HOW TO ENTERTAIN.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 December 1929, Page 6 (Supplement)

HOW TO ENTERTAIN.

' HINT’S FOR THE HOSTESS. It is all very well for hostesses who can throw open their marble halls to talk about entertaining (says the London Daily Chronicle). With ample means to purchase distractions, they can extend invitations by tho dozen. Entertaining by the humbler ones who can afford no “lions,” and who do not possess marble halls, is an infinitely harder problem. It is easy enough when one’s list of friends is colossal to select a score whose tastes coincide, but when such a number represents the sum total of one's battle array —all of them different as chalk from cheesethings begin to get complicated.- Quite impossible to say, “I will have my literary friends to-night, the artistic ones to-morrow, and a jolly old rag for the rest the night after.” Entertaining on a small scale is an exhausting business. As if a hostess’s trials aren’t hard enough, it has become the fashion —goodness knows why

—to accept an invitation to a party with misgiving. Some preconceived plan is essential. A Jiarty which is voted a success must not know one tedious moment. It 'is useless to rely on conversation. If it blossoms when the proceedings come to a temporary halt, so much the better, but a little tittle tattle is the best that can be hoped for. There can be dancing, of course, to the gramophone and, what to my mind makes tho dullest party go, charades. An easy-going type of hostess for this sort of amusement is essential—one who has no objection to having her wardrobe and linen cupboard invaded and ransacked, nor all her . possessions made free use of. As hostess, one must be prepared to face every annoyance imaginable, every feeling of despair and dissatisfaction under the sun, even to one’s most eagerly anticipated guest letting one down at the last moment. But if the nice young men and nice young women you have invited do not fail you, things will soon begin to move. ’ If older people are looking bored, tho young ones are probably enjoying themselves down to the ground, and if the young people are restless —more ominous this—the older ones are having tho time of their lives. If, by any chance, the hostess finds herself capable of enjoying her own party, sho may know that it is being an unqualified success, and that young and old are enjoying themselves equally.