necessarily so.
One of the most important maxims of hospitality is, "Let your guests
alone!" If it were generally observed it would save both hosts and
visitors a world of trouble. Your first object should be to make your
guests feel at home. This they never can do while your needless bustle
and obtrusive attentions constantly remind them that they are not at
home, and perhaps make them wish they were.

You will not, of course, understand us to mean that you should devote
no attention to your guests. On the contrary, you should assiduously
labor to promote their comfort and enjoyment, opening to them every
source of entertainment within your reach; but it should be done in
that easy, delicate, considerate way which will make it seem a matter
of course, and no trouble whatever to you. You should not seem to be
conferring but receiving a favor.

Begging your visitors to "make themselves at home," does not give them
the home _feeling_. Genuine, unaffected friendliness, and an
unobtrusive and almost unperceived attention to their wants alone will
impart this. Allow their presence to interfere as little as possible
with your domestic arrangements; thus letting them see that their
visit does not disturb you, but that they fall, as it were, naturally
into a vacant place in your household.

Observe your own feelings when you happen to be the guest of a person
who, though he may be very much your friend, and really glad to see
you, seems not to know what to do either with you or himself; and
again, when in the house of another, you feel as much at ease as in
your own. Mark the difference, more easily felt than described,
between the manners of the two, and deduce therefrom a lesson for your
own improvement.

Furnish your rooms and table for your guests in as good style as your
means and the circumstances of the case will permit, and make no fuss
about it. To be unnecessarily sparing shows meanness, and to be
extravagantly profuse is absurd as well an ruinous. Probably your
visitors know whether your income is large or small and if they do not
they will soon learn, on that point, all that it is necessary for
them to know. But if any circumstance out of the ordinary course of
things should render an apology necessary, make it at once and say no
more about it.

Avoid by all means the very common but very foolish habit of
depreciating your own rooms, furniture, or viands, and expressing
uncalled-for regrets that you have noth