Fourth, there's our Ball-and-Big-Dinner Book. That's got a list of all the young men and another of all the young women. And I'm making notes against the names of those I don't know very well or don't know at all--notes about their personal appearance, eligibility, capacities for dancing, conversation, and so forth and so on. If you're going to make an entertainment a success you've got to know something more or less definite about the people that are coming, whom to ask to certain things and whom not to ask. Take a man like Phil Harkness, or a girl like Nell Witton, for example. Either of them would ruin a dinner, but Phil shines at a ball, where silence and good steady dancing are what the girls want. As for Nell, she's possible at a ball only if you can be sure John Rush or somebody like him is coming--somebody to sit with her and help her blink at the dancers and be bored. Then there's the Sam Tremenger sort of man--a good talker, but something ruinous when he turns loose in a ball-room and begins to batter the women's toilets to bits. He's a dinner man, but you can't ask him when politics may be discussed--he gets so violent that he not only talks all the time, but makes a deafening clamor and uses swear words--and we still have quiet people who get gooseflesh for damn. Then there's--let me see, what number--oh, yes--fifth, there's my Acceptance-and-Refusal Book. It's most necessary, both as a direct help and as an indirect check on other books. Then, too, I want it to be impossible to send the Burkes to places they've said they wouldn't go, or for them to be out when they've asked people to come here. Those things usually happen when you've asked some of those dreadful people that everybody always forgets, yet that are sure to be important at some critical time. Sixth, there's my Book of Home Entertainments--a small book but most necessary, as arranging entertainments in the packed days of the Washington season isn't easy. Seventh, there's the little book with the list of entertainments other people are going to give. We have to have that so that we can know how to make our plans. And in it I'm going to keep all the information I can get about the engagements of the people we particularly want to ask. If I'm not sharp-eyed about that I'll fail in one of my principal duties, which is getting the right sort of people under this roof often enough during the season to give us "distinction." Eighth, there's my Distinguished-Stranger Book. I'm going to make that a specialty. I want to try to know whenever anybody who is anybody is here on a visit, so that we can get hold of him if possible. The White House can get all that sort of information easily because the distinguished stranger always gives the President a chance to get at him. _We_ shall have to make an effort, but I think we'll succeed. Ninth--that's my book for press notices. It's empty now, but I think "pa" Burke will be satisfied long before the season is over.