Etiquette Part 24

!PREPARING BREAKFAST TRAY!

The advantage of having one's guests choose breakfast up-stairs, is that unless there is a separate breakfast room, a long delayed breakfast prevents the dining-room from being put in order or the lunch table set. Trays, on the other hand, stand "all set" in the pantry and interfere much less with the dining-room work. The trays are either of the plain white pantry variety or regular breakfast ones with folding legs. On each is put a tray cloth. It may be plain linen hemst.i.tched or scalloped, or it may be much embroidered and have mosaic or filet lace.

Every bedroom has a set of breakfast china to match it. But it is far better to send a complete set of blue china to a rose-colored room than a rose set that has pieces missing. Nothing looks worse than odd crockery. It is like unmatched paper and envelopes, or odd shoes, or a woman's skirt and waist that do not meet in the back.

There is nothing unusual in a tray set, every china and department store carries them, but only in "open" stock patterns can one buy extra dishes or replace broken ones; a fact it is well to remember. There is a tall coffee pot, hot milk pitcher, a cream pitcher and sugar bowl, a cup and saucer, two plates, an egg cup and a covered dish. A cereal is usually put in the covered dish, toast in a napkin on a plate, or eggs and bacon in place of cereal. This with fruit is the most elaborate "tray" breakfast ever provided. Most people who breakfast "in bed" take only coffee or tea, an egg, toast and possibly fruit.

!THE COURTEOUS HOST!

Of those elaborate ceremonials between host and guest familiar to all readers of the Bible and all travelers in the East, only a few faint traces remain in our country and generation. It is still unforgivable to eat a man's bread and remain his enemy. It is unforgivable to criticize your host, or in his presence to criticize his friends. It is unforgivable to be rude to any one under your own roof or under the roof of a friend. If you must quarrel with your enemy, seek public or neutral ground, since quarrels and hospitality must never be mingled.

The Spaniard says to his guest: "All I have is yours." It is supposed to be merely a pretty speech--but in a measure it is true of every host's att.i.tude toward his house guest. If you take some one under your roof, he becomes part of, and sharer in, your life and possessions. Your horse, your fireside, your armchair, your servants, your time, your customs, all are his; your food is his food, your roof his shelter. You give him the best "spare" room, you set before him the best refreshments you can offer, and your "best" china and gla.s.s. His bed is made up with your best "company" linen and blankets. You receive your guest with a smile, no matter how inconvenient or troublesome or straining to your resources his visit may be, and on no account do you let him suspect any of this.

!KEEPING ONE'S GUESTS OCCUPIED!

In popular houses where visitors like to go again and again, there is always a happy combination of some attention on the part of the host and hostess, and the perfect freedom of the guests to occupy their time as they choose.

The host and the men staying in the house arrange among themselves to rest or play games or fish or ride or shoot clay pigeons or swim, etc. The hostess, unless at the seash.o.r.e where people go bathing in the morning, generally leaves her guests to their own devices until lunch time, though they are always offered whatever diversions the place or neighborhood afford. They are told there is bathing, fis.h.i.+ng, golf; and if they want to do any of these things, it is arranged for them. But unless something special, such as driving to a picnic or clambake, has been planned, or there is a tennis tournament or golf match of importance, the hostess makes her first appearance just before luncheon.

This is the same as any informal family meal. If there are thirty guests it makes no difference. Sometimes there are place cards--especially if other people have been invited in--sometimes people find places for themselves.

After luncheon something is usually arranged; perhaps those who play golf go out for their game, and others who do not play go to the country club at the hour the players are supposed to be coming in, so that they can all have tea together. Those who like motoring perhaps go for a drive, or to a neighbor's house for bridge, or neighbors come in for tea. There is always bridge, sometimes there is dancing. In very big houses musicians are often brought in after dinner, and dancing and bridge alternate till bedtime.

A houseful of young people very easily look after their own amus.e.m.e.nt. As said before, a big house is run very much like a country club, and guests are supposed to look after themselves.

Making an especial effort to entertain a guest who is to stay for a week or longer has gone out of custom in the fas.h.i.+onable world, except for an important personage. A visit from the President of the United States for instance, would necessitate the most punctiliously formal etiquette, no matter how close a friend of the family he may always have been. For such a visitor a hostess would either arrange a series of entertainments or none, according to her visitor's inclination.

