The fish which was to have been a mousse with Hollandaise sauce, is a huge mound, much too big for the platter, with a narrow gutter of water around the edge and the center dabbed over with a curdled yellow mess.  You realize that not only is the food itself awful, but that the quantity is too great for one dish.  You don’t know what to do next; you know there is no use in apologizing, there is no way of dropping through the floor, or waking yourself up.  You have collected the smartest and the most critical people around your table to put them to torture such as they will never forget.  Never!  You have to bite your lips to keep from crying.  Whatever possessed you to ask these people to your horrible house?

Mr. Kindhart, sitting next to you, says gently, “Cheer up, little girl, it doesn’t really matter!” And then you know to the full how terrible the situation is.  The meal is endless; each course is equally unappetizing to look at, and abominably served.  You notice that none of your guests eat anything.  They can’t.

You leave the table literally sick, but realizing fully that the giving of a dinner is not as easy as you thought.  And in the drawing-room, which is now fireless and freezing, but at least smokeless, you start to apologize and burst into tears!

As you are very young, and those present are all really fond of you, they try to be comforting, but you know that it will be years (if ever) before any of them will be willing to risk an evening in your house again.  You also know that without malice, but in truth and frankness, they will tell everyone:  “Whatever you do, don’t dine with the Newweds unless you eat your dinner before you go, and wear black glasses so no sight can offend you.”

When they have all gone, you drag yourself miserably up-stairs, feeling that you never want to look in that drawing-room or dining-room again.  Your husband, remembering the trenches, tries to tell you it was not so bad!  But you know! You lie awake planning to let the house, and to discharge each one of your awful household the next morning, and then you realize that the fault is not a bit more theirs than yours.

If you had tried the chimney first, and learned its peculiarities; if you yourself had known every detail of cooking and service, of course you would not have attempted to give the dinner in the first place; not at least until, through giving little dinners, the technique of your household had become good enough to give a big one.

On the other hand, supposing that you had had a very experienced cook and waitress; dinner would, of course, not have been bungled, but it would have lacked something, somewhere, if you added nothing of your own personality to its perfection.  It is almost safe to make the statement that no dinner is ever really well done unless the hostess herself knows every smallest detail thoroughly.  Mrs. Worldly pays seemingly no attention, but nothing escapes her.  She can walk through a room without appearing to look either to the right or left, yet if the slightest detail is amiss, an ornament out of place, or there is one dull button on a footman’s livery, her house telephone is rung at once!