The same sort of informality may mark the afternoon-tea party in the home where no maid is kept. All the making ready can be done in advance, the sandwiches cut and piled, the cakes arranged, the china and tea equipage set out, so that nothing is needed but to start the kettle to boiling and make the tea when it is needed. A friend will preside at the tea-table, other friends will look after other details and leave the hostess free to welcome and entertain her guests. Such a party as this is one of the pleasantest, least costly, and generally satisfactory ways of gathering one’s friends about one for a social hour or two. The hostess of small means and no maid should concentrate upon some such line of entertaining as this and stick to it. She should aspire to become known for her merry afternoon teas, her pleasant Sunday-night suppers, her gay and informal after-theater spreads, where the chafing-dish is the principal feature and where her guests are so well amused that they think far less of the simple food put before them than they do of the good-fellowship they have enjoyed. Formal entertaining may have to be foregone, but the substitutes she offers are more genuinely satisfactory both to the guests who share them and to the host and hostess who have to pay for them! X THE CHILD IN THE HOUSE With the introduction of a baby into an establishment the whole general management of the place is changed. That is to say, it is changed for a while. A serious mistake is made when even so important an event as the arrival of a new member of the family is permitted to cause a permanent alteration in the conduct of the home. The most devoted of husbands and fathers will yield his position as first-and-foremost for a while to the latest advent; will take it for granted that his wife shall be absorbed in the needs of the baby, shall have no conversation but that which deals with its joys and woes, its accidents and accomplishments; but eventually any man worth a row of pins will recollect that after all he was a human being, a husband, and a householder before he was a parent, and will claim a few of the rights coming to him in those capacities. The prospective mother who grasps this truth and puts it into practical service after the baby comes is much more likely to make a success of her wifehood and matronhood than the one who is all mother and nothing else. If the child is well and is properly trained there is no reason why it should not be a satisfactory member of society and a joy to the household and to all about it instead of a nuisance to every one except its most devoted parent.