!A GUEST CAN LOOK AFTER HIS OWN COMFORT!

The most trying thing to people of very set habits is an unusual breakfast hour. When you have the unfortunate habit of waking with the dawn, and the household you are visiting has the custom of sleeping on Sunday morning, the long wait for your coffee can quite actually upset your whole day. On the other hand, to be aroused at seven on the only day when you do not have to hurry to business, in order to yawn through an early breakfast, and then sit around and kill time, is quite as trying. The guest with the "early" habit can in a measure prevent discomfort. He can carry in a small case (locked if necessary) a very small solidified alcohol outfit and either a small package of tea or powdered coffee, sugar, powdered milk, and a few crackers. He can then start his day all by himself in the barnyard hours without disturbing any one, and in comfort to himself. Few people care enough to "fuss," but if they do, this equipment of an habitual visitor with incurably early waking hours is given as a suggestion.

Or perhaps the entire guest situation may be put in one sentence. If you are an inflexible person, very set in your ways, don't visit! At least don't visit without carefully looking the situation over from every angle to be sure that the habits of the house you are going to are in accord with your own.

A solitary guest is naturally much more dependent on his host (or her hostess), but on the other hand, he or she is practically always a very intimate friend who merely adapts himself or herself like a chameleon to the customs and hours and diversions of the household.

!DONT'S FOR HOSTESS!

When a guest asks to be called half an hour before breakfast, don't have him called an hour and a half before because it takes you that long to dress, nor allow him a scant ten minutes because the shorter time is seemingly sufficient. Too often the summons on the door wakes him out of sound sleep; he tumbles exhausted out of bed, into clothes, and down stairs, to wait perhaps an hour for breakfast.

If a guest prefers to sit on the veranda and read, don't interrupt him every half page to ask if he really does not want to do something else. If, on the other hand, a guest wants to exercise, don't do everything in your power to obstruct his starting off by saying that it will surely rain, or that it is too hot, or that you think it is senseless to spend days that should be a rest to him in utterly exhausting himself.

Don't, when you know that a young man cares little for feminine society, fine-tooth-comb the neighborhood for the dullest or silliest young woman to be found.

Don't, on the other hand, when you have an especially attractive young woman staying with you, ask a stolid middle-aged couple and an octogenarian professor for dinner, because the charm and beauty of the former is sure to appeal to the latter.

Don't, because you personally happen to like a certain young girl who is utterly old-fas.h.i.+oned in outlook and type from ultra modern others who are staying with you, try to "bring them together." Never try to make any two people like each other. If they do, they do; if they don't, they don't, and that is all there is to it; but it is of vital importance to your own success as hostess to find out which is the case and collect or separate them accordingly.

!THE CASUAL HOSTESS!

The most casual hostess in the world is the fas.h.i.+onable leader in Newport, she who should by the rules of good society be the most punctilious, since no place in America, or Europe, is more conspicuously representative of luxury and fas.h.i.+on. Nowhere are there more "guests" or half so many hostesses, and yet hospitality as it is understood everywhere else, is practically unknown. No one ever goes to stay in a Newport house excepting "on his own" as it were. It is not an exaggerated story, but quite true, that in many houses of ultra fas.h.i.+on a guest on arriving is told at which meals he is expected to appear, that is at dinners or luncheons given by his hostess. At all others he is free to go out or stay in by himself. No effort is a.s.sumed for his amus.e.m.e.nt, or responsibility for his well-being. It is small wonder that only those who have plenty of friends care to go there--or in fact, are ever invited! Those who like to go to visit the most perfectly appointed, but utterly impersonal house, find no other visiting to compare with its unhampering delightfulness. The hostess simply says on his (or her) arrival: "Oh, howdo Freddie (or Constance)! They've put you in the Chinese room, I think. Ring for tea when you want it. Struthers telephoned he'd be over around five. Mrs. Toplofty asked you to dinner to-night and I accepted for you--hope that was all right. If not, you'll have to telephone and get out of it yourself. I want you to dinner to-morrow night and for lunch on Sunday. Sorry to leave you, but I'm late for bridge now. Good-by." And she is off.

