A Model Hostess.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 452, 8 March 1890, Page 6

A Model Hostess.

\ A hostess has so very charming a position, if she is amiable, one wonders she should ever peril it by being unamiable, says Mrs John Sherwood in the ‘Ladies’ Homo Journal.’ She is, in her hour of hostessship, perhaps at the acme of a woman's ambition. It is her place to sec that a number of people are well fed and happy. She is the person of all others to whom i every gentle, sweet emotion, every grateful feeling turns. A hostess at a pretty country house is very much to be envied, ancl she can, without much effort, make everybody happy. A hostess in the city can become an enormous social power if she has tact and a certain intelligence. She becomes the envied of women and the admired of men. That she should ever use this power to make herself disagreeable is most amazing. If we had not seen it done, wo could hardly believe it possible. A hostess should never reprove her servants in the presence of her guests. All that worries her must be carefully concealed from them. It is her place to oil the wheels of the domestic machinery so that. • nothing shall jar. It is quite impossible in America that such a set of trained servants could be obtained who should make the domestic wheelsmove without jarring. But the hostess must not appear to notice it. If she is disturbed, or flustered, or miserable, who can enjoy anything ? This necessity for calmness on the part of a hostess is well satirised in an old-fashioned novel called ‘ Cecil,’ where the hero writes to his sister, ‘ Learn to be perfectly unmoved at your table, even if your cook sends up stewed pupp\'.’ And an old poet eulogises the calm hostess who is * Mistress of herself, though China fall.’ There is no such utter mistake as to lose one’s temper, one’s nerve, one’s composure, in company. Society may be a false condition of things, but, whatever its faults, it demands of a woman the very high virtues of self-command, gentleness and composure, politeness, coolness, and serenity. Good manners are said to be the shadows of virtue* but they are virtues—to be polite is a virtue of the very highest.