But while trying your best to provide some sort of amusement for your guests, never forget to “leave well alone,” and your visitors also. If there is one thing more objectionable than another to many people, it is being “hiked about,” and told to go here and there, or do this and that, when they do not want either to go to or do the place or thing suggested. Talleyrand once said to a man who asked counsel of him respecting a project he had very much at heart, “_Surtout pas trop de zèle_,” and that advice it is well to bear in mind. We all know the proverb, “One may have too much of a good thing,” and “zeal,” excellent in itself, is apt if over-much indulged to become a nuisance to the object if not the subject thereof. The hostess who, with the best intentions, insists on driving her friends even to things they like doing, who says, “Now I know what will suit you—the old ruins. We will go there to-day, and to-morrow is the Gymkana. We must all go there. Headache, did you say? Oh, I thought you never had headaches, but anyhow a nice little drive just to the ruins can’t hurt. In fact the air will do you good. Now, you, I know you would rather stay in, so take that comfortable chair, and there’s your book, I put it ready for you, and there’s the _Morning Post_, or would you like the _Times_ better?” and so on _ad infinitum_, is a person to be dreaded. “Kind woman,” say her friends behind her back, “but, oh, if she would only leave us alone!” The essence of good manners, indeed, is to make things as pleasant as possible by letting people follow their own bent and inclination; giving them the chance of joining in something which may be agreeable, but dropping the subject at once if it does not seem to be attractive. Closely connected with this is manner itself, about which it may be said perhaps, “People cannot help their manner.” That is true to a certain extent but not entirely, for a good manner may be cultivated and a bad one discouraged just as flowers may be watered and attended to and weeds rooted out. When I speak of a good manner, I do not mean that specially soft demeanour which reminds one somewhat of a cat and is often accompanied by a little delicately hinted flattery of the person spoken to, although such manner is seldom thrown away, human nature being very prone to approve of flattery under the guise of appreciation. But I do mean gentleness as contrasted with anything like roughness or _brusquerie_. The Latin expression “_Suaviter in modo_” conveys the idea better than any words I know, and, in women particularly, short sharp ways of speaking, over-strong, almost violent, expressions of opinion, and what may be called unoiled words of contradiction, are disagreeable in themselves and dead against every rule and custom of society. If we possess a hand of steel, let us hide it in a velvet glove. The strength will be in no wise impaired thereby, while our neighbours will be less sensible of the hardness.