We have heard of tea-tables (even in splendid establishments) being left entirely to the mismanagement of incompetent or negligent servants; so that when the company sat down, there was found a deficiency in some of the indispensable appendages; such as spoons, and even forks, and napkins – butter-knives forgotten, and (worse than all) cooking-butter served in mistake for the better sort. By-the-bye, the use of cooking-butter should be abolished in all genteel-houses. If the butter is not good enough to eat on the surface of cold bread or on warm cakes, it is not good enough to eat in the inside of sweet cakes, or in pastry, or in any thing else; and is totally unfit to be mixed with vegetables or sauces. The use of butter is to make things taste well; if it makes them taste ill, let it be entirely omitted: for bad butter is not only unpalatable, but unwholesome. There are houses in which the money wasted on one useless bauble for the drawing-room would furnish the family with excellent fresh butter for a whole year – enough for all purposes.

We know, by experience, that it is possible to make very fine butter even in the State of New York, and to have it fresh in winter as in summer, though not so rich and yellow. Let the cows be well fed, well sheltered, and kept fat and clean – the dairy utensils always in perfect order – churning done twice or thrice every week – all the milk worked well out – and the butter will surely be good.

If cakes for tea have been made at home, and they have turned out failures, (as is often the case with home-made cakes where there is not much practice in baking them,) do not have them brought to table at all, but send to a shop and get others. It is rude to set before your guests what you know is unfit for them to eat. And heavy, tough, ill-baked things are discreditable to any house where the means of obtaining better are practicable.

In sending for cakes to a confectioner, do not a second time allow him to put you off with stale ones. This many confectioners are in the practice of doing, if it is passed over without notice. Stale cakes should at once be sent back, (with a proper reproof,) and fresh ones required. Let the confectioner with whom you deal understand that he is not to palm off his stale cakes upon you, and that you will not keep them when sent. You will then find that fresh ones will generally be forthcoming. It is always well to send for cakes in the early part of the afternoon.

Have a pitcher of ice-water on the side-table, and a tumbler beside every plate – as most persons like to finish with a glass of water.

Do not, on sitting down to table, inform your guest that "you make no stranger of her," or that you fear she will not be able to "make out" at your plain table. These apologies are ungenteel and foolish. If your circumstances will not allow you on any consideration to make a little improvement in your usual family-fare, your friend is, in all probability, aware of the fact, and will not wish or expect you to incur any inconvenient expense on her account. But if you are known to possess the means of living well, you ought to do so; and to consider a good, though not an extravagantly luxurious table as a necessary part of your expenditure. There is a vast difference between laudable economy and mean economy. The latter (whether it shows itself in bad food, bad fires, bad lights, bad servants) is never excused in persons who dress extravagantly, and live surrounded by costly furniture, and who are universally known to be wealthy, and fully able to afford comfort, as well as show.

If you invite a friend to tea, in whose own family there is no gentlemen, or no man-servant, it is your duty previously to ascertain that you can provide her on that evening with an escort home; and in giving the invitation, you should tell her so, that she may know on what to depend. If you keep a carriage, it will be most kind to send her home in it.

Even if it is your rule to have the entry-lamp extinguished at a certain hour, let your servants understand that this rule must be dispensed with, as long as an evening-visiter remains in the house. Also, do not have the linen covers put on the furniture, and the house audibly shut up for the night, before she has gone. To do this is rude, because she cannot but receive it as a hint that she has staid too long.

If your visiter is obliged to go home with no other escort than your servant-man, apprize him, in time, that this duty will be expected of him; desiring that he takes care to be at hand before ten o'clock.

A lady that has no escort whose services she can command, ought not to make unexpected tea-visits. In many cases these visits produce more inconvenience than pleasure. If you wish to "take tea sociably" with a friend, inform her previously of your intention. She will then let you know if she is disengaged on that evening, or if it is in any way inconvenient to receive you; and she will herself appoint another time. Generally, it is best not to volunteer a tea-visit, but to wait till invited.

If you are engaged to take tea with an intimate friend, who assures you that you will see none but the family; and you afterward receive an invitation to join a party to a place of public amusement, which you have long been desirous of visiting, you may retract your first engagement, provided you send an apology in due time, telling the exact truth, and telling it in polite terms. Your intimate friend will then take no offence, considering it perfectly natural that you should prefer the concert, the play, or the exhibition, to a quiet evening passed at her house with no other guests. But take care to let her know as early as possible.² And be careful not to disappoint her again in a similar manner.

