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"There is an emanation from the heart in genuine hospitality which cannot be described, but is immediately felt, and puts the stranger at once at his ease."
--Washington Irving.

Were we to look up the meaning of the word hospitality in the dictionary, we would find it defined as the act of receiving and entertaining guests kindly, generously, and gratuitously, without expectation of reward.
According to such a definition, much that passes for hospitality in the social realm does not deserve the name. Society is a give-and¬-take arrangement, somewhat resembling the gift exchange we practise at Christmas. If you do not give you do not get; if you do not entertain you are not invited, unless it is understood that circumstances prevent your doing so. Then one is asked for what one can contribute in the way of good company, promotion of gayety, and the like. One "pays her way" by being agreeable, well gowned, popular. Thus, in a way, much social hospitality is merely social bargaining. The woman who feels indebted to her circle--or circles, for these impinge upon each other--gives a large reception or "at home." She can seldom do more than welcome the coming and speed the parting guest. Her greeting is "So delighted to see you here;" her farewell, "Good-bye; so glad you were able to come." Her guests have greeted each other in much the same casual fashion, have had some refresh¬ments warranted to destroy their appetite for dinner; have shown a handsome gown and hat--and perhaps had the former injured in the crush. One is reminded of Bunthornes "Hollow! Hollow! Hollow!!"

Real Hospitality
Quite different is this from what we offer when we invite our friends to visit us. Here is genuine hospitality--the receiving and entertaining gratuitously those whose companionship we enjoy. One of the chief joys of having ones own home is the pleasure of being able to welcome ones friends and afford them the privilege of enjoying it also. An invitation of this kind means we are willing to incommode ourselves, incur expense, and give a measure of our time to the entertainment of those of our friends whose society we wish to enjoy familiarly. Thus it seems that an invitation to visit a friend in her home is a compliment of no mean order, although Nicole says: "Visits are for the most part neither more nor less than inventions for discharging upon our neighbors somewhat of our own unendurable weight."

Short Visits
Visits are of much shorter duration than in those "old times" people talk about so enthusiastically--and would find so tire¬some were they to return again. Then visitors stayed week after week; were urged to remain longer when they proposed departure. The story goes of a Virginia planter who invited an old war-time friend to visit him. At the end of a month the major proposed departure. His host objected so strenuously that he agreed to stay another month. And so it went on, the guest regularly proposing to leave, the host hospitably insisting on his remaining, until in the end the old veteran died in and was buried from his friends house. This, however, is an example not to be emulated in these less hospitable days.
There is a saying, "Short visits make long friends," that is worth consideration by those who visit. Probably the truth of the saying has been so often attested that it has given rise to the custom of specifying the date of arrival and departure of a guest when giving the invitation. It has become to be understood that the vague, indefinite invitation "Do come and see us sometime," means nothing. No one would think for a moment of taking it in good faith. If the giver wishes to entertain her friend she will ask if it will be convenient for her to visit her at a certain specified date. Nothing less counts. An understanding of this might save the unexperienced from the awkwardness of making an unwelcome visit.

The Unexpected Visit
Nothing is worse form than "the surprise visit." Generally you do surprise your hostess and very often most disagreeably. A housekeeper does not enjoy an intrusion--for such it is--¬of that kind any more than you would be pleased to have a chance caller rush unannounced into your private rooms. Even among relatives and the most intimate friends, there is nothing to justify the unexpected arrival. Nothing so strikes terror to a womans soul as the thud of trunks on the piazza and the crunch of wheels on the gravel, meaning someone has "come to stay."
Such an arrival is a piece of presumption on the part of the visitor. She assumes she will be welcome at any time she chooses to present herself. This may be true; but at the same time there is an obligation of courtesy which requires her to consult her friends convenience. Instead, she consults her own and utterly ignores that of her hostess, who is thus forced into entertaining her.

The Inopportune Arrival
Many awkward and sometimes amusing anecdotes are told in connection with the inopportune visit. Thus not long ago the newspapers chronicled the plight of a woman who undertook to surprise an acquaintance from whom she had not heard for several years. She was driven to their house and dismissed the carriage. A strange face met her at the door, and she learned that her friend had removed to another city nearly a twelvemonth before. "Served her right" will be everybodys verdict.
Suppose one arrives unexpectedly and finds the friends house full of other and invited company. Then, if ever, she ought to feel herself "a rank outsider." If she is tactless enough not to give notice of her intended arrival, she probably has not the good sense to depart as quickly as possible. The man of the house may have to sleep on the parlor sofa, or the children on the floor, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred the whole family will wish her in Halifax.
Or she may arrive to find some member of the family ill, or house-cleaning or repairing in progress, or the house in the hands of the decorators. Indeed, so many unforeseen accidents may occur to make her visit an unpleasant memory, both to herself and her hostess, that only the most selfish and inconsiderate of women will so violate the social conventions as to make "surprise visits."

