A lady never pays a party call on a gentleman. But if the gentleman who has given a dinner has his mother (or sister) staying with him and if the mother (or sister) chaperoned the party, cards should of course be left upon her.
Having risen to go, _go_! Don't stand and keep your hostess standing while you say good-by, and make a last remark last half an hour!
Few Americans are so punctilious as to pay their dinner calls within twenty-four hours; but it is the height of correctness and good manners.
When a gentleman, whose wife is away, accepts some one's hospitality, it is correct for his wife to pay the party call with (or for) him, since it is taken for granted that she would have been included had she been at home.
In other days a hostess thought it necessary to change quickly into a best dress if important company rang her door-bell. A lady of fashion to-day receives her visitors at once in whatever dress she happens to be wearing, since not to keep them waiting is the greater courtesy.
As an inheritance from the days when Mrs. Brown presented her compliments and begged that Mrs. Smith would do her the honor to take a dish of tea with her, we still--notwithstanding the present flagrant disregard of old-fashioned convention--send our formal invitations, acceptances and regrets, in the prescribed punctiliousness of the third person.
All formal invitations, whether they are to be engraved or to be written by hand (and their acceptances and regrets) are invariably in the third person, and good usage permits of no deviation from this form.
The invitation to the ceremony is engraved on the front sheet of white note-paper. The smartest, at present, is that with a raised margin--or plate mark. At the top of the sheet the crest (if the family of the bride has the right to use one) is embossed without color. Otherwise the invitation bears no device. The engraving may be in script, block, shaded block, or old English. The invitation to the ceremony should always request "the honour" of your "presence," and never the "pleasure" of your "company." (Honour is spelled in the old-fashioned way, with a "u" instead of "honor.")
Two envelopes are never used except for wedding invitations or announcements; but wedding invitations and all accompaning cards are always enclosed first in an inner envelope that has no mucilage on the flap, and is superscribed "Mr. and Mrs. Jameson Greatlake," without address. This is enclosed in an outer envelope which is sealed and addressed: