"Amongst the salient points which distinguish the perfect or charming hostess are perhaps foremost, a certain facility of putting each individual guest at ease, conveying that the welcome she accords is a personal if not a special one. Simultaneously with these agreeable impressions is conveyed a sense of the hostess's genial qualities; her charm of manner, her graciousness and her courteous bearing evincing so plainly that she is entirely mistress of the situation: these qualities insensibly react upon the guests, and evoke a corresponding desire to please on their part.

The perfect hostess possesses yet another advantage, viz., a readiness of speech, a faculty of saying the right thing at the right moment and to the right person, and of the identifying herself, so to speak, with the susceptibilities of each of her guests.

The good hostess is essentially what is known as a considerate hostess; she makes up for the brightest qualities in which she is lacking by her extreme consideration for her guests. In the charming hostess this consideration is eclipsed by her more brilliant powers of pleasing, it permeates all she does. while in the good hostess it is her strongest point, and upon which is founded her claim to the name. The lady who bears the undesirable reputation of being "not a good hostess" is not"good" in a variety of ways; she means well and does her utmost to succeed, but by some contrariety of the laws which regulate domestic and social affairs, the results of her efforts are always the reverse of what she would have them be. The lady who is not a good hostess sometimes suffers from shyness and reserve which renders her stiff in manner when she would most desire to be cordial, silent when she would be most loquacious and awkward when she would be at ease."

Credit and courtesy: Leonid Rosenblatt

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8György Fülöp, Dipak Varu and 6 others

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