The Newport hostess is, of course, an extreme type that is seldom met away from that one small watering place in Rhode Island.

!THE ENERGETIC HOSTESS!

The energetic hostess is the ant.i.thesis of the one above, and far more universally known. She is one who fusses and plans continually, who thinks her guests are not having a good time unless she rushes them, Cook's tourist fas.h.i.+on, from this engagement to that, and crowds with activity and diversion--never mind what so long as it is something to see or do--every moment of their stay.

She walks them through the garden to show them all the nooks and vistas. She dilates upon the flowers that bloomed here last month and are going to bloom next. She insists upon their climbing over rocks to a summerhouse to see the view; she insists on taking them in another direction to see an old mill; and, again, every one is trouped to the cupola of the house to see another view. She insists on every one's playing croquet before lunch, to which she gathers in a curiously mixed collection of neighbors. Immediately after lunch every one is driven to a country club to see some duffer golf--for some reason there is never "time" in all the prepared pleasures for any of her guests to play golf themselves. After twenty minutes at the golf club, they are all taken to a church fair. The guests are all introduced to the ladies at the booth and those who were foolish enough to bring their purses with them from now on carry around an odd a.s.sortment of fancy work. There is another entertainment that her guests must not miss! A flower pageant of the darlingest children fourteen miles away! Everyone is dashed to that. On some one's front lawn, daisies and lilies and roses trip and skip--it is all sweetly pretty but the sun is hot and the guests have been on the go for a great many hours. Soon, however, their hostess leaves. "Home at last!" think they. Not at all. They are going somewhere for tea and French recitations. But why go on? The portrait is fairly complete, though this account covers only a few hours and there is still all the evening and to-morrow to be filled in just as liberally.

!THE ANXIOUS HOSTESS!

The anxious hostess does not insist on your ceaseless activity, but she is no less persistent in filling your time. She is always asking you what you would like to do next. If you say you are quite content as you are, she nevertheless continues to shower suggestions. Shall she play the phonograph to you? Would you like her to telephone to a friend who sings too wonderfully? Would you like to look at a portfolio of pictures? If you are a moment silent, she is sure you are bored, and wonders what she can do to divert you!

!THE PERFECT HOSTESS!

The ideal hostess must have so many perfections of sense and character that were she described in full, no one seemingly but a combination of seer and angel could ever hope to qualify.

She must first of all consider the inclinations of her guests, she must not only make them as comfortable as the arrangements and limits of her establishment permit, but she must subordinate her own inclinations utterly. At the same time, she must not fuss and flutter and get agitated and seemingly make efforts in their behalf. Nothing makes a guest more uncomfortable than to feel his host or hostess is being put to a great deal of bother or effort on his account.

A perfect hostess like a perfect housekeeper has seemingly nothing whatever to do with household arrangements which apparently run in oiled grooves and of their own accord.

Certain rules are easy to observe once they are brought to attention. A hostess should never speak of annoyances of any kind--no matter what happens! Unless she is actually unable to stand up, she should not mention physical ills any more than mental ones. She has invited people to her house, and as long as they are under her roof, hospitality demands that their sojourn shall be made as pleasant as lies in her power.

If the cook leaves, then a picnic must be made of the situation as though a picnic were the most delightful thing that could happen. Should a guest be taken ill, she must a.s.sure him that he is not giving the slightest trouble; at the same time nothing that can be done for his comfort must be overlooked. Should she herself or some one in her family become suddenly ill, she should make as light of it as possible to her guests, even though she withdraw from them. In that event she must ask a relative or intimate friend to come in and take her place. Nor should the deputy hostess dwell to the guests on the illness, or whatever it is that has deprived them of their hostess.

!THE GUEST NO ONE INVITES AGAIN!

The guest no one invites a second time is the one who runs a car to its detriment, and a horse to a lather; who leaves a borrowed tennis racquet out in the rain; who "dog ears" the books, leaves a cigarette on the edge of a table and burns a trench in its edge, who uses towels for boot rags, who stands a wet gla.s.s on polished wood, who tracks muddy shoes into the house, and leaves his room looking as though it had been through a cyclone. Nor are men the only offenders. Young women have been known to commit every one of these offenses and the additional one of bringing a pet dog that was not house trained.

