Page:When You Write a Letter (1922).pdf/110



My sister Virginia was giving a dinner, and she asked me to help her write the invitations. For several reasons the invitations were to be written and not engraved. Virginia is a stickler for social conventions and for thoroughly good form, so she couldn't have them printed, for both she and I knew that that would suggest that we are common and vulgar and inexperienced in social affairs; only those who are ignorant of what is done by the most careful people, or those who choose for the sake of haste or economy to ignore social conventions, ever have their calling cards or their invitations printed. There was not time to have them engraved, for Virginia had decided rather hastily to give the dinner, she could secure the caterer only upon a certain night, and she knew that she would have to give her guests ten days in which to reply to her invitation and to get their feathers preened up. The written invitation is quite as good form as is the engraved one, and so, as I said, my sister decided to write her invitations, and she asked me to help her.