Part 6

When possible, fine articles which have to be darned or carefully mended with a patch or by piecing are best repaired before they are ironed. After they have been washed they can be put aside until the housekeeper has time to mend them properly, and they can then have an iron run over them and the mended spot smoothed.

The life of fine table-linen can be prolonged indefinitely by attention to the first break in the hemstitching, the first wear of a thread in the fabric, the first hole in lace. After the material once begins to go, even long and careful mending will scarcely save it, but watchfulness for the earliest symptoms of wear will postpone the evil day.

IX

WHEN COMPANY COMES

Elaborate entertaining should not be undertaken by a young couple of moderate means. Hospitality should be a matter of course, but never on a scale that makes it a burden to carry out at the time or to pay for afterward.

Perhaps the best and in many respects the most agreeable form of hospitality is that which calls in the occasional guest to an informal meal--a sort of improvised party. The husband asks a crony to dine on a certain night, the wife invites a friend to meet him. Little change is made in the family meal--perhaps a salad added as well as a sweet, or more unusual items ordered, or a special dessert prepared, but nothing which would bring the repast into the line of a dinner-party. There is no state and ceremony and everything is pleasant and jolly. Such little dinners are among the most charming forms of entertainment that can be achieved by young people of moderate means. When it seems well to widen the circle of invited guests, all to be done is to increase the provision made without departing from the simplicity which is one of the features of this kind of entertaining.

In the properly regulated home, where the observances of polite society are followed as much when the family is alone as when there is company, guests have no terrors. When the unexpected visitor arrives the table is found spread for two in the same style that it would be for ten. The napery is fresh and well laundered; the silver, glass, and china are shining--clean and arranged in correct order--the knife at the right of the plate with the soup or bouillon spoon, the fork at the left with the napkin; the bread-and-butter plate, with its slice of bread or roll and the butter-ball, near the fork, to correspond with the water-glass on the other side.

In such a home the maid is taught to follow the orderly sequence of courses, changing the plates and crumbing the table with as much pains for one as for half a dozen. Little by little she becomes accustomed to the routine, so that when a more formal entertainment is planned her work seems to her merely an amplification of that to which she has grown wonted.

At the same time a warning should be uttered to the housekeeper of small ménage against attempting to ape the hospitality of those whose incomes far exceed her own. Pretense is always absurd, and the woman who undertakes to imitate the style of the wealthy and fashionable hostess only renders herself ridiculous without in the least impressing those with whom she is striving to compete. Such entertaining strains her income and is in reality far inferior to the little parties she might give that would possess a merit all their own.

The hostess who aspires to give dinners should make them small, in the first place. Six is an excellent number--four besides the man and woman of the house--and it is rarely safe for the beginner to have more than eight all told, unless she is prepared to hire extra service. Fully as much attention should be bestowed upon the selection of the guests as upon the items of the bill of fare. Friends may be unexceptionable taken alone or in their own environment who do not mix with those from another circle, and in these conditions even the most delightful develop unexpected powers of boring and being bored. To get the right persons together at a dinner and to seat them in the proper combinations requires a good deal of social skill, and for this reason it is better for the tyro in entertaining to start with small parties and only work up to the larger affairs as she becomes more accustomed to exercising general hospitality.

Experiments in food should never be tried on company. Only those articles should be served which the maid has proved her ability to prepare perfectly and to serve correctly. When innovations are to be presented it should be in the privacy of the family circle. A dinner that is confined to a few courses should be remarkable rather for their excellence than for their unusual character or for their costliness. I have known housekeepers who won themselves a reputation for their dinners when the items of these were of the simplest character, but were beautifully cooked and served with a touch of unusualness which redeemed them from the commonplace.

Again let me warn the hostess against attempting too much on such occasions. In any establishment not supplied with a corps of trained servants a great deal of the work of even the quietest dinner falls upon the hostess. To her it comes to see that the table is set, the many small and fussy details looked after; generally she must give the final touches of seasoning or blending to soup, sauces, and salad-dressing. It is no wonder if sometimes she comes to the table too tired either to enjoy the food or to lead the talk of the board and play the part so important for a hostess who desires to have her guests enjoy their evening.