If you are accustomed to taking coffee in the evening, and have an insuperable dislike to tea, it is best not to make an unexpected visit – or at least, if you go at all, go early – so as to allow ample time for the making of coffee – a much slower process than that of tea; particularly as there may chance to be no roasted coffee in the house. Much inconvenience has been caused by the "sociable visiting" of determined coffee-drinkers. It is very easy to make green or black tea at a short notice – but not coffee.

In inviting "a few friends," which means a small select company, endeavour to assort them suitably, so as not to bring together people who have no community of tastes, feelings, and ideas. If you mix the dull and stupid with the bright and animated, the cold and formal with the frank and lively, the professedly serious with the gay and cheerful, the light with the heavy, and above all, those who pride themselves on high birth (high birth in America?) with those who boast of "belonging to the people," none of these "few friends" will enjoy each other's society; the evening will not go off agreeably, and you and the other members of your family will have the worst of it. The pleasantest people in the room will naturally congregate together, and the task of entertaining the unentertainable will devolve on yourself and your own people.

Still, it is difficult always to assort your company to your satisfaction and theirs. A very charming lady may have very dull or very silly sisters. An intelligent and refined daughter may be unfortunate in a coarse, ignorant mother, or a prosing, tiresome, purse-proud father. Some of the most delighted persons you may wish to invite, may be encumbered with relations totally incapable of adding any thing to the pleasure of the evening; – for instance, the numerous automatons, whom we must charitably believe are speechless merely from diffidence, and of whom we are told, that "if we only knew them," we should discover them, on intimate acquaintance, to be "quite intelligent people." Perhaps so. But we cannot help thinking that when a head is full of ideas, some of them will involuntarily ooze out and be manifest. Diffidence is very becoming to young people, and to those who are new to the world. But it is hardly credible that it should produce a painful taciturnity in persons who have passed from youth into maturity; and who have enjoyed the advantages of education and of living in good society. Still those who, as the French say, have "a great talent for silence," may redeem themselves from suspicion of stupidity, by listening attentively and understandingly. A good talker is never displeased with a good hearer.

We have often met with young ladies from whom it was scarcely possible for one of their own sex to extract more than a few monosyllables at long intervals; those intervals being passed in dozing, rather than in hearing. And yet, if any thing in the shape of a beau presented itself, the tongues of these "dumb belles" were immediately loosened, and the wells of their minds commenced running as glibly as possible. To be sure, the talk amounted to nothing definite; but still they did talk, and often became quite lively in a few minutes. Great is the power of beaux!

To return to the tea-table. – Unless you are positively sure, when you have a visiter, that she drinks the same tea that is used in your own family, you should have both black and green on the table. Either sort is often extremely disagreeable to persons who take the other. Drinkers of green tea, for instance, have generally an unconquerable aversion to black, as tasting like hay, herbs, &c., and they find in it no refreshing or exhilarating property. In some, it produces nausea. Few, on the other hand, dislike the taste of good green tea, but they assign as a reason for not drinking it, that it is supposed from its enlivening qualities to affect the nerves. Judge Bushrod Washington, who always drank green, and avoided black, said that, "he took tea as a beverage, not as a medicine." And there are a vast number of sensible people in the same category. If your guest is a votary of green tea, have it made for her, in time for the essence of the leaves to be well drawn forth. It is no compliment to give her green tea that is weak and washy. And do not, at your own table, be so rude as to lecture her upon the superior wholesomeness of black tea. For more than a century, green tea was universally drunk in every house, and there was then less talk of nervous diseases than during the reign of Souchong, – which, by-the-bye, is nearly exploded in the best European society.

In pouring out, do not fill the cups to the brim. Always send the cream and sugar round, that each person may use those articles according to their own taste. Also, send round a small pot of hot water, that those who like their tea weak may conveniently dilute it. If tea is handed, a servant should, at the last, carry round a water-pitcher and glasses.

Whether at dinner or tea, if yourself and family are in the habit of eating fast, (which, by the way, is a very bad and unwholesome one, and justly cited against us by our English cousins,) and you see that your visiter takes her food deliberately, endeavour (for that time at least) to check the rapidity of your own mastication, so as not to finish before she has done, and thus compel her to hurry herself uncomfortably, or be left alone while every one round her is sitting unoccupied and impatient. Or rather, let the family eat a little more than usual, or seem to do so, out of politeness to their guest.

