing.

People are so fond of talking about their troubles and griefs.  The greater the sorrow, the greater the discussion.  They call up tears to their eyes, as if the subject were too sacred to approach.  But such tears are kept for the purpose.  They come at their bidding, and fall as naturally into their place as if the exhibition had been practiced beforehand.  It is a positive enjoyment to such people to detail their grievances.

With the lower classes, this, so to speak, gloating over your losses is even more apparent.  One comparatively well-to-do woman I know, seems to have a monopoly of funerals.  There is always some relation dead, and off she goes with an important air, draped from head to foot in black; the picture of “loathed melancholy” outwardly; inwardly, glowing with pride; while all her neighbors stand outside their doors, literally consumed with jealousy at her good fortune!  And then the terrible moment of her return, when you are obliged, whether you will or not, to listen to the whole account, the description, the progress, and finally the interment of “the corpse”!  I hope, however dead I may be one day, that I shall never be described as “a corpse”!  There is something so horrible in the word, I always think.  It makes you even more dead than you are.  It cuts you so absolutely off from the living.

Then there are those tiresome people who talk of nothing but their own families.  The mother from whom you hear all the ailments of her children if they are young, all the conquests of her daughters if they are old.  The sisters, to prevent the accusation of vanity, do not praise themselves, but arrive at the same end by lauding up each other!  These “mutual admiration” families, as Wilkie Collins so aptly terms them, are families to be shunned.