are attentive enough to go often to see her. But if a
stranger calls on her--particularly a stranger who may not know that she
is always confined to the house, it is correct for a daughter or sister
or even a friend to leave the invalid's card for her and even to pay a
visit should she find a hostess "at home." In this event the visitor by
proxy lays her own card as well as that of the invalid on the tray
proffered her. Upon being announced to the hostess, she naturally explains
that she is appearing in place of her mother (or whatever relation the
invalid is to her) and that the invalid herself is unable to make any
visits.

A lady never pays a party call on a gentleman. But if the gentleman who
has given a dinner has his mother (or sister) staying with him and if the
mother (or sister) chaperoned the party, cards should of course be left
upon her.

Having risen to go, _go_! Don't stand and keep your hostess standing while
you say good-by, and make a last remark last half an hour!

Few Americans are so punctilious as to pay their dinner calls within
twenty-four hours; but it is the height of correctness and good manners.

When a gentleman, whose wife is away, accepts some one's hospitality, it
is correct for his wife to pay the party call with (or for) him, since it
is taken for granted that she would have been included had she been at
home.

In other days a hostess thought it necessary to change quickly into a best
dress if important company rang her door-bell. A lady of fashion to-day
receives her visitors at once in whatever dress she happens to be wearing,
since not to keep them waiting is the greater courtesy.

CHAPTER XI

INVITATIONS, ACCEPTANCES AND REGRETS

=THE FORMAL INVITATION=

As an inheritance from the days when Mrs. Brown presented her compliments
and begged that Mrs. Smith would do her the honor to take a dish of tea
with her, we still--notwithstanding the present flagrant disregard of
old-fashioned convention--send our formal invitations, acceptances and
regrets, in the prescribed punctiliousness of the third person.

All formal invitations, whether they are to be engraved or to be written
by hand (and their acceptances and regrets) are invariably in the third
person, and good usage permits of no deviation from this form.

=WEDDING INVITATIONS=

The invitation to the ceremony is engraved on the front sheet of white
note-paper. The smartest, at present, is that with a raised mar