might better have postponed this particular entertainment for a few years, and, it is not too much to say that in most cases it could be done, by taking more time to live while engaged in the business of living.
The gentlemanly bricklayer and the enterprising carpenter has each his "hour" at noon. Men and women higher in the social scale would gasp at the idea of taking a whole hour out of the middle of the day, when the tide of life runs swiftest. And yet, why not?
Periodical literature furnishes many amusing incidents of women who are "taken by surprise" when a guest suddenly appears at luncheon time. One such story tells of a woman at whose house a club committee met, early in the morning. The session was protracted till past the luncheon hour, and presently the hostess excused herself
In half an hour, she appeared and invited the committee into the dining-room. There a table was spread with the snowiest of napery, the most exquisite of china, the most gleaming of silver. The "feast of reason" was simply brown bread and butter and tea, which was offered "without a word of apology."
Leaving out the apology, the committee, as well as the hostess, should have had something more than brown bread and butter and tea. An emergency shelf in the store-room is an
