of this kind means we are willing to incommode ourselves, incur expense, and give a measure of our time to the entertainment of those of our friends whose society we wish to enjoy familiarly.  Thus it seems that an invitation to visit a friend in her home is a compliment of no mean order, although Nicole says:  “’Visits are for the most part neither more nor less than inventions for discharging upon our neighbors somewhat of our own unendurable weight.”

[Manners and social customs 709]

Short Visits.—­Visits are of much shorter duration than in those “old times” people talk about so enthusiastically—­and would find so tiresome were they to return again.  Then visitors stayed week after week; were urged to remain longer when they proposed departure.  The story goes of a Virginia planter who invited an old war-time friend to visit him.  At the end of a month the major proposed departure.  His host objected so strenuously that he agreed to stay another month.  And so it went on, the guest regularly proposing to leave, the host hospitably insisting on his remaining, until in the end the old veteran died in and was buried from his friend’s house.  This, however, is an example not to be emulated in these less hospitable days.

There is a saying, “Short visits make long friends,” that is worth consideration by those who visit.  Probably the truth of the saying has been so often attested that it has given rise to the custom of specifying the date of arrival and departure of a guest when giving the invitation.  It has become to be understood that the vague, indefinite invitation “Do come and see us sometime,” means nothing.  No one would think for a moment of taking it in good faith.  If the giver wishes to entertain her friend she will ask if it will be convenient for her to visit her at a certain specified date.  Nothing less counts.  An understanding of this might save the unexperienced from the awkwardness of making an unwelcome visit.

The Unexpected Visit.—­Nothing is worse form than “the surprise visit.”  Generally you do surprise your hostess and very often most disagreeably.  A housekeeper does not enjoy an intrusion—­for such it is—­of that kind any more than you would be pleased to have a chance caller rush unannounced into your private rooms.  Even among relatives and the most intimate friends, there is nothing to justify the unexpected arrival.  Nothing so strikes terror to a woman’s soul as the thud of trunks on the piazza and the crunch of wheels on the gravel, meaning someone has “come to stay.”

Such an arrival is a piece of presumption on the part of the visitor.  She assumes she will be welcome at any time she chooses to present herself.  This may be true; but at the same time there is an obligation of courtesy which requires her to consult her friend’s convenience.  Instead, she consults her own and utterly ignores that of her hostess, who is thus forced into entertaining her.