The herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1893-1900, 1895-02-17
WOMEN WHO
KNOW ABOUT ART AND
OTHER THINGS
Athens Time of Pisistratus
KateF ieIdo the WASH ngtonw omen

at receptions and doing the pump-handle
act
Just little common sense. Whatever
is stiff is uncomfortable. Whoever is in
vited to entertainments goes for. pleas
ure. 1t is therefore the business of the
hostess to make her guests feel that they
have not wasted their time. If they are
amused or refreshed, their hostess has full
filled her mission. If they are bored, she
has not done her duty and is failure.
The end OF hospitality is not to collect
lot of heterogeneous animals and leave
them to their own devices. 1t is to bring
kindred spirits together and to make them
glad by sympathetic intercourse.
Instead of planting her assistants in a
row and reducing them to automatons,
let the Christian hostess who processes to
love her neighbor as she loves herself,
divide her forces, placing them in differ
emit sections of the same room if there be
but one, and instructing them to make
themselves agreeable to everybody, espe-
clally to such as seem TO be without
friends. Let them introduce men to
women and change the tete-a-tetes before
boredom sets in. Congenial souls can
always take care of themselves society,
to be social, must rescue the stupid and
the antipathetic from each other.
1t is pity that we have not borrowed
certain customs from France while bor-
rowing her fashions. Every person who
meets in French salon is for the time
being on an equality. The mere fact of
being friends of the hostess is all the
guarantee needed for freedom of inter-
course. Strangers address each other and
pass the time agreeably without, perhaps,
knowing each others names thus intro
ductlons become unnecessary. Outside
that roof those same persons remain
strangers, unless they have been so at
tracted as to desire further acquaintance.
Unfortunately we ignore France where
we should copy her, and adopt the frig-
idity of England. First, we issue the
edict that introductions are necessary;
then we carefully abstain from introduce
ing our guests. What humanity is there
in such refinement of cruelty? In Eng
land this brutality is carried even unto
the dinner table. Many time I've been
taken into dinner in Mayfair or Belgravia
by men absolutely unknown. As the
situation is unbearable and as English
men like frankness, have always broken
the ice by explaining myself and asking
for reciprocity. Then we got on, and as
a rule we enjoyed ourselves.
If the half dozen women who usually
act as pillars at Washington receptions
circulated and made it their business to
keep the social ball rolling they would
revolutionize the present inexcusable Gus
tom and make themselves and their
hostesses immensely popular. If they
want a precedent joyfully point to Mrs.
Cleveland. On last Saturday, for exam
pie, occurred one of the pleasantest func.-
tons ever given in the executive man
sion. From to 5 O'Clock Mrs. Cleveland
stood in the south end of the east room
and cordially took by the hand 900 wom-
en-. They we're presented by Colonel Will
son, who with his aid had the glory of
representing the missing sex. The guests
hidden wore their most becoming cos
tunes and their most winning smiles, and
the result was very happy family. Mrs.
Cleveland has way of making everybody
like her and look at her, and, as is nat
ural, in the presence of the first lady in
the land, satellites cease to shine.
Cognizant of this inevitable fact, Mrs
Cleveland disposed of her bevy of hand
maidens at sufficient distance from her
self to make an orbit of their own. In the
adjoining room, Mrs. Bissell held her
court; in the blue room Mrs. Perrne re-
ceived her friends; in the red room Mrs.
Lamont presented arms most graciously.
Guests fitted about the White House, find
ing hostesses in every nook and Granny,
and all went home declaring they never
had attended so pleasant reception.
Suppose the Cabinet ladies and the debut
antes had stood single file to the left of
Mrs Cleveland, what an appalling specta-
Gle it would have been!
After this object lesson, set by Mrs.
Cleveland, some of us who need recrea-
ton and would like to find it when pre-
cious time is given to society, pray on
both knees that Christianity will become
so much the fashion as to invade draw
ing-rooms and permeate them with the
atmosphere of good fellowship,