Visits That Save Expense
Something equally reprehensible is the visit we pay to a friend in town where we have business or desire a pleasure trip, and do not propose to have it cost us much of any¬thing. We force hospitality on our acquaintances in order to save hotel bills. They know it, and they feel about it just exactly as we would in their places--that is, that it is an imposition on good nature and a mean and selfish thing to do.
"We gave up our house and went to boarding simply because my health and my husbands salary were inadequate to the demands made upon them by our out-of-town relatives and acquaintances, who used us as a restaurant and hotel. There was seldom a week when we did not give ten or twelve meals and two or three nights lodging to people better able to pay for them than we were to furnish them. So we gave up housekeeping." This is an actual experience.

MANNERS AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS FOR OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS
AS WELL AS OUR BEST SOCIETY
Correspondence, Cards and Introductions, Dress for Different Occasions, Weddings, Christenings, Funerals, Etc.,
Social Functions, Dinners, Luncheons.
Gifts, "Showers," Calls, and Hundreds of Other Essential Subjects so Vital to Culture and Refinement of Men, Women, School-Girls and Boys at Home and in Public.
By MRS. ELIZABETH JOHNSTONE
Excerpt from the book:
MOTHERS  REMEDIES
Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers of the United States and Canada.
By DR. T. J. RITTER
PUBLISHED BY G.H. FOOTE  PUB. CO. DETROIT MICH 1921

There is no situation in which ones good breeding is so much in evidence as at the table. For that reason, mothers should begin to train their children in infancy to correct usage. As soon as a child is able to hold a spoon and fork, he should be taught how to hold them properly, and the training should be continued until the right habit is established.
One should not be seated until the lady of the house is seated, unless especially requested to do so. Children should observe this rule as rigidly as that which requires the removal of the hat on entering the house.

At the Table
On being seated, the napkin is unfolded and laid across the lap. It is more correct to only unfold one-half, that is, open it at the center fold. One is not supposed to require further protection than from the accidental crumb. On no account should it be used as a bib, or be tucked in the dress or waistcoat.
Grape fruit is eaten from an orange spoon. If oysters are served raw, they must not be cut but eaten whole.
Soup must be taken from the side of the spoon, quietly, with no hissing or other sound, nor should the spoon be so full that it drips over. The motion of the spoon in filling it, is away from instead of towards the person; and tilting the plate to secure the last spoonful is bad form.
Crackers are never served with soup: croutons--small squares of bread toasted very hard and brown, or small H. & P. biscuits are passed. These are never put into the soup, but are eaten from the hand. Neither soup nor fish should be offered the second time.
Fish is generally eaten with a fork and a bit of bread, though silver fish knives are in occasional use. The entree which follows the fish should be eaten with the fork only. A mouthful of meat is cut as required; it is never buried in potato or any vegetable and then conveyed to the mouth. Vegetables are no longer served in "birds bath-tubs," as some wit once called the individual vegetable dishes, but are cooked sufficiently dry to be served on the plate with the meat. All vegetables are eaten with the fork, so also jellies, chutney, etc., served with the meat course.

Using the Fork
The fork laid farthest from the plate is to be used for the first course requiring such a utensil; the others are used in their order. The knife is held in the right hand; by the handle, not the blade. The fork should not be held like a spoon, or a shovel, but more as one would hold a pencil or pen; it is raised laterally to the mouth. The elbow is not to be projected, or crooked outward, in using either knife or fork; that is a very awkward performance. The fork should never be over-burdened. The knife is never lifted to the mouth; it is said that "only members of the legislature eat pie with a knife nowadays." The handle of neither knife or fork may rest on the table nor the former be laid across the edge of the plate.
Tender meat, like the breast of chickens, may be cut with the fork. A bone is never taken in the fingers, the historic anecdote about Queen Victoria to the contrary notwithstanding. The table manners of the twentieth century are not Early Victorian. Olives and celery are correctly laid on the bread-and-butter plate. The former is never dipped in ones salt cellar; a small portion of salt is put on the edge of the plate; both are eaten from the fingers.