Such fatigue is not necessary if the rules I have laid down are followed. If, for example, the cook can make an unapproachable tomato or oyster bisque; if she can roast a leg of lamb so that it will melt in the mouth, prepare candied sweet-potatoes to tempt an epicure, and spinach with the knack of a French chef; if there is some special sweet dish for which she has made herself famous, whether this be a prune soufflé with whipped cream, or a frozen mousse or ice--then let the hostess confine herself to these items for her company dinners until her maid has acquired further accomplishments. What difference does it make if precisely the same dinner was served to a knot of friends last week? The guests are different this time, even if the dishes are unchanged, and these are good enough to stand repetition though they appear half a dozen times in succession!

In a neighborhood where dinner is usually served in the middle of the day and the period for social festivity is in the evening, supper may take the place of dinner and be no less attractive. When this is the case, I would advise the hostess to adopt some specialty and stick to it, with only a few variations.

For instance, I know one housekeeper who was transplanted from the South to another section of the country, and who there became famous for the meals she served from her mother’s cook-book. Fried chicken with cream gravy, Southern sweet-potatoes, beaten biscuit, Sally Lunn, waffles, fried oysters, batter-bread, syllabubs, were among the dainties she offered her appreciative guests. Not that she had all these at one time, but she rang the changes on them, to the delectation of the company.

Another woman I know who was born and raised in New England made a success much farther south than this by feasting her friends on such delicacies as genuine baked beans, cooked in a bean-pot (she made the fireless cooker take the place of the ancient brick oven), Boston brown bread--she called it “rye ’n’ Injun”--fried pork with cream gravy, even creamed codfish and boiled potatoes, made to taste as no one had ever before dreamed such things could taste. Of course doughnuts and coffee were included in her menus, and pumpkin-pies and other dishes of that sort. It was amusing and, in a way, pathetic to see the joy of the exiles from New England before whom were placed the viands they had been used to in the long-ago.

The simplicity of the provision should not be made an excuse for departing from the orthodox methods of service. A supper such as I have described can be served with as much daintiness as a formal dinner, and the courses should follow one another in as orderly a style.

As strict in the lines of its etiquette as a dinner is the lunch, where usually women are the only guests. Such a meal as this may also be limited in its items. It may begin with bouillon or soup in cups and, without pausing for an entrée, may go directly on to a solid course, such as chicken in some form, chops, cutlets, and the like, with a vegetable or two; this be followed by a salad with crackers and cheese, and the meal wind up with a sweet of light character, and coffee. When one has a well-enough trained maid to introduce such an entrée as oyster pâtés, crab meat _au gratin_, eggs _à la Bénédictine_, or something of the kind, and can reconcile the extra cost to her economical conscience, the guests will probably enjoy the additional provision, but no hostess can feel she is guilty of social stinginess if she omits these features and follows the simpler lines.

The same caution may be given here as with the dinner--to introduce no novelties for the first time. Use the family as an experiment station before presenting the new dishes or the untried fashion of serving them to outsiders.

Like the luncheon is the breakfast-party, with this difference--that men are frequently invited to the latter, while they are seldom at the formal luncheon. For such a breakfast, to be served at twelve-thirty or one, the first item may be fruit; the soup may be omitted and the meat course, consisting of some such dish as broiled or fried chicken, chops or steak or fish, should be accompanied by a good hot bread as well as by potatoes daintily cooked; and coffee in large cups may be served the same time. A sweet to wind up a meal like this is rather out of place unless it takes the form of waffles or griddle-cakes of a delicate variety with maple syrup or honey. Sometimes the breakfast concludes as it began, with fruit, although of a different kind from that with which the meal opened. When oranges or grapefruit prelude the repast, grapes, etc., may end it.

All these affairs I have mentioned are for a small number. The afternoon tea is the best method of entertaining guests on a larger scale, and with a minimum of expense.

I do not need to go here into the details of sending out cards for such an affair. Whether the tea be a single one, given for the amiable purpose of wiping out social obligations, or as a means of introducing a visitor to the local friends of the hostess; or a series of three or four afternoons, the method followed is the same and the guest who comes expects nothing beyond a light refreshment. At the more elaborate affairs of this sort coffee or chocolate may be served as well as tea, or a bowl of punch offered. The edible provisions are always practically the same and cover a range of sandwiches of different kinds--piquant, solid, and sweet--varied by toast buttered plain or sprinkled with cinnamon, hot scones, small buttered biscuit and similar cates, followed by cakes of various kinds, plain or fancy, and in some cases bonbons and salted nuts. The last are not really necessary.

