LET YOUR GUEST ALONE
A welcome should be cordial and honest. A hostess should take time to warm her guest’s heart by telling her that she is glad, genuinely glad, to have her in her home. She should also do all she can to make the visitor forget that she is away from her own house.
All this done, the guest should be let alone! We mean this, strange as it may seem. Many well-meaning hostesses annoy guests by following them up and by insisting that they shall be “doing something” all the time. This is almost as wearing and depressing as neglect would be. Each person wants to be alone a part of the time. A visitor is no exception to this rule. She has letters to write, or an interesting book she wants to read, or, if she needs the rest and change her visit should bring her, it will be luxury to her to don a kimono and relax on the couch or bed in her room for an hour or two a day. The thought that one’s hostess is noting and wondering at one’s absence from the drawing-room, where one is expected to be on exhibition, is to a nervous person akin to torture.
Allow all possible freedom as to the hour for rising, provide a certain amount of entertainment for the visitor in the way of outdoor exercise (if she likes it), callers, amusements and so forth, and then (again) in plain English, let her alone!
One must never insist that a guest remain beyond the time set for her return, if the guest declares sincerely that to remain longer is inadvisable. To speed the parting guest is an item of true hospitality. The hostess may beg her to stay when she feels that the visitor can conveniently do so, and when her manner shows that she desires to do so. But when the suggestion has been firmly and gratefully declined, the matter should be dropped. A guest who feels that she must return to her home for business, family or private reasons, is embarrassed by the insistence on the part of her entertainers that such return is unnecessary.
A GUEST’S EXPENSES
Of course, the visitor in one’s house should be spared all possible expense. The porter who brings the trunk should be paid by the host, unless the guest forestalls him in his hospitable intention. Car-fares, hack-hire and such things, are paid by the members of the family visited. All these things should be done so unobtrusively as to escape, if possible, the notice of the person entertained.
If a woman have two maids, the second maid should, shortly before the retiring hour, go to the guest’s room, turn down the covers of the bed and provide a pitcher of fresh drinking-water. In the event of having one maid only, the hostess will perform these offices herself.