Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

The spread of education is often brought forward as a reason for the deterioration of servants. I must put in a protest against this. I never will believe it ! On the contrary, Mill's definition of education will always remain true to me : ' The best employment of all the means which can be made use of for rendering the human mind, to the greatest possible degree, the cause of human happiness.' It is essential, for the well-regulating of a house, that the orders to servants should be given early in the morn- ing. Everything except flower- arranging ought to be got through in an hour. When people complain that house- keeping takes so long, it is either that they are ignorant and undecided, or that they are out of health, and come down very late in the morning, and things get out of order from being left to the servants for several days in the week. I fear many young people will probably think me priggish and disagreeable if I say that, be a woman ever so delicate, it is far better for her to get up early and see to her work, even if she finds it necessary to take a rest at twelve or three. I am a great believer in early rising, partly because it implies a generally healthy life, and means that there are no large late dinners or late going to bed ; for it is impossible to burn the candle at both ends. I think most women would work best in the morning ; but I quite admit that, owing to the faults of family life, time is seldom entirely her own, except in the privacy of her room, either at night or in the very early morning. Some years ago I was asked by a rich woman who had come to London with a view to entertaining, how I did it. She had come prepared to make a regular London list of unknown swells, and was rather surprised when I 350 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN answered : ' I never send out formal invitations, and I never ask anyone who is not more or less a personal friend of my own, or someone brought at the request of one of these friends, this last being a distinct element of success.' If two people are really happy in a room, it sheds a glow of brightness all around them. This, to my mind, applies to all private and unofficial entertaining which is done for pleasure — one's own and that of others — rather than duty. All entertaining, to be good, should be a collection of people who meet because they either really know each other or would like to do so. The moment people are brought together for any reason connected with duty, the party, unless it is very large, is sure to go badly and to be dull. The dinners we all dread are those where the host and hostess ask people to meet each other because they have duties of various kinds to pay off. The deadly dulness of all garden parties in the country is a marked example of the extraordinary flatness that results from turning society into a social duty, and having to ask a whole neighbourhood at once, which is in no sense true hospitality. Duty and charity are excellent things, but they cannot be turned into agreeable social gatherings.