Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 257, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1912 — MAKING DINNER A SUCCESS [ARTICLE]

MAKING DINNER A SUCCESS

Next to Cuisine, Most Important Point Is the Proper Seating of the Assembled Guests. You may have a dinner with the best appointment and cuisine, and if your guests are badly chosen the dinner will be a social failure. Certain elements will not coalesce, and the woman who tries to force the process Is courting an explosion. Choose guests as you would shoes- — because they fit. You may be catholic in your taste and enjoy the butterfly without a brain and the woman who is all brain but without social grace, the artist or musician, the snob who distrusts all she clever coterie, the man who loves a gay story and the woman who is easily shocked. But gather those friends around a common board and you may count on their boredom. If you must have a mixed dinner pfay for tact in the seating. “A man csres what he eats; a woman cares whom she sits next.” Never seat your guests according to social position. The practice makes neither the dinner nor the hostess popular. If you pufe»the socially unimportant together your entertaining will never be a success. Custom has it that those who sit on the right and left of the host and hostess may feel themselves singled out for attention —but choose for reasons. Do not give your guests a chance to gibe at you as a money worshiper or one with an axe to grind. Do not have dinners so large as to prevent general conversation. Not all who go out to dinner are blessed with manners, and the hostess should have it in her power to go to the rescue of the guest who is neglected by her neighbors.