AFTER SIX O’CLOCK
FOR most of us the active business of the day is over at sundown.
Mothers of large families, physicians and occasionally other workers
are employed over time; but most of us can count on leisure after
six o’clock. Much of our happiness depends upon how this leisure is
employed. That it should afford recreation of one sort or another is a
commonly accepted opinion, though one that is accepted usually without
appreciation of the obligations involved. Recreation implies something
more than idleness. One can not be amused in any worth-while sense
without sitting up and paying attention. Foreigners complain habitually
that Americans take their pleasure sadly, that they do not go in for
gaiety with spirit. We are much more vital in our attitude toward work
than toward play. We know that we must pay for success in labor of any
sort, but the debt we owe to amusement is a point not yet so widely
grasped. Pleasure is shy of the person who makes only occasional
advances to her. She must be courted habitually in order to give a
full return. We are all acquainted with the dull unhappy appearance
of the sedulous man of business off for a rare holiday. He is out of
his element. He knows how to behave himself at work but he is not
acquainted with the fundamental principles of having a good time. These
can not be learned in a minute. One must have practise in enjoyment
in order to carry off the matter easily; and this practise should be
a habit of every-day life. Many people who stand shyly off from the
delights of the world and wonder why they are deprived of them, fail
to realize that diversion of any sort worthy the name, is a thing for
which one must make some effort.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: HOME FESTIVITY]
It is at home that one should cultivate the graces that make one
attractive abroad; and this is only preliminary to saying that planning
for the every-day recreation of a household should be as much a matter
of course as devising ways and means for the purchase of food and
clothing.
The first requisite for bringing about an atmosphere of festivity and
good cheer at home is to adopt in some degree the methods that one
uses away from home. If one is invited out to dinner, one makes some
preparation for it, and so one should do for dinner at home. Externals
have much to do with coaxing gaiety to live as a guest in the house. A
pretty table and food managed with some regard to esthetic values as
well as to the palatable quality, have a happy effect upon the mind
and temper of the diners. A few flowers properly distributed assist
still further. If all the inmates of a house are in the habit, as they
should be, of making some change in their toilet for dinner, this of
itself makes a sharp line of demarcation between the work-time and the
play-time of the twenty-four hours. The hint of festivity in attire
induces a happy and a festive frame of mind, imparts just that touch
of difference from the habit of prosaic daylight necessary to send the
mind sailing off into pleasant channels.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE HOME DINNER]
The care for the dinner-table, for the personal appearance and,
generally speaking, for pretty environment implies effort. Lazy people
can not hope for these delightful effects of a material kind. Neither
can they expect the happiness which comes to those who take some pains
at home for the mental entertainment of themselves and their household.
There are many people who regard it as deceitful and insincere to
forecast what one shall talk about and it is quite true that _formally_
planned talk is a foe to spontaneity and naturalness. But usually the
man or woman who entertains by his conversation is the person who, in
a general way, has taken some thought about what he shall say. Given
the opportunity, conversation, charming in its spontaneity, rises out
of the mental habit of noting down for future reference pleasant or odd
personal experiences, good stories, the quirks in one’s own mind. One
must not intrude these in a place where they do not fit, but it is not
in the least a social sin to guide the talk toward your own thought
provided you do not thereby push out something better. We are all given
tongues and with them a certain conversational responsibility. If each
member of the family made it his business and his pleasure during the
day to remember the best part of his experience that he might relate it
at the dinner-hour some part of that gloom which descends upon so many
American families at the evening meal would be dissipated.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE TIME FOR PLAY]
If one cultivates the prettier touches of personal appearance for that
part of the day after six o’clock, whether at home or abroad, one
should also cultivate the pleasanter and more agreeable states of mind.
