THE HOME DINNER
The care for the dinner-table, for the personal appearance and, generally speaking, for pretty environment implies effort. Lazy people can not hope for these delightful effects of a material kind. Neither can they expect the happiness which comes to those who take some pains at home for the mental entertainment of themselves and their household. There are many people who regard it as deceitful and insincere to forecast what one shall talk about and it is quite true that formally planned talk is a foe to spontaneity and naturalness. But usually the man or woman who entertains by his conversation is the person who, in a general way, has taken some thought about what he shall say. Given the opportunity, conversation, charming in its spontaneity, rises out of the mental habit of noting down for future reference pleasant or odd personal experiences, good stories, the quirks in one’s own mind. One must not intrude these in a place where they do not fit, but it is not in the least a social sin to guide the talk toward your own thought provided you do not thereby push out something better. We are all given tongues and with them a certain conversational responsibility. If each member of the family made it his business and his pleasure during the day to remember the best part of his experience that he might relate it at the dinner-hour some part of that gloom which descends upon so many American families at the evening meal would be dissipated.
THE TIME FOR PLAY
If one cultivates the prettier touches of personal appearance for that part of the day after six o’clock, whether at home or abroad, one should also cultivate the pleasanter and more agreeable states of mind. Business should be put behind one. The petty cares of the day should go unmentioned. The ills of body and mind should be, as far as possible, forgot. Those little courtesies and formalities of manner that we admire in the practised man or woman of society are as decorative at home as away and equally creative of a festive atmosphere. In one of the magazines of the last decade there is a homely effective story of a young girl, just home from a house-party and full of its gaiety, to whom the idea occurred that the methods employed by her hostess might make a delightful week in her own large family circle. She took the matter in hand, and invited her mother to be the guest of honor for the seven days. Some entertainment was planned for each evening in the week, sometimes with visitors and sometimes not. The women of the family wore their best frocks frequently during the week. The prettiest china and the best silver were used as freely as if for company. The result of it all was that the family voted visiting at home a signal success.
GAMES AS A PASTIME
There are many specific ways of providing amusement for evenings at home. One has space only for the mention of a few of these in a short article on the subject. Games of various kinds are an excellent resource for making the after-dinner time pass pleasantly. They cultivate quickness of decision, sociability, a friendly rivalry. Success in games is partly a matter of chance but much more of attention and skill. Many people sniff at them who are too lazy to make the conquest of their methods.