Sisyphus task?  Would the social machine go to pieces—­the inquiry is made in good faith, and solely for information—­if they made rational business for themselves to be attended to, or even if they gave the time now given to calls they hate to reading and study, and to making their household civilizing centres of intercourse and enjoyment, and paid visits from some other motive than “clearing off their list”?  If all the artificial round of calls and cards should tumble down, what valuable thing would be lost out of anybody’s life?

The question is too vast for the Drawer, but as an experiment in sociology it would like to see the system in abeyance for one season.  If at the end of it there had not been just as much social enjoyment as before, and there were not fewer women than usual down with nervous prostration, it would agree to start at its own expense a new experiment, to wit, a kind of Social Clearing-House, in which all cards should be delivered and exchanged, and all social debts of this kind be balanced by experienced bookkeepers, so that the reputation of everybody for propriety and conventionality should be just as good as it is now.

DINNER-TABLE TALK

Many people suppose that it is the easiest thing in the world to dine if you can get plenty to eat.  This error is the foundation of much social misery.  The world that never dines, and fancies it has a grievance justifying anarchy on that account, does not know how much misery it escapes.  A great deal has been written about the art of dining.  From time to time geniuses have appeared who knew how to compose a dinner; indeed, the art of doing it can be learned, as well as the art of cooking and serving it.  It is often possible, also, under extraordinarily favorable conditions, to select a company congenial and varied and harmonious enough to dine together successfully.  The tact for getting the right people together is perhaps rarer than the art of composing the dinner.  But it exists.  And an elegant table with a handsome and brilliant company about it is a common conjunction in this country.  Instructions are not wanting as to the shape of the table and the size of the party; it is universally admitted that the number must be small.  The big dinner-parties which are commonly made to pay off social debts are generally of the sort that one would rather contribute to in money than in personal attendance.  When the dinner is treated as a means of discharging obligations, it loses all character, and becomes one of the social inflictions.  While there is nothing in social intercourse so agreeable and inspiring as a dinner of the right sort, society has invented no infliction equal to a large dinner that does not “go,” as the phrase is.  Why it does not go when the viands are good and the company is bright is one of the acknowledged mysteries.