o ceremonies at all.
He goes through all the complicated duties of the scene as if he were
'to the manner born.'"

To the giver of a dinner we have but one or two remarks to offer. If
he be a bachelor, he had better give his dinner at a good hotel, or
have it sent in from Birch's or Kuehn's. If a married man, he will, we
presume, enter into council with his wife and his cook. In any
case, however, he should always bear in mind that it is his duty to
entertain his friends in the best manner that his means permit;
and that this is the least he can do to recompense them for the
expenditure of time and money which they incur in accepting his
invitation.

"To invite a friend to dinner," says Brillat Savarin, "is to become
responsible for his happiness so long as he is under your roof."
Again:--"He who receives friends at his table, without having bestowed his
personal supervision upon the repast placed before them, is unworthy
to have friends."

A dinner, to be excellent, need not consist of a great variety of
dishes; but everything should be of the best, and the cookery should
be perfect. That which should be cool should be cool as ice; that
which should be hot should be smoking; the attendance should be
rapid and noiseless; the guests well assorted; the wines of the best
quality; the host attentive and courteous; the room well lighted; and
the time punctual.

Every dinner should begin with soup, be followed by fish, and include
some kind of game. "The soup is to the dinner," we are told by Grisnod
de la Regniere, "what the portico is to a building, or the overture to
an opera."

To this aphorism we may be permitted to add that a _chasse_ of cognac
or curacoa at the close of the dinner is like the epilogue at the end
of a comedy.

One more quotation and we have done:--"To perform faultlessly the
honours of the table is one of the most difficult things in society.
It might indeed he asserted without much fear of contradiction, that
no man has as yet ever reached exact propriety in his office as host,
or has hit the mean between exerting himself too much and too little.
His great business is to put every one entirely at his ease, to
gratify all his desires, and make him, in a word, absolutely contented
with men and things. To accomplish this, he must have the genius
of tact to perceive, and the genius of finesse to execute; ease
and frankness of manner; a knowledge of the world that nothing
can surprise; a calmness