"Handsome!" she cried in tears, "I don't own anything half good enough to
compare with the least article in this house. That 'simple' little woman
as you call her would, I think, almost make a queen seem provincial! And
as for her clothes, they are priceless--just as everything is in this
little gem of a house. Why, the window curtains are as fine as the best
clothes in my trousseau."
The two houses contrasted above are two extremes, but each a luxury. The
Oldnames' expenditure, though in no way comparable with the Worldlys' or
the Gildings,' is far beyond any purse that can be called moderate.
The really moderate purse inevitably precludes a woman from playing an
important rôle as hostess, for not even the greatest magnetism and charm
can make up to spoiled guests for lack of essential comfort. The only
exceptions are a bungalow at the seashore or a camp in the woods, where a
confirmed luxury-lover is desperately uncomfortable for the first
twenty-four hours, but invariably gets used to the lack of comfort almost
as soon as he gets dependent upon it; and plunging into a lake for bath,
or washing in a little tin basin, sleeping on pine boughs without any
sheets at all, eating tinned foods and flapjacks on tin plates with tin
utensils, he seems to lack nothing when the air is like champagne and the
company first choice.
=GUEST ROOM SERVICE=
If a visitor brings no maid of her own, the personal maid of the hostess
(if she has one--otherwise the housemaid) always unpacks the bags or
trunks, lays toilet articles out on the dressing-table and in the
bathroom, puts folded things in the drawers and hangs dresses on hangers
in the closet. If when she unpacks she sees that something of importance
has been forgotten, she tells her mistress, or, in the case of a servant
who has been long employed, she knows what selection to make herself, and
supplies the guest without asking with such articles as comb and brush or
clothes brush, or bathing suit and bath-robe.
The valet of the host performs the same service for men. In small
establishments where there is no lady's maid or valet, the housemaid is
always taught to unpack guests' belongings and to press and hook up
ladies' dresses, and gentlemen's clothes are sent to a tailor to be
pressed after each wearing.
In big houses, breakfast trays for women guests are usually carried to the
bedroom floor by the butler (some butlers delegate this service to a
footman) and are handed to the lady's maid who takes the tray into the
room. In small houses they are carried up by the waitress.
Trays for men visitors are rare, but when ordered are carried up and into
the room by the valet, or butler. If there are no men servants the
waitress has to carry up the tray.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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