Certainly, ladies have a personal interest in abolishing this state of things, when gentlemen's dinner-parties, including half a dozen invitations, to the exclusion of every lady, except the hostess, are becoming so common. Make your dinners more simple, fair dames, and make your dress as simple as your dinners. Restore in this way the power to invite your friends oftener, and let your and your husband's invitations to dinner, include gentlemen _and their wives_. If the latter are fools, they will not become less so by being excluded from rational conversation. If they are _not_ fools, it is an outrage to treat them as if they were. It would be useless, of course, to hint that dinner had better be at midday. Fashion would turn up her nose at the idea. And yet you know very well that _that_ is the natural and most wholesome time to dine. As to gentlemen "not being able to leave their business," to do this, I might suggest that they go to bed earlier, to enable them to go earlier to that business in the morning. I might also add, that gentlemen generally can find time to do anything which they greatly desire to do. I might also add, that for one child or young person who eats this heartiest meal of the day, and goes directly to bed upon it without harm, thousands bring on an indigestion, which makes life a curse instead of the blessing it ought to be.
Where do you ever hear now, the frank, hearty invitation, "Come in any time and see us?" How is it possible, when a table preparation that involves so much thought and expense, is considered the proper way to honor a guest, and conversation and cordiality are secondary matters, if not altogether ignored? Of what use is it to have a fine house, and well-stocked wine-cellar, and drilled servants, when the passion for show has reached such a pitch, that public saloons and suites of rooms in vast hotels, must be hired, and a man leave his own house, be it ever so fine, because he must have more room and more parade, than any private house can by any possibility furnish, without pitching the whole family into inextricable chaos and confusion for a month.
This is all false and wrong, and demoralizing. It is death to social life--death to the true happiness and well-being of the family, and in my opinion, ladies are to blame for it, and ladies only can effect a reform.