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THE ART OF ENTERTAINING
THE
ART OF ENTERTAINING
BY
M. E. W. SHERWOOD
This night
Beneath my roof my dearest friends I entertain
Homer
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1893
Copyright, 1892,
By Dodd, Mead and Company.
All rights reserved.
University Press:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
With a grateful recognition of his services to
"The Art of Entertaining,"
Both at home and abroad, and with a profound respect for his wit,eloquence, and learning, this book is dedicated
TO
THE HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW,
By his Friend, the Author.
PREFACE.
In America the art of entertaining as comparedwith the same art in England, in France, in Italyand in Germany may be said to be in its infancy.But if it is, it is a very vigorous infant, perhaps alittle overfed. There is no such prodigality of foodanywhere nor a more genuinely hospitable peoplein the world than those descendants of the Pilgrimsand the Cavaliers who peopled the North andSouth of what we are privileged to call the UnitedStates. Exiles from Fatherland taught the Indiansthe words "Welcome!" and "What Cheer?"—abeautiful and a noble prophecy. Well mightit be the motto for our national shield. We, whowelcome to our broad garden-lands the hungryand the needy of an overcrowded old world, canwell appropriate the legend.
No stories of that old Biblical world of thepatriarchs who lived in tents have been forgottenin the New World. The Western settler who placedbefore his hungry guest the last morsel of jerkedvimeat, or whose pale, overworked wife broiled thefish or the bird which had just fallen before hisunerring gun,—these people had mastered in theirway the first principle in the art of entertaining.They have the hospitality of the heart. From thatmeal to a Newport dinner what an infinite series ofgradations!
Perhaps we may help those on the lower rungsof the ladder to mount from one to the other.Perhaps we may hint at the poetry, the romance,the history, the literature of entertaining; perhapswith practical hints of how to