Business should be put behind one. The petty cares of the day should go
unmentioned. The ills of body and mind should be, as far as possible,
forgot. Those little courtesies and formalities of manner that we
admire in the practised man or woman of society are as decorative at
home as away and equally creative of a festive atmosphere. In one of
the magazines of the last decade there is a homely effective story of
a young girl, just home from a house-party and full of its gaiety, to
whom the idea occurred that the methods employed by her hostess might
make a delightful week in her own large family circle. She took the
matter in hand, and invited her mother to be the guest of honor for
the seven days. Some entertainment was planned for each evening in
the week, sometimes with visitors and sometimes not. The women of the
family wore their best frocks frequently during the week. The prettiest
china and the best silver were used as freely as if for company. The
result of it all was that the family voted visiting at home a signal
success.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: GAMES AS A PASTIME]
There are many specific ways of providing amusement for evenings
at home. One has space only for the mention of a few of these in a
short article on the subject. Games of various kinds are an excellent
resource for making the after-dinner time pass pleasantly. They
cultivate quickness of decision, sociability, a friendly rivalry.
Success in games is partly a matter of chance but much more of
attention and skill. Many people sniff at them who are too lazy to make
the conquest of their methods.
Charades, of which English people never grow tired, as a means of
diversion, have their ups and downs in the more quickly changing
fashions of America. They provide one of the easiest and merriest
means of entertainment. They may be of any degree of simplicity or
elaboration, and they call forth as much or as little ingenuity as is
possessed by the actors in any given case. They are usually popular
because almost everybody has latent a little talent for the actor’s
art at which he is willing to try his luck. Many people who are
afraid to join in formal theatricals find an outlet for this taste in
charades; and so informal usually is this kind of entertainment that
the spectators enjoy the acting whether well done or otherwise. It
is enough to see one’s friends and acquaintances struggling with a
part. If well done, one enjoys the success; if not, one applauds the
absurdity of the conception.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: READING ALOUD]
Reading aloud to a congenial home party has much to be said in its
favor, in spite of its present reputation as a stupid means of passing
an evening. “The world may be divided into two classes,” runs an old
and favorably known joke, “those who like reading aloud and those
who do not. Those who like it are those who do the reading; those
who dislike it are those who do the listening.” The half-truth in
this witticism must not be accepted for more than it is worth. As an
occasional means of passing an evening, reading aloud is diverting and
stimulating. The habit of spending one’s evenings in that way is not
an encouragement to variety and liveliness of mind. One gets into the
way of depending upon the author in hand for entertainment instead of
depending upon the action of one’s own mind. Small doses of reading
aloud are good. Continual doses are fatal to a proper social ideal.
[Sidenote: THE POPULAR HOUSE]
The people who make their own houses a center of attraction are,
generally speaking, happy people. The house where the evening is
accepted as a time of diversion is the popular house. The atmosphere
there begets gaiety and naturalness of manner. We have all had the
experience of making evening calls where we were compelled to stand
in the hall till the gas was lighted in the drawing-room or the
electricity turned on, where we must pass a dreary fifteen minutes
before the members of the family are ready to receive. This kind of
preliminary puts a damper upon the spirits of host and guests from
which they do not easily recover. To be ready for pleasant evenings,
to meet them half-way by one’s attitude is a good recipe for insuring
their arrival.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE SUNDAY NIGHT SUPPER]
A pleasant and informal method of insuring good times in one’s own
house is to make a feature of the Sunday night supper. This is not
so formal or expensive a mode of entertainment as dinner-giving. It
is a jolly and pleasant method. One may have everything in the way
of edibles prepared for the meal in the morning except perhaps one
article to be made on the chafing-dish. One may serve this meal with or
without servants. Often the guests enjoy the freedom implied in helping
the hostess carry off successfully the details of serving. The Sunday
evening supper is one of those festivities that imply some elasticity
in numbers. This is the sort of meal to which the unexpected guest
is welcome, at which the person who “happens in” may feel entirely
at ease. Where there are young people in the house, the Sunday night
supper is an especially popular institution. They appreciate the
delights of entertaining without the care or the formality of more
elaborate functions.
[Sidenote: PRACTISING COURTESY]
The ways of enjoying life away from home after six o’clock in the
evening, readily suggest themselves. There are the various functions
to which one is invited. There is the theater, the most delightful
of resources, but unfortunately one which by reason of its expense
is available frequently only by the rich. Receptions, dinners,
card-parties and the theater all go to make this earth a more agreeable
place to those who have the social instinct. But it must never be
forgot that the fundamental place for the cultivation of this instinct
is at home, which is the practise ground for formal and general
society.