Semi-official dinners at private houses.

It sometimes happens that semi-official dinners are given at private houses, when proprietors of newspapers or wealthy men interested in certain undertakings, entertain the staff of those employed. In such circumstances it may be as well to warn the guests against addressing the footmen as “waiter.” This may appear to be superfluous advice, but I have myself been present when the mistake was made, evidently to the intense indignation of the magnificent being thus addressed.

At such dinners as these, the host treats his guests as his social equals for the nonce. By having invited them to his house he places himself in the position of regarding them as he would his own friends at his dinner-table. Any infraction of this would be in the worst taste. It is also usual to abstain from any business talk at such times as these, the conversation being encouraged to dwell on general topics.

Though the fiction of social equality is maintained by the host, the guests need not adopt a familiar, free- and-easy manner in response. True manliness involves sufficient self-respect to preserve the possessor from falling into this error; but it is, perhaps, a little difficult for the novice, on such occasions, to bear himself in such wise as to avoid undue familiarity on one hand and an air of stiffness and standoffishness on the other. In his anxiety not to appear to presume upon the friendliness of his host’s manner, he is apt to wear a rather repellent air. And this is more particularly so when the employé is by birth the equal, if not the superior, of his entertainer. It often happens that a man at the head of a great business has risen from obscure beginnings to the command of wealth and a high position in the world, enjoying a title and many of the extraneous advantages of rank. Among those whom he employs may be several who are his social superiors in all but wealth; but any of them who imagine that this fact gives them any claim upon his consideration or entitles them to converse with him upon a footing of equality, make a radical mistake. Their position, as regards their employer, is exactly that justified by their standing in his firm. The true gentleman is well aware of this, and would never dream of asserting himself in any way on the strength of being well-born or highly educated. He leaves all that kind of thing to the man who feels his claim to gentleman-hood to be so shadowy and insecure as to need constant insistance.

Besides, the host is usually the elder, and deference to seniority is an important part of good manners, and sits extremely well upon the young.