e, for it reduces the general liability of talk, and a common man,
if he be industrious, may pluck his bird down to the bone in peace.

A formal reception is even worse than a dinner. One stands around with
stalled machinery. Good stout legs, that can go at a trot all day,
become now weak and wabbly. One hurdles dispiritedly over trailing
skirts. One tries in conversation to think of the name of a play he
has just seen, but it escapes him. It is, however, so nearly in his
grasp, that it prevents him from turning to another topic. Benson, the
essayist, also disliked formal receptions and he quotes Prince Hal in
their dispraise. "Prithee, Ned," says the Prince--and I fancy that he
has just led a thirsty Duchess to the punchbowl, and was now in the
very act of escaping while her face was buried in the cup--"Prithee,
Ned," he says, "come out of this fat room, and lend me thy hand to
laugh a little!" And we can imagine these two enfranchised rogues,
easy at heart, making off later to their Eastcheap tavern, and the
passing of a friendly cup. But now, alas, today, all of the rooms of
the house are fat and thick with people. There is a confusion of
tongues as when work on the tower of Babel was broken off. There is no
escape. If it were one's good luck to be a waiter, one could at least
console himself that it was his livelihood.

The furniture has been removed from all the rooms in order that more
persons may be more uncomfortable. Or perhaps the chairs and tables,
like rats in a leaky ship, have scuttled off, as it were, now that
fashion has wrecked the home. A friend of mine, J----, resents these
entertainments. No sooner, recently, did he come into such a bare
apartment where, in happier days his favorite chair had stood, than he
hinted to the guests that the furniture had been sold to meet the
expenses of the day. This sorry jest lasted him until, on whispering
to a servant, he learned that the chairs had been stored in an upper
hall. At this he proposed that the party reassemble above, where at
least they might sit down and be comfortable. When I last saw J----
that evening he was sitting at the turn of the stairs behind an exotic
shrubbery, where he had found a vagrant chair that had straggled
behind the upper emigration.

The very envelope that contains a formal invitation bears a forbidding
look. It is massive and costly to the eye. It is much larger than a
letter, unless, perhaps, one carries on a correspondence wi