Thus it is always with general invitations. “Do call on us some evening, Miss Duncan, just in an easy way, and, pray, bring your seam with you, for there is nothing I hate so much as ceremonious set calls,” is the sort of invitations you will hear in the middle ranks of life, given to some good-natured female acquaintance, while you yourself, if a bachelor, will in the same way be bidden to call “just after you are done with business, and any night in the week; it is all the same, for you can never catch us unprepared.” The deuce is in these general invitations. People give them without reflecting that they cannot be at all times ready to entertain visitors; cannot be so much as at home to have the chance of doing so. Other people accept and act upon them, at the risk of either putting their visitors dreadfully about, or receiving a very poor entertainment. The sudden arrival of an unexpected guest who has come on the faith of one of these delusive roving invitations, indeed, in many instances, disorganises the economy of a whole household. Nothing tries a housewife so much. The state of her larder or cupboard instantaneously flashes on her mind; and if she do not happen to be a notable, and, consequently, not a regular curer of beef, or curious in the matter of fresh eggs, a hundred to one but she feels herself in an awkward dilemma, and, I have no doubt, would wish the visitor any where but where he is. The truth is, by these general invitations you may chance to arrive at a death or a marriage, a period of mourning or rejoicing, when the sympathies of the family are all engaged with matters of their own. If people will have their friends beside them, let them, for the sake of all that is comfortable, give them a definite invitation at once; a general invitation is much worse than no invitation at all; it is little else than an insult, however unintentional; for it is as much as to say that the person is not worth inviting in a regular manner. In “good” society, a conventional understanding obtains in the delicate point of invitations; there is an established scale of the value of the different meals adapted to the rank of the invited. I advise all my friends to follow this invaluable code of civility. By all means let your invitations have a special reference to time. On the other hand, if a friend comes plump down with a request that you will favour him with your company at a certain hour of the day, why, go without hesitation. The man deserves your company for his honesty, and you will be sure to put him to no more trouble than what he directly calculates on. But turn a deaf ear, if you be wise, to _general_ invitations; they are nets spread out to ensnare your comfort. Rather content yourself with the good old maxim, which somebody has inscribed over an ancient doorway in one of the old streets of Edinburgh, TECUM HABITA—_Keep at Home_. CONFESSORS.