In giving a dinner party, invite only as many guests as you can seat comfortably at your table. If you have two tables, have them precisely alike, or, rest assured, you will offend those friends whom you place at what they judge to be the inferior table. Above all, avoid having little tables placed in the corners of the room, when there is a large table. At some houses in Paris it is a fashion to set the dining room entirely with small tables, which will accommodate comfortably three or four people, and such parties are very merry, very sociable and pleasant, if four congenial people are around each table; but it is a very dull fashion, if you are not sure of the congeniality of each quartette of guests.
If you lose your fortune or position in society, it is wiser to retire from the world of fashion than to wait for that world to bow you out.
If you are poor, but welcome in society on account of your family or talents, avoid the error which the young are most apt to fall into, that of living beyond your means.
The advice of Polonius to Laertes is as excellent in the present day, as it was in Shakespeare’s time:—
“Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel:
But do not dull thy palm with entertainments
Of each new hatch’d, unfledg’d comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man.
* * * * *
Neither a borrower nor a lender be:
For loan oft loses both itself and friend;
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all,—To thine ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
It is by no means desirable to be always engaged in the serious pursuits of life. Take time for pleasure, and you will find your work progresses faster for some recreation. Lord Chesterfield says:
“I do not regret the time that I passed in pleasures; they were seasonable; they were the pleasures of youth, and I enjoyed them while young. If I had not, I should probably have overvalued them now, as we are very apt to do what we do not know; but knowing them as I do, I know their real value, and how much they are generally overrated. Nor do I regret the time that I have passed in business, for the same reason; those who see only the outside of it, imagine it has hidden charms, which they pant after; and nothing but acquaintance can undeceive them. I, who have been behind the scenes, both of pleasure and business, and have seen all the springs and pullies of those decorations which astonish and dazzle the audience, retire, not only without regret, but with contentment and satisfaction. But what I do, and ever shall regret, is the time which, while young, I lost in mere idleness, and in doing nothing. This is the common effect of the inconsideracy of youth, against which I beg you will be most carefully upon your guard. The value of moments, when cast up, is immense, if well employed; if thrown away, their loss is irrecoverable. Every moment may be put to some use, and that with much more pleasure than if unemployed. Do not imagine that by the employment of time, I mean an uninterrupted application to serious studies. No; pleasures are, at proper times, both as necessary and as useful; they fashion and form you for the world; they teach you characters, and show you the human heart in its unguarded minutes. But then remember to make that use of them. I have known many people, from laziness of mind, go through both pleasure and business with equal inattention; neither enjoying the one nor doing the other; thinking themselves men of pleasure, because they were mingled with those who were, and men of business, because they had business to do, though they did not do it. Whatever you do, do it to the purpose; do it thoroughly, not superficially. Approfondissez: go to the bottom of things. Anything half done or half known, is, in my mind, neither done nor known at all. Nay worse, it often misleads. There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost every body knows some one thing, and is glad to talk upon that one thing. Seek and you will find, in this world as well as in the next. See everything; inquire into everything; and you may excuse your curiosity, and the questions you ask, which otherwise might be thought impertinent, by your manner of asking them; for most things depend a great deal upon the manner. As, for example, I am afraid that I am very troublesome with my questions; but nobody can inform me so well as you; or something of that kind.”