“MAN is essentially a dining animal. Creatures of the inferior races eat and drink; only man dines!" And he should do it properly.
"To invite a friend to dinner," says Brillat Savarin, "is to become responsible for his happiness so long as he is under your roof."
If, therefore, any lady would entertain her friends in the best manner that her means permit, it will be well for her to understand the routine of the table herself, and never trust entirely to the skill of an ordinary cook. It is hardly to be expected that she should understand the preparation of each dish, but she must be capable of judging it when served. If she distrusts her own power of arranging a menu, and seeing it properly carried out, the dinner should be ordered from the best of caterers. Then, with full assurance of perfect cookery, and faultless service, one may prepare one's list of favored guests with a peaceful conscience and a mind free from care.
Invitations.
Forms of [invitations] suited to all classes of dinners, have been given at length in the department devoted to that subject, and [acceptances and regrets] for the same carefully explained, together with the obligation upon every one to answer all such invitations at once, either in the affirmative or negative. Since a dinner is, in all respects, so important a social event that the least one can do is to signify immediately one's course of action, Sidney Smith was not so far out of the way when he burlesqued the solemnity of the occasion, and the aversion that all dinner-givers have to an empty chair, when he wittily wrote: "A man should, if he die after having accepted an invitation to dinner, leave his executors a solemn charge to fill his place."