Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/108

 managed to get in at the "crush," and near enough to the hostess to bow and touch her hand, their sole attention henceforward becomes concentrated on the business of getting out again as rapidly as possible. For let it be said to the praise, honour and glory of the sterner sex, that taken in the rough majority, they detest the fashionable "At Home," with vigorous and honest intensity,—and unless they are of that degenerate class who like to be seen hanging round some notoriously press-puffed "professional beauty," or some equally notoriously known leader of the Smart Set, they are seldom seen at such gatherings. They feel themselves to be incongruous and out of place,—and so they are. "At Homes" are curious sort of social poultry-yards, where the hens have it all their own way, and do most distinctly crow.

But if "At Homes" are bad enough, the smart, the very smart dinner-party is perhaps a little worse in its entire lack of the true hospitality which, united to grace and tact and ready conversation, should make every guest feel that his or her presence is valuable and welcome. A small private dinner, at which the company are some six or eight persons at most, is sometimes (though not by any means always) quite a pleasant affair, but a "big" dinner in the "big" sense of the word, is generally the most painful and dismal of functions, except to those for whom silent gorging and after repletion are the essence of all mental and physical joy. I remember—and of a truth it would be impossible to forget—one of these dinners which took place one season in a very "swagger" house—the house of a member of that old British nobility