If you are subject to uninvited company, and your means do not allow you to set before your guests as good a table as they keep at home, do not distress yourself or them with apologies. If they are real friends, they will cheerfully sit down with you to such a table as is appropriate to your circumstances, and would be made uncomfortable by an effort on your part to provide a better one than you can afford. If your resources are ample, live in such a way that an unexpected visitor shall occasion no difference. The less alteration made in family arrangements on account of visitors, the happier for them as well as for you.
Never treat the subject of having company as if it were a great affair. Your doing this will excite your domestics, and lead them to imagine the addition to their usual work much greater than it is; your own cares, too, will be greatly magnified. A calm and quiet way of meeting all sorts of domestic vicissitudes, and of doing the work of each day, be it more or less, equalizes the pressure of care, and prevents its becoming oppressive.
Be composed when accidents happen to your furniture. The most careful hand is sometimes unsteady. Angry words will not mend broken glass or china, but they will teach your domestics to conceal such occurrences from you, and the only explanation ever given you will be, that they came apart. Encourage every one whom you employ to come immediately and tell you, when they have been so unfortunate as to break or injure any thing belonging to you. The cases are very rare, in which it is best to deduct the value from their wages.
In the best regulated families there will be some laborious, perplexing days. Adverse and inconvenient circumstances will cluster together. At those times, guard against two things,—discouragement and irritability. If others look on the dark side, find something cheering to say; if they fret, sympathize in their share of the trial, while you set them the example of bearing your part in it well.
Miss Hamilton's three maxims, so often quoted, are worthy of an indelible inscription in every house:—
"Do every thing in its proper time.
"Keep every thing to its proper use.
"Put every thing in its proper place."
She should have added, Do every thing in the best manner; for the habit of aiming at a perfect standard, is not only of the highest importance in our moral interests, but also proportionately so in reference to the common affairs of life.
Accustom yourself, each evening, to arrange in your own mind the meals for the next day, and also the extra work to be done by others, and what you will do yourself. This habit promotes order and system, and gives quietness and ease to the movement of the whole family machinery. When you see defects, such as irregularity, confusion, waste, or want of cleanliness in any part of your household concerns, consider what is the best remedy, and be willing to attend to the subject till the evil is cured.