Having generalized by drawing two pictures, it is now time to take up the specific details to be considered in giving a dinner.

=DETAILED DIRECTIONS FOR DINNER GIVING=

The requisites at every dinner, whether a great one of 200 covers, or a little one of six, are as follows: 

Guests.  People who are congenial to one another.  This is of first importance.

Food.  A suitable menu perfectly prepared and dished. (Hot food to be hot, and cold, cold.)

Table furnishing.  Faultlessly laundered linen, brilliantly polished silver, and all other table accessories suitable to the occasion and surroundings.

Service.  Expert dining-room servants and enough of them.

Drawing-room.  Adequate in size to number of guests and inviting in arrangement.

A cordial and hospitable host.

A hostess of charm.  Charm says everything—­tact, sympathy, poise and perfect manners—­always.

And though for all dinners these requisites are much the same, the necessity for perfection increases in proportion to the formality of the occasion.

=TASTE IN SELECTION OF PEOPLE=

The proper selection of guests is the first essential in all entertaining, and the hostess who has a talent for assembling the right people has a great asset.  Taste in house furnishings or in clothes or in selecting a cook, is as nothing compared to taste in people!  Some people have this “sense”—­others haven’t.  The first are the great hosts and hostesses; the others are the mediocre or the failures.

It is usually a mistake to invite great talkers together.  Brilliant men and women who love to talk want hearers, not rivals.  Very silent people should be sandwiched between good talkers, or at least voluble talkers.  Silly people should never be put anywhere near learned ones, nor the dull near the clever, unless the dull one is a young and pretty woman with a talent for listening, and the clever, a man with an admiration for beauty, and a love for talking.

Most people think two brilliant people should be put together.  Often they should, but with discretion.  If both are voluble or nervous or “temperamental,” you may create a situation like putting two operatic sopranos in the same part and expecting them to sing together.

The endeavor of a hostess, when seating her table, is to put those together who are likely to be interesting to each other.  Professor Bugge might bore you to tears, but Mrs. Entomoid would probably delight in him; just as Mr. Stocksan Bonds and Mrs. Rich would probably have interests in common.  Making a dinner list is a little like making a Christmas list.  You put down what they will (you hope) like, not what you like.  Those who are placed between congenial neighbors remember your dinner as delightful—­even though both food and service were mediocre; but ask people out of their own groups and seat them next to their pet aversions, and wild horses could not drag them to your house again!