Detailed Directions For Dinner Giving
The requisites at every dinner, whether a great one of 200 covers, or a little one of six, are as follows:
Guests. People who are congenial to one another. This is of first importance.
Food. A suitable menu perfectly prepared and dished. (Hot food to be hot, and cold, cold.)
Table furnishing. Faultlessly laundered linen, brilliantly polished silver, and all other table accessories suitable to the occasion and surroundings.
Service. Expert dining-room servants and enough of them.
Drawing-room. Adequate in size to number of guests and inviting in arrangement.
A cordial and hospitable host.
A hostess of charm. Charm says everything—tact, sympathy, poise and perfect manners—always.
And though for all dinners these requisites are much the same, the necessity for perfection increases in proportion to the formality of the occasion.