At such a tea as this, if it comprise more than a few intimates, the maid is usually in attendance to open the door, direct the guests to the drawing-room, bring hot tea or hot water when needed, remove soiled cups and perhaps pass the food. In the latter service the hostess may have the aid of her friends, who usually appreciate the honor of being asked to “pour” or to help act as hostesses in introducing new-comers, looking after the comfort of strangers and making sure that no one is neglected in the distribution of refreshments.

Thus far reference has been made to hospitality exercised in the home where a maid is kept. Far more numerous are those establishments in which no regular service is employed. Even in these one’s friends may be entertained as delightfully, if not as formally, as in the houses supplied with hired domestics.

The regulation dinner is practically out of the question, and it is wiser not to attempt it. But merry informal suppers, luncheons, and breakfasts can be compassed and often these are greater successes than those parties given under the supervision of a staff of trained servants. The main point to be guarded against is the attempt at anything which cannot be put through well. As soon as struggle is made to do the impossible the effort becomes not only a burden to the host and hostess, but a sort of nightmare to the guests. Better have a roast-oyster party in the kitchen, where selected members of the company do the cooking over the gas-stove, while others take upon themselves the responsibility of serving the eaters, and the whole affair is a jolly picnic, than to endeavor to manage a stately function with insufficient aid and appurtenances.

The same sort of informality may mark the afternoon-tea party in the home where no maid is kept. All the making ready can be done in advance, the sandwiches cut and piled, the cakes arranged, the china and tea equipage set out, so that nothing is needed but to start the kettle to boiling and make the tea when it is needed. A friend will preside at the tea-table, other friends will look after other details and leave the hostess free to welcome and entertain her guests. Such a party as this is one of the pleasantest, least costly, and generally satisfactory ways of gathering one’s friends about one for a social hour or two.

The hostess of small means and no maid should concentrate upon some such line of entertaining as this and stick to it. She should aspire to become known for her merry afternoon teas, her pleasant Sunday-night suppers, her gay and informal after-theater spreads, where the chafing-dish is the principal feature and where her guests are so well amused that they think far less of the simple food put before them than they do of the good-fellowship they have enjoyed. Formal entertaining may have to be foregone, but the substitutes she offers are more genuinely satisfactory both to the guests who share them and to the host and hostess who have to pay for them!

X

THE CHILD IN THE HOUSE

With the introduction of a baby into an establishment the whole general management of the place is changed.

That is to say, it is changed for a while. A serious mistake is made when even so important an event as the arrival of a new member of the family is permitted to cause a permanent alteration in the conduct of the home. The most devoted of husbands and fathers will yield his position as first-and-foremost for a while to the latest advent; will take it for granted that his wife shall be absorbed in the needs of the baby, shall have no conversation but that which deals with its joys and woes, its accidents and accomplishments; but eventually any man worth a row of pins will recollect that after all he was a human being, a husband, and a householder before he was a parent, and will claim a few of the rights coming to him in those capacities.

The prospective mother who grasps this truth and puts it into practical service after the baby comes is much more likely to make a success of her wifehood and matronhood than the one who is all mother and nothing else. If the child is well and is properly trained there is no reason why it should not be a satisfactory member of society and a joy to the household and to all about it instead of a nuisance to every one except its most devoted parent.

A great deal more of the comfort of the child and its future good habits is settled within the first month of its life than is suspected by those who have had little to do with the care of babies. If it is started with regular habits of eating and sleeping, is from the beginning accustomed to lie in its cradle or crib instead of being held in the arms constantly and lifted and rocked at its first whimper, it takes such treatment for granted and forms no habit of making demands for that which is difficult for the attendant always to supply and does no good to the child to receive.

