Such fatigue is not necessary if the rules I have laid down are followed. If, for example, the cook can make an unapproachable tomato or oyster bisque; if she can roast a leg of lamb so that it will melt in the mouth, prepare candied sweet-potatoes to tempt an epicure, and spinach with the knack of a French chef; if there is some special sweet dish for which she has made herself famous, whether this be a prune soufflé with whipped cream, or a frozen mousse or ice--then let the hostess confine herself to these items for her company dinners until her maid has acquired further accomplishments. What difference does it make if precisely the same dinner was served to a knot of friends last week? The guests are different this time, even if the dishes are unchanged, and these are good enough to stand repetition though they appear half a dozen times in succession! In a neighborhood where dinner is usually served in the middle of the day and the period for social festivity is in the evening, supper may take the place of dinner and be no less attractive. When this is the case, I would advise the hostess to adopt some specialty and stick to it, with only a few variations. For instance, I know one housekeeper who was transplanted from the South to another section of the country, and who there became famous for the meals she served from her mother’s cook-book. Fried chicken with cream gravy, Southern sweet-potatoes, beaten biscuit, Sally Lunn, waffles, fried oysters, batter-bread, syllabubs, were among the dainties she offered her appreciative guests. Not that she had all these at one time, but she rang the changes on them, to the delectation of the company. Another woman I know who was born and raised in New England made a success much farther south than this by feasting her friends on such delicacies as genuine baked beans, cooked in a bean-pot (she made the fireless cooker take the place of the ancient brick oven), Boston brown bread--she called it “rye ’n’ Injun”--fried pork with cream gravy, even creamed codfish and boiled potatoes, made to taste as no one had ever before dreamed such things could taste. Of course doughnuts and coffee were included in her menus, and pumpkin-pies and other dishes of that sort. It was amusing and, in a way, pathetic to see the joy of the exiles from New England before whom were placed the viands they had been used to in the long-ago. The simplicity of the provision should not be made an excuse for departing from the orthodox methods of service. A supper such as I have described can be served with as much daintiness as a formal dinner, and the courses should follow one another in as orderly a style.