When refreshments are brought in after tea, let them be placed on the centre-table, and handed round from thence by the gentlemen to the ladies. If there are only four or five persons present, it may be more convenient for all to sit round the table – which should not be cleared till after all the visiters have gone, that the things may again be offered before the departure of the guests.

If a friend makes an afternoon call, and you wish her to stay and take tea, invite her to do so at once, as soon as she has sat down; and do not wait till she has risen to depart. If she consents to stay, there will then be ample time to make any additional preparation for tea that may be expedient; and she will also know, at once, that you have no engagement for the evening, and that she is not intruding on your time, or preventing you from going out. If you are intimate friends, and your guest is disposed to have a long chat, she will do well to ask you, at the beginning, if you are disengaged, or design going out that afternoon.

We knew a very sensible and agreeable lady in Philadelphia, who liking better to have company at home than to go out herself, made a rule of inviting every day, half a dozen friends (not more) to take tea with her – just as many as could sit round the table, "with ample room and verge enough." These friends she assorted judiciously. And therefore she never asked a whole family at once; those who were left out understanding that they would be invited another time. For instance, she would send a note for the father and mother only – to meet another father and mother or two. A few weeks after, a billet would come for the young people only. But if there were several young people, some were delayed – thus – "I wish James and Eliza to take tea with me this evening, to meet so-and-so. Another time I promise myself the pleasure of Edward's company, and Mary's."

This distribution of invitations never gave offence.

Those who were honoured with the acquaintance of such a lady were not likely to be displeased at so sensible a mode of receiving them. These little tea-drinkings were always pleasant, and often delightful. The hostess was well qualified to make them so.

Though the refreshments were of the best kind, and in sufficient abundance, and the fires, lights, &c. all as they should be, there was no ostentatious display, and the ladies were dressed no more than if they were spending a quiet evening at home – party-finery being interdicted – also, such needle-work as required constant attention to every stitch.

If you have a friend who is in somewhat precarious health, and who is afraid of being out in the night air, or who lives in a distant part of the town, invite her to dinner, or to pass the day, rather than to tea. She will then be able to get home before twilight.

There is in Boston a very fashionable and very distinguished lady, who, since her return from Europe, has relinquished the custom of giving large parties; and now entertains her friends by, almost every day, having two or three to dine with her, – by invitation. These dinners are charming. The hour is according to the season – earlier in winter, later in summer – the guests departing before dark, and the lady always having the evening to herself.

We know a gentleman in Philadelphia, who every Monday has a family-dinner at his house, for all his children and grandchildren, who there meet and enjoy themselves before the eyes of the father and mother – a friend or two being also invited. Nothing can be more pleasant than to see them all there together, none staying away, – for parents, children, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, sisters-in-law, brothers-in-law, are all at peace, and all meeting in friendship – unhappily, a rare case, where there is a large connection, and considerable wealth.

We wish that social intercourse was more frequently conducted on the plan of the few examples above cited.

Should chance-visiters come in before the family have gone to tea, let them at once be invited to partake of that repast; which they will of course decline, if they have had tea already. In a well-provided house, there can be no difficulty in adding something to the family tea-table, which, in genteel life, should never be discreditably parsimonious.

It is a very mean practice, for the members of the family to slip out of the parlour, one by one at a time, and steal away into the eating-room, to avoid inviting their visiter to accompany them. The truth is always suspected by these separate exits, and the length of absence from the parlour – and is frequently betrayed by the rattle of china, and the pervading fumes of hot cakes. How much better to meet the inconvenience (and it cannot be a great one) by decently conducting your accidental guest to the table, unless he says he has already taken tea, and will amuse himself with a book while the family are at theirs.

Casual evening visiters should avoid staying too late. Ten o'clock, in our country, is the usual time to depart, or at least to begin departing. If the visit is unduly prolonged, there may be evident signs of irrepressible drowsiness in the heads of the family, which, when perceived, will annoy the guest, who must then feel that he has stayed too long – and without being able to excuse himself with any approach to the elegance of William Spencer's apology to the charming Lady Anne Hamilton.

 
Too late I stay'd – forgive the crime;
Unheeded flew the hours,
For noiseless falls the foot of Time
That only treads on flowers.
Ah! who with clear account remarks
The ebbing of the glass,
When all its sands are diamond sparks,
That dazzle as they pass!