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 3. Don’t discuss the shortcomings of your neighbours. It was probably to escape neighbours that he accepted your invitation.

4. Don’t dispose of every moment of his time before he arrives. Too many visits resemble three days in Rome on a Cook ticket.

5. Beware of showing him collections of photographs of your relations. It is an attack on an unarmed man.

6. Talk less than you listen. He does his listening at home.

7. Remember you invited him. Blame yourself if a visit which augured well at the beginning bores badly at the end.

8. Don’t make excuses. He can see without a magnifying glass, and you won’t have time to get them all in, anyhow.

9. Make it as easy for him to go as it was to come. Fly-paper is not hospitality.

10. Ask him to come again. It is a perfectly safe risk so long as you don’t put it in writing.

It is proper, at this point, to speak briefly of my garden. I felt it to be appropriate to my condition of country gentleman that I