Part 5

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In criticising a play or a novel be careful to avoid long and discriminating criticisms. You should either “knock” or “boost.” Try to remember that there are only two kinds of plays or novels—they are either “bully” or “rotten.”

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If a few people in the smart set are entertaining a stranger at lunch, it is de rigueur for them to converse with each other entirely in whispers and always on subjects with which he is absolutely unfamiliar.

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In discussing literature at a lunch or dinner, try to remember that there are but a very few fashionable authors. They are as follows: Mrs. Wharton, Colonel Mann, Mrs. Glyn, Robert Hichens, F. Peter Dunne, John Fox, Jr., and Billy Baxter.

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At a dinner a gentleman sitting beside a débutante should congratulate her upon her début, and, in a few well-chosen words, should discuss the usual débutante topics—i. e., platonic love, banting, Ethel Barrymore, French dressmakers, John Drew, the relative merits of Harvard and Yale, love at first sight, the football match and the matter of her great personal beauty and charm.

Try always to remember that the chief and most interesting topics of conversation are herself and yourself. Serious topics are very properly deemed out of place in society.

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After dinner, over the cigars, it is bad form for men to discuss any subjects but stocks and motor cars.

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Whenever, at a dinner, an anecdote is narrated in French, it is always a wise precaution to laugh heartily.

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Women should not complain of their husbands in public. All married women have a great deal to contend with. Everybody knows that married men make very poor husbands.

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At a dinner the safest conversational opening is as follows: “Is that your bread, or mine?”

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When, at a dinner, you don’t know the lady next to you, show her your dinner card and say:

“I’m that; what are you?”

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Chivalry demands that a lady’s name should never be mentioned in a gentleman’s club. Occasionally, however, this hard-and-fast rule may be slightly infracted, and her intimate affairs discreetly talked over—provided that the group of gentlemen be a small one and absolute privacy assured.

N. B.—A “small group” is any group of less than twelve.

DINNERS

DINNERS

A dinner is a miscellaneous collection of appropriately dressed men and women, who are not in the least hungry and who are invited by the host and hostess to repay certain social obligations for value received or expected. The attitude of the guests at such a repast is very often one of regret and revolt, because of the haunting memory of an invitation, much more enticing in its prospects, but, alas, more recently received.

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