Twentieth Century Culture and Deportment / Or the Lady and Gentleman at Home and Abroad; Containing Rules of Etiquette for All Occasions, Including Calls; Invitations; Parties; Weddings; Receptions; Dinners and Teas; Etiquette of the Street; Public Places, Etc., Etc. Forming a Complete Guide to Self-Culture; the Art of Dressing Well; Conversation; Courtship; Etiquette for Children; Letter-Writing; Artistic Home and Interior Decorations, Etc.

by Maud C. Cooke

Invitations.

Forms of invitations suited to all classes of dinners, have been given at length in the department devoted to that subject, and acceptances and regrets for the same carefully explained, together with the obligation upon every one to answer all such invitations at once, either in the affirmative or negative. Since a dinner is, in all respects, so important a social event that the least one can do is to signify immediately one’s course of action, Sidney Smith was not so far out of the way when he burlesqued the solemnity of the occasion, and the aversion that all dinner-givers have to an empty chair, when he wittily wrote: “A man should, if he die after having accepted an invitation to dinner, leave his executors a solemn charge to fill his place.”