Besides these actually destructive shortcomings, there are evidences of bad upbringing in many modern youths whose lack of consideration is scarcely less annoying. Those who are late for every meal; cheeky others who invite friends of their own to meals without the manners or the decency to ask their hostess' permission; who help themselves to a car and go off and don't come back for meals at all; and who write no letters afterwards, nor even take the trouble to go up and "speak" to a former hostess when they see her again.

On the other hand, a young person who is considerate is a delight immeasurable--such a delight as only a hostess of much experience can perhaps appreciate. A young girl who tells where she is going, first asking if it is all right, and who finds her hostess as soon as she is in the house at night to report that she is back, is one who very surely will be asked again and often.

A young man is, of course, much freer, but a similar deference to the plans of his hostess, and to the hours and customs of the house, will result in repeated invitations for him also.

The lack of these things is not only bad form but want of common civility and decency, and reflects not only on the girls and boys themselves but on their parents who failed to bring them up properly.

!THE CONSIDERATE GUEST!

Courtesy demands that you, when you are a guest, shall show neither annoyance nor disappointment--no matter what happens. Before you can hope to become even a pa.s.sable guest, let alone a perfect one, you must learn as it were not to notice if hot soup is poured down your back. If you neither understand nor care for dogs or children, and both insist on climbing all over you, you must seemingly like it; just as you must be amiable and polite to your fellow guests, even though they be of all the people on earth the most detestable to you. You must with the very best dissimulation at your command, appear to find the food delicious though they offer you all of the viands that are especially distasteful to your palate, or antagonistic to your digestion. You must disguise your hatred of red ants and scrambled food, if everyone else is bent on a picnic. You must pretend that six is a perfect dinner hour though you never dine before eight, or, on the contrary, you must wait until eight-thirty or nine with stoical fort.i.tude, though your dinner hour is six and by seven your chest seems securely pinned to your spine.

If you go for a drive, and it pours, and there is no top to the carriage or car, and you are soaked to the skin and chilled to the marrow so that your teeth chatter, your lips must smile and you must appear to enjoy the refres.h.i.+ng coolness.

If you go to stay in a small house in the country, and they give you a bed full of lumps, in a room of mosquitoes and flies, in a chamber over that of a crying baby, under the eaves with a temperature of over a hundred, you can the next morning walk to the village, and send yourself a telegram and leave! But though you feel starved, exhausted, wilted, and are mosquito bitten until you resemble a well-developed case of chickenpox or measles, by not so much as a facial muscle must you let the family know that your comfort lacked anything that your happiest imagination could picture--nor must you confide in any one afterwards (having broken bread in the house) how desperately wretched you were.

If you know anyone who is always in demand, not only for dinners, but for trips on private cars and yachts, and long visits in country houses, you may be very sure of one thing: the popular person is first of all unselfish or else extremely gifted; very often both.

The perfect guest not only tries to wear becoming clothes but tries to put on an equally becoming mental att.i.tude. No one is ever asked out very much who is in the habit of telling people all the misfortunes and ailments she has experienced or witnessed, though the perfect guest listens with apparent sympathy to every one else's. Another attribute of the perfect guest is never to keep people waiting. She is always ready for anything--or nothing. If a plan is made to picnic, she likes picnics above everything and proves her liking by enthusiastically making the sandwiches or the salad dressing or whatever she thinks she makes best. If, on the other hand, no one seems to want to do anything, the perfect guest has always a book she is absorbed in, or a piece of sewing she is engrossed with, or else beyond everything she would love to sit in an easy chair and do nothing.

She never for one moment thinks of herself, but of the other people she is thrown with. She is a person of sympathy always, and instantaneous discernment. She is good tempered no matter what happens, and makes the most of everything as it comes. At games she is a good loser, and a quiet winner. She has a pleasant word, an amusing story, and agreeable comment for most occasions, but she is neither gus.h.i.+ng nor fulsome. She has merely acquired a habit, born of many years of arduous practise, of turning everything that looks like a dark cloud as quickly as possible for the glimmer of a silver lining.

