The life of fine table-linen can be prolonged indefinitely by attention to the first break in the hemstitching, the first wear of a thread in the fabric, the first hole in lace. After the material once begins to go, even long and careful mending will scarcely save it, but watchfulness for the earliest symptoms of wear will postpone the evil day. IX WHEN COMPANY COMES Elaborate entertaining should not be undertaken by a young couple of moderate means. Hospitality should be a matter of course, but never on a scale that makes it a burden to carry out at the time or to pay for afterward. Perhaps the best and in many respects the most agreeable form of hospitality is that which calls in the occasional guest to an informal meal--a sort of improvised party. The husband asks a crony to dine on a certain night, the wife invites a friend to meet him. Little change is made in the family meal--perhaps a salad added as well as a sweet, or more unusual items ordered, or a special dessert prepared, but nothing which would bring the repast into the line of a dinner-party. There is no state and ceremony and everything is pleasant and jolly. Such little dinners are among the most charming forms of entertainment that can be achieved by young people of moderate means. When it seems well to widen the circle of invited guests, all to be done is to increase the provision made without departing from the simplicity which is one of the features of this kind of entertaining. In the properly regulated home, where the observances of polite society are followed as much when the family is alone as when there is company, guests have no terrors. When the unexpected visitor arrives the table is found spread for two in the same style that it would be for ten. The napery is fresh and well laundered; the silver, glass, and china are shining--clean and arranged in correct order--the knife at the right of the plate with the soup or bouillon spoon, the fork at the left with the napkin; the bread-and-butter plate, with its slice of bread or roll and the butter-ball, near the fork, to correspond with the water-glass on the other side. In such a home the maid is taught to follow the orderly sequence of courses, changing the plates and crumbing the table with as much pains for one as for half a dozen. Little by little she becomes accustomed to the routine, so that when a more formal entertainment is planned her work seems to her merely an amplification of that to which she has grown wonted.