[710 Mothers’ remedies]

The Inopportune Arrival.—­Many awkward and sometimes amusing anecdotes are told in connection with the inopportune visit.  Thus not long ago the newspapers chronicled the plight of a woman who undertook to surprise an acquaintance from whom she had not heard for several years.  She was driven to their house and dismissed the carriage.  A strange face met her at the door, and she learned that her friend had removed to another city nearly a twelvemonth before.  “Served her right” will be everybody’s verdict.

Suppose one arrives unexpectedly and finds the friend’s house full of other and invited company.  Then, if ever, she ought to feel herself “a rank outsider.”  If she is tactless enough not to give notice of her intended arrival, she probably has not the good sense to depart as quickly as possible.  The man of the house may have to sleep on the parlor sofa, or the children on the floor, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred the whole family will wish her in Halifax.

Or she may arrive to find some member of the family ill, or house-cleaning or repairing in progress, or the house in the hands of the decorators.  Indeed, so many unforeseen accidents may occur to make her visit an unpleasant memory, both to herself and her hostess, that only the most selfish and inconsiderate of women will so violate the social conventions as to make “surprise visits.”

Visits That Save Expense.—­Something equally reprehensible is the visit we pay to a friend in town where we have business or desire a pleasure trip, and do not propose to have it cost us much of anything.  We force hospitality on our acquaintances in order to save hotel bills.  They know it, and they feel about it just exactly as we would in their places—­that is, that it is an imposition on good nature and a mean and selfish thing to do.

“We gave up our house and went to boarding simply because my health and my husband’s salary were inadequate to the demands made upon them by our out-of-town relatives and acquaintances, who used us as a restaurant and hotel.  There was seldom a week when we did not give ten or twelve meals and two or three nights lodging to people better able to pay for them than we were to furnish them.  So we gave up housekeeping.”  This is an actual experience.

WEEK-END VISITS.

The “house-party,” as the week-end visit is now often styled, is a comparatively recent addition to social entertainments.  It is a fashion imported from England, and a very good one.  It is the “from Saturday to Monday” visit, and so universally recognized that during the summer extra trolley cars and railroad trains are in use to convey resorters and their guests to summer homes in the country.

Invitations to a house-party are given several weeks in advance, and great care should be taken to invite those who are congenial and will “mix well,” since where a few are thrown together congeniality is absolutely essential to success.  The invitations are informal; the length of the visit definitely fixed; even the train by which the visitor is expected to arrive and leave is mentioned, that there may be no misunderstanding.