She is as sympathetic to children as to older people; she cuts out wonderful paper dolls and soldier hats, always leisurely and easily as though it cost neither time nor effort. She knows a hundred stories or games, every baby and every dog goes to her on sight, not because she has any especial talent, except that one she has cultivated, the talent of interest in everyone and everything except herself. Few people know that there is such a talent or that it can be cultivated.

She has more than mere beauty; she has infinite charm, and she is so well born that she is charming to everyone. Her manner to a duke who happens to be staying in the house is not a bit more courteous than her manner to the kitchen-maid whom she chances to meet in the kitchen gardens whither she has gone with the children to see the new kittens; as though new kittens were the apex of all delectability!

She always calls the servants by name; always says "How do you do" when she arrives, "Good morning" while there, and "Good-by" when she leaves. And do they presume because of her "familiarity" when she remembers to ask after the parlor-maid's mother and the butler's baby? They wait on her as they wait on no one else who comes to the house--neither the Senator nor the Governor, nor his Grace of Overthere!

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 sh.o.r.e 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 fas.h.i.+onable "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.

The very same people therefore who went a short time before to Great Estates, women who arrived with their maids and luggage containing personal equipment of amazing perfection and unlimited quant.i.ty (to say nothing of jewels worth a king's ransom), and men who usually travel with their own man-servants and every variety of raiment and paraphernalia, on being invited to "rough it" with the Kindharts at Mountain Summit Camp, are the very ones who most promptly and enthusiastically telegraph their delighted acceptance. At a certain party a few years ago, the only person who declined was a young woman of so little "position" that she was quite offended that Mrs. Kindhart should suppose her able to endure discomfort such as her invitation implied.

This year the Worldlys, the Normans, the Lovejoys, the "Bobo" Gildings, the Littlehouses, Constance Style, Jim Smartlington and his bride, Clubwin Doe and young Struthers make up the party. No one declined, not even the Worldlys, though there is a fly in the amber of their perfect satisfaction. Mrs. Kindhart wrote "not to bring a maid." Mrs. Worldly is very much disturbed, because she cannot do her hair herself. Mr. Worldly is even more perturbed at the thought of going without his valet. He has never in the twenty years since he left college been twenty-four hours away from Ernest. He knows perfectly well that Ernest is not expected. But he means to take him--he will say nothing about it; he can surely find a place for Ernest to stay somewhere.

The other men all look upon a holiday away from formality (which includes valeting) as a relief, like the opening of a window in a stuffy room, and none of the women except Mrs. Worldly would take her maid if she could.

!THE CLOTHES THEY TAKE!

The men all rummage in attics and trunk-rooms for those disreputable looking articles of wearing apparel dear to all sportsmen; oil soaked boots, water soaked and sun bleached woolen, corduroy, leather or canvas garments and hats, each looking too shabby from their wives' (or valet's) point of view to be offered to a tramp.

Every evening is spent in cleaning guns, rummaging for unprepossessing treasures of shooting and fis.h.i.+ng equipment. The women also give thought to their wardrobes--consisting chiefly in a process of elimination. Nothing perishable, nothing requiring a maid's help to get into, or to take care of. Golf clothes are first choice, and any other old country clothes, skirts and sweaters, and lots of plain s.h.i.+rt waists to go under the sweaters. An old polo coat and a mackintosh is chosen by each. And for evenings something "comfortable" and "easy to put on" in the way of a house gown or ordinary summer "day dress." One or two decide to take tea gowns in dark color and plainest variety.

All the women who sew or knit take something to "work on" in unoccupied moments, such as the hours of sitting silent in a canoe while husbands fish.

Finally the day arrives. Every one meets at the railroad station. They are all as smart looking as can be, there is no sign of "rough" clothes anywhere, though nothing in the least like a jewel case or parasol is to be seen. At the end of somewhere between eight and eighteen hours, they arrive at a shed which sits at the edge of the single track and is labelled Dustville Junction, and hurrying down the narrow platform is their host. Except that his face is clean shaven and his manners perfect, he might be taken for a tramp. Three far from smart looking teams--two buckboards and an express wagon--are standing near by. Kindhart welcomes everyone with enthusiasm--except the now emerging Ernest. For once Kindhart is nonplussed and he says to Worldly: "This isn't Newport, you know--of course we can give him a bed somewhere, but this is really no place for Ernest and there's nothing for him to do!"