With a delicate or sickly babe the same strict rules cannot be enforced as with a healthy infant, and yet even a puny child is better off if kept to a steady regimen than if fed, taken up, and put down at uncertain intervals, and allowed to accumulate a crop of irregular fashions of eating and sleeping. Sometimes the struggle to implant a sense of law and order is a difficult undertaking when the ill health of the child or the carelessness of the first nurse has brought it into bad ways, but persistence in the effort is worth while for the sake of the comfort success is bound to bring later to all concerned.

The periods of feeding are determined by the doctor, to begin with, and the space between them is gradually widened as the child grows older. The system which should be the guide of the housekeeper in her home has as large a field of usefulness applied to children as anywhere else. The baby should be washed and dressed at a regular hour; the time for its meals and its outing should be invariable; the hour for undressing it, washing it, and making it ready for bed should never vary except in cases of rare exigency. If it is a healthy child it will fall naturally into the habit of taking a morning nap after the bath and the meal, of waking at a certain time, and then of lying comfortably in the bed or on a couch or in its carriage with no wails to be lifted and walked with. Modern medical science has declared that the less handling a little baby receives the better for it, and that for some months its growth should be in most respects as much like that of a vegetable as possible.

As the child gets older and begins to use its limbs it will be good for it to be exercised rather more, but nature is a pretty safe guide to follow in this respect. The baby who is well and normal is not slow to show its growth and progress, and it is far wiser for the parent to be led by these than to attempt to hurry development either of body or of mind. The child will assert itself soon enough, and so decidedly as to leave no room for doubt as to its proclivities.

Possibly it may sound a trifle absurd to say that from the first the child should have the habit of obedience implanted, yet this is no absurdity, but a serious and important fact. At an astonishingly early age the infant endeavors to pit its small will against that of its seniors, and the initial step in revolt is promptly followed by others unless the attempt is checked at once.

Neither time nor place is sufficient here to go into the reasons why the training of a child in obedience, even at the cost of suffering and punishment, is not the exercise over the weak of the tyranny of the strong, but the display of superior wisdom for the benefit of the inexperienced. It is enough to remind those who think that a child should be allowed to grow up naturally, unrestrained by rule and severity, when severity is required to enforce discipline, that all through life the human being must conform to constituted authority as exemplified in the laws of health, of the state, of teachers and employers, of morality, of religion. In view of this the sooner the child learns to defer to those in whose charge it is the better for it later on, the less cruel the lessons life holds in store for it.

Apart from this there can be no doubt that the well-trained child is actually happier than the one with no law but its own whim. Also it is much pleasanter company than the self-willed, undisciplined infant who follows its own sweet will regardless of the comfort or preference of others.

The same kind of regimen established for a child in babyhood should be pursued when it grows older and begins to share more actively in the life of the household. The mistaken custom of permitting a child to keep the same hours, eat the same diet, and follow practically the same life as its elders cannot be sufficiently condemned. The habit of going to bed early after a light meal, of having the heaviest repast in the middle of the day, of partaking of such food as is particularly suited to the needs of a growing child, of being debarred rich and indigestible articles of diet, of having postponed until more advanced years exciting amusements and pursuits instead of being hurried into them while hardly out of infancy, should all be enforced. A child is not a miniature man or woman, but an immature human being who must develop naturally, as plants grow, and is wronged by being forced into premature bloom or fruition, mentally or emotionally as much as physically.

The child’s food should be carefully considered by the mother and she should not regard the time wasted she bestows in studying food values and devising the best sort of diet for the nursery. Not until the first teeth begin to come should starchy food of any sort be given, and then with caution. Until the saliva flows freely to help digest starch, bread in any form, crackers, etc., should be withheld. As the child reaches the stage where solid food is allowed this should continue to be simple in character. A child does not have the longing for variety common to more sophisticated palates.

For the breakfast of the child of two or more years of age a cereal, well cooked, with plenty of milk, should be given. Sugar should not accompany it. When sweet is desirable, as it often is, it should be taken in some other way than as an adjunct to a regular article of diet. With the cereal and milk the child seldom needs anything more, but if the consumption of the porridge is not sufficient, a soft-boiled egg or a poached egg may be supplied, with a little toast. Milk should be the drink.

In the middle of the morning a supplementary meal may be taken, and this may consist of a piece of bread and butter and a glass of milk. Whole-wheat bread is better than that made from the bolted flour. When there is a tendency to constipation Graham bread is good.