* * *
Though there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip,
Yet, while o'er the brim of life's breaker I dip,
While there's life in the lip, while there's warmth in the wine,
One deep health I'll pledge, and that health shall be thine.
--Owen Meredith.
A HINT ON ENTERTAINING.
"The most successful social functions are those managed by a host and hostess," says a society scribe, "not by either alone. Leave a man to make up a party and he is sure to forget that Mrs. B. was engaged to C. before she married D., and that Mrs. C. is aware of the fact, and that the D.s and E.s have long been at daggers drawn, and he will have no eyes to detect the designs of Mrs. H. On the other hand, a woman gets nervous and fatigued with the constant effort to keep the ball rolling, and fails just where a man would succeed. What is wanted is a division of labor, and if this were done oftener there would be less disappointment on the part of entertainers and entertained."
LOOK AT YOUR CUP.
A cup of coffee, farmers assert, makes a pretty accurate barometer:
"To make a barometer out of a cup of coffee," a farmer said, "you must use loaf sugar. You drop a lump of this sugar exactly into the middle of your cup, and then watch the bubbles rise. It is by these bubbles that your prognostications are made.
"If the bubbles rise straight up in the middle, remaining there in a cluster till they disappear, the weather is to be fair; if they rise at the sides of the cup, adhering to the china, the weather will be rainy. If they rise all over the coffee's surface, and move here and there erratically, changeable conditions are to be looked for."