orded turns a game into "gambling."

=AN ELUSIVE POINT ESSENTIAL TO SOCIAL SUCCESS=

The sense of whom to invite with whom is one of the most important, and
elusive, points in social knowledge. The possession or lack of it is
responsible more than anything else for the social success of one woman,
and the failure of another. And as it is almost impossible, without
advice, for any stranger anywhere to know which people like or dislike
each other, the would-be hostess must either by means of natural talent or
more likely by trained attention, read the signs of liking or prejudice
much as a woodsman reads a message in every broken twig or turned leaf.

One who can read expression, perceives at a glance the difference between
friendliness and polite aloofness. When a lady is unusually silent,
strictly impersonal in conversation, and entirely unapproachable,
something is not to her liking. The question is, what? Or usually, whom?
The greatest blunder possible would be to ask her what the matter is. The
cause of annoyance is probably that she finds someone distasteful and it
should not be hard for one whose faculties are not asleep to discover the
offender and if possible separate them, or at least never ask them
together again.

CHAPTER X

CARDS AND VISITS

=USEFULNESS OF CARDS=

Who was it that said--in the Victorian era probably, and a man of
course--"The only mechanical tool ever needed by a woman is a hair-pin"?
He might have added that with a hair-pin and a visiting card, she is ready
to meet most emergencies.

Although the principal use of a visiting card, at least the one for which
it was originally invented--to be left as an evidence of one person's
presence at the house of another--is going gradually out of ardent favor
in fashionable circles, its usefulness seems to keep a nicely adjusted
balance. In New York, for instance, the visiting card has entirely taken
the place of the written note of invitation to informal parties of every
description. Messages of condolence or congratulation are written on it;
it is used as an endorsement in the giving of an order; it is even tacked
on the outside of express boxes. The only employment of it which is not as
flourishing as formerly is its being left in quantities and with frequency
at the doors of acquaintances. This will be explained further on.

=A CARD'S SIZE AND ENGRAVING=

The card of a lady is usually from about 2-3/4 to 3-1/2 inches wide, by 2