This ideal guest is an equally ideal hostess; the principle of both is the same. A ready smile, a quick sympathy, a happy outlook, consideration for others, tenderness toward everything that is young or helpless, and forgetfulness of self, which is not far from the ideal of womankind.
The Guest On A Private Car Or Yacht
The sole difference between being a guest at a country house and a guest on a private car or a yacht, is that you put to a very severe test tour adaptability as a traveler. You live in very close quarters with your host and hostess and fellow guests, and must therefore be particularly on your guard against being selfish or out of humor. If you are on shore and don't feel well, you can stay home; but off on a cruise, if you are ill you have to make the best of it, and a sea-sick person's "best" is very bad indeed! Therefore let it be hoped you are a good sailor. If not, think very, very carefully before you embark!
CHAPTER XXVI
THE HOUSE PARTY IN CAMP
"Roughing it" in the fashionable world (on the Atlantic coast) is rather suggestive of the dairymaid playing of Marie Antoinette; the "rough" part being mostly "picturesque effect" with little taste of actual discomfort. Often, of course, the "roughing it" is real, especially west of the Mississippi (and sometimes in the East too); so real that it has no place in a book of etiquette at all. In the following picture of a fashionable "camping party" it should perhaps be added, that not only the Worldlys but most of the women really think they are "roughing it."
At the same time there is nothing that a genuine dependent upon luxury resents more than to be told he is dependent. It is he who has but newly learned the comforts of living who protests his inability to endure discomfort.