Worldly, for the moment at a loss, explains lamely: "I thought he might be useful--if you could find some corner for him to-night, then we can see--that's all right, isn't it?"

Kindhart as host can't say anything further except to agree. Everyone is bundled into the buckboards (except Ernest who goes on top of the luggage in the express wagon), and a "corduroy" drive of six or eight miles begins.

!WHAT THE CAMP IS LIKE!

Summit Camp is a collection of wooden shacks like a group of packing cases dumped in a clearing among the pine trees at the edge of a mountain lake. Those who have never been there before feel some misgivings, those who have been there before remember with surprise that they had liked the place! The men alone are filled with enthusiasm. The only person who is thoroughly apprehensive of the immediate future is Ernest.

In front of the largest of the shacks, Mrs. Kindhart, surrounded by dogs and children, waves and hurries forward, beaming. Her enthusiasm is contagious, the children look blooming. That the "hards.h.i.+p" is not hurting them, is evident! And when the guests have seen the inside of the camps most of them are actually as pleased as they look. The biggest "shack" is a living-room, the one nearest is the dining camp, four or five smaller ones are sleeping camps for guests and another is the Kindharts' own.

The "living" camp is nothing but a single room about thirty feet wide and forty feet long, with an open raftered roof for ceiling. It has windows on four sides and a big porch built on the southeast corner. There is an enormous open fireplace, and a floor good enough to dance on. The woodwork is of rough lumber and has a single coat of leaf-green paint. The shelves between the uprights are filled with books. All the new novels and magazines are spread out on a long table. The room is furnished with Navajo blankets, wicker furniture, steamer chairs, and hammocks are hung across two of the corners. Two long divan sofas on either side of the fireplace are the only upholstered pieces of furniture in the whole camp, except the mattresses on the beds.

The guest camps are separate shacks, each one set back on a platform, leaving a porch in front. Inside they vary in size; most have two, some have four rooms, but each is merely one pointed-roofed s.p.a.ce. The front part has a fireplace and is furnished as a sitting-room, the rear half is part.i.tioned into two or more cubicles, like box-stalls, with part.i.tions about eight feet high and having regular doors. In each of the single rooms, there is a bed, bureau, washstand, chair, and two shelves about six or seven feet high, with a calico curtain nailed to the top one and hanging to the floor, making a hat shelf and clothes closet. The few "double" rooms are twice the size and have all furniture in duplicate. There is also a matting or a rag rug on the floor, and that is all!

Each cottage has a bathroom but the hot water supply seems complicated. A sign says your guide will bring it to you when needed. Mrs. Worldly, feeling vaguely uncomfortable and hungry, is firmly determined to go home on the next morning train. Before she has had much time to reflect, Mrs. Kindhart reports that lunch is nearly ready. Guides come with canisters of hot water, and everyone goes to dress. Town clothes disappear, and woods clothes emerge. This by no means makes a dowdy picture. Good sport clothes never look so well or becoming as when long use has given them an "accustomed set" characteristic of their wearer. The men put on their oldest country clothes too. Not their fis.h.i.+ng "treasures" to sit at table with ladies! The treasured articles go on in the early dawn, and the guides are the only humans (except themselves) supposed worthy to behold them!

Presently a gong is sounded. The Kindhart children run to the guest houses to call out that "the gong means dinner is ready!" And "dinner" means lunch.

!DINING-ROOM DETAILS!

In a short while the very group of people who only ten days before were being shown to their places in the Worldlys' own tapestry-hung marble dining-room at Great Estates by a dozen footmen in satin knee breeches, file into the "dining camp" and take their places at a long pine table, painted turkey red, on ordinary wooden kitchen chairs, also red! The floral decoration is of laurel leaves in vases made of preserve jars covered with birch bark. Gla.s.s and china is of the cheapest. But there are a long centerpiece of hemst.i.tched crash and crash doilies, and there are "real" napkins, and at each plate a birch bark napkin ring with a number on it. Mrs. Worldly looks at her napkin ring as though it were an insect. One or two of the others who have not been there before, look mildly surprised.