Vegetables, Fruits, etc.
Green corn is seldom served on the cob at ceremonious dinners. If it is served, it is to be broken in medium-sized pieces and eaten from the cob, a rather messy process, and one not pretty to observe. The fastidious avoid it. If eaten, the piece is held between the fingers of one hand. To take an unbroken ear in both hands and gnaw the length of it suggests the manners of an animal never named in polite society.
It is correct to take up asparagus by the stalk, and eat it from the fingers, but the newer and more desirable custom is to cut off the edible portion with knife and fork. Lettuce is never cut with a knife; a fork is used, the piece rolled up and conveyed to the mouth.
Hard cheese may be eaten from the fingers; soft cheeses, like Neufchatel, Brie, and the like, are eaten with the fork, or a bit is spread on a morsel of bread and conveyed to the mouth with the fingers.
A soft cake is eaten with a fork. The rule is that whatever can be eaten with a fork shall be so eaten.
Roman punch and sherbets require a spoon. Berries, peaches and cream, custards, preserves, jellies, call for the spoon. Strawberries are often served as a first course in their season. They are then arranged with their hulls and a portion of stem left on, dipped in powdered sugar and eaten from the fingers. A little mound of the sugar is pressed into shape in the center of the small plate and the berries laid around it.
Peaches, pears, and apples are peeled with the fruit knife, cut in quarters or eighths, and eaten from the fingers. Bananas are stripped of the skin, cut in pieces with a fork and eaten from it. Oranges are cut in two across the sections and eaten with an orange spoon. Plums, like olives, are eaten by biting off the pulp without taking the stone in the mouth. Pineapple, unless shredded or cut up, requires both knife and fork; it is usually prepared for more convenient eating. Grapes, which should be washed by letting water from the faucet run over them and laid on a folded towel until the moisture drips off, are eaten from behind the half-closed hand, which receives the skins and seeds, then to be deposited on the plate.
If the small cup of coffee--the demi-tasse--is served, the small after-dinner coffee spoon is necessary. Cream is seldom served with the black coffee--cafe noir--with which a meal concludes, cut loaf sugar is passed.

The Spoon
The spoon must never be left in the cup, no matter what beverage is served. Most of us have seen some absent-minded individual (we will charitably suppose him absent-minded instead of ignorant), stir his coffee round and round and round, creating a miniature whirlpool and very likely slopping it over into the saucer; then, prisoning the spoon with a finger, drink half the cups contents at a gulp. To do this is positively vulgar. Stir the coffee or tea very slightly, just enough to stir the cream and sugar with it, then drink in sips. To take either from the teaspoon is bad form. Bread is broken, not cut, and only a small portion buttered at a time. Do not play with bread crumbs or spoon, etc., during the progress of a meal.
Leave knife and fork on the plate, handles side by side, when it is passed for a second helping, and at a conclusion of a course, or the meal, lay them in the same position, points of the fork upward.

Finger Bowls
When finger bowls are brought, the tips of the fingers are dipped in the bowl and dried on the napkin. Men may lift the moistened fingers to the lips; women seldom do this, but wipe the lips with the napkin. At any function the napkin is not folded, but laid at the side of the plate at the conclusion of the repast. If a guest for a day or so, or for more than one meal, note what your hostess does with her napkin and follow her. If a guest at only one meal, never fold the napkin. Be careful not to throw it down so carelessly that it is stained with coffee, fruit, or fruit juices; your hostess will thank you for your consideration.
Be ready to rise when your hostess rises; you do not push your chair into place; simply rise and leave it. Rise on the side of your chair so you will not have to go around it in following your hostess to the drawing room.

MANNERS AND SOCIAL CUSTOMS FOR OUR GREAT MIDDLE CLASS
AS WELL AS OUR BEST SOCIETY
Correspondence, Cards and Introductions, Dress for Different Occasions, Weddings, Christenings, Funerals, Etc.,
Social Functions, Dinners, Luncheons.
Gifts, "Showers," Calls, and Hundreds of Other Essential Subjects so Vital to Culture and Refinement of Men, Women, School-Girls and Boys at Home and in Public.
By MRS. ELIZABETH JOHNSTONE
Excerpt from the book:
MOTHERS  REMEDIES
Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers of the United States and Canada.
By DR. T. J. RITTER
PUBLISHED BY G.H. FOOTE  PUB. CO. DETROIT MICH 1921