ich is
pretty much the truth.

About five o'clock, as you sit over your book in the library, you
hear a rapid firing off of guns, which apprises you that the men have
returned from shooting. They linger a while in the gun-room talking
over their sport and seeing the record of the killed entered in the
game-book. Then some, doffing the shooting-gear for a free-and-easy
but scrupulously neat attire, repair to the ladies' sitting-room or
the library for "kettledrum."

On a low table is placed the tea equipage, and tea in beautiful little
cups is being dispensed by fair hands. This is a very pleasant time
in many houses, and particularly favorable to fun and flirtation. In
houses where there are children, the cousins of the house and others
very intimate adjourn to the school-room, where, when the party is
further reinforced by three or four boys home for the holidays, a
scene of fun and frolic, which it requires all the energies of the
staid governess to prevent going too far, ensues.

So time speeds on until the dressing-bell rings at seven o'clock,
summoning all to prepare for the great event of the day--dinner. Every
one dons evening-attire for this meal; and so strong a feeling obtains
on this point that if, in case of his luggage going wrong or other
accident, a man is compelled to join the party in morning-clothes, he
feels painfully "fish-out-of-waterish." We know, indeed, of a case in
which a guest absurdly sensitive would not come down to dinner until
the arrival of his things, which did not make their appearance for a
week.

Ladies' dress in country-houses depends altogether upon the occasion.
If it be a quiet party of intimate friends, their attire is of the
simplest, but in many fashionable houses the amount of dressing is
fully as great as in London. English ladies do not dress nearly as
expensively or with so much taste as Americans, but, on the other
hand, they have the subject much less in their thoughts; which is
perhaps even more desirable.

There is a degree of pomp and ceremony, which, however, is far from
being unpleasant, at dinner in a large country-house. The party is
frequently joined by the rector and his wife, a neighboring squire
or two, and a stray parson, so that it frequently reaches twenty. Of
course in this case the pleasantness of the prandial period depends
largely upon whom you have the luck to get next to; but there's this
advantage in the situation over a similar one in London--