Mrs. Kindhart smiles, "I'm sorry, but I told you it was 'roughing it.' Any one who prefers innumerable paper napkins to using a washed one twice, is welcome. But one napkin a day apiece is camp rule!" Mrs. Worldly tries to look amiable, all the rest succeed.

The food is limited in variety but delicious. There are fresh trout from the lake and venison steak; both well cooked in every way that can be devised appear at every meal. All other supplies come in hampers from the city. The head cook is the Kindharts' own, and so is the butler, with one of the chauffeurs (when home) to help him wait on table. They wear "liveries," evolved by Mrs. Kindhart, of gray flannel trousers, green flannel blazers, very light gray flannel s.h.i.+rts, black ties, and moccasins!

The table service, since there are only two to wait on twenty including the children, is necessarily somewhat "farmer style"; ice, tea, rolls, b.u.t.ter, marmalade, cake, fruit, are all on the table, so that people may help themselves.

!THE AMUs.e.m.e.nTS OFFERED!

After luncheon Kindhart points out a dozen guides who are waiting at the boat-house to take anyone who wants to be paddled or to sail or to go out into the woods. There is a small swimming pool which can be warmed artificially. Those who like it cold swim in the lake. All the men disappear in groups or singly with a guide. The women go with their husbands, or two together, with a guide. Should any not want to go out, she can take to one of the hammocks, or a divan in the living-room, and a book.

At first sight, this hospitality seems inadequate, but its discomfort is one of outward appearance only. The food is abundant and delicious, whether cooked in the house or by the guides in the woods. The beds are comfortable; there are plenty of warm and good quality, though not white, blankets. Sheets are flannel or cotton as preferred. Pillow cases are linen, towels of the "bath" variety because was.h.i.+ng can be done by "natives" near by, but ironing is difficult. Let no one, however, think that this is a "simple" (by that meaning either easy or inexpensive) form of entertainment! Imagine the budget! A dozen guides, teams and drivers, natives to wash and clean and to help the cook; food for two or three dozen people sent hundreds of miles by express!

It is true that the buildings are of the most primitive, and the furnis.h.i.+ngs, too. The bureau drawers do stick, and there is only "curtained" closet room, and mirrors are few and diminutive, and orders for hot water have to be given ahead of time, but there is no discomfort, except bathing in the cold! The huge fire, lighted early every morning by one of the guides in each guest house, keeps the main part fairly warm but the temperature of one of the bathrooms on a cold morning is scarcely welcoming.

!CAMP MANNERS!

People do not "dress" for dinner, that is, not in evening clothes. After coming in from walking or shooting or fis.h.i.+ng, if it is warm they swim in the pool or have their guides bring them hot water for a bath. Women change into house gowns of some sort. Men put on flannel trousers, soft s.h.i.+rts, and flannel or serge sack coats.

In the evening, if it is a beautiful night, every one sits on steamer chairs wrapt in rugs around the big fire built out doors in front of a sort of penthouse or windbreak. Or if it is stormy, they sit in front of a fire, almost as big, in the living-room. Sometimes younger ones pop corn or roast chestnuts, or perhaps make taffy. Perhaps some one tells a story, or some one plays and everyone sings. Perhaps one who has "parlor tricks" amuses the others--but as a rule those who have been all day in the open are tired and drowsy and want nothing but to stretch out for a while in front of the big fire and then turn in.

The etiquette of this sort of a party is so apparently lacking that its inclusion perhaps seems out of place. But it is meant merely as a "picture" of a phase of fas.h.i.+onable life that is not much exploited, and to show that well-bred people never deteriorate in manner. Their behavior is precisely the same whether at Great Estates or in camp. A gentleman may be in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves actually, but he never gets into s.h.i.+rt sleeves mentally--he has no inclination to.

To be sure, on the particular party described above, Mrs. Worldly wore a squirrel fur cap in the evening as well as the daytime; she said it was because it was so warm and comfortable. It was really because she could not do her hair!

Perhaps some one asks about Ernest? At the end of two days of aloof and distasteful idleness, Ernest became quite a human being; invaluable as baiter of worms for the children's fish-hooks, as extra butler, and did not scorn even temporary experiments as kitchen-maid. In fact, he proved the half-hearted recommendation that he "might be useful" so thoroughly that the first person of all to be especially invited for next year and future years, was--exactly--Ernest.