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 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.

I think it often surprises people, and especially men, that middle-aged women, even those who have no daughters, are so energetic and indefatigable in their efforts to go into society in a way they rather avoided than courted when they were younger. Society is always only too glad to shunt the middle-aged, and the middle-aged themselves so often feel it to be only a treadmill. I am sure the secret is to be found, consciously or unconsciously, in the love of power. It gives people the opportunities to help, not only their own children, if they have any, but other people in whom they may happen to be interested, who are often benefited by an opportune word in high places. This is what transforms the treadmill and the burden and the labour into something so worth while that it almost becomes a pleasure.

In entertaining at home, our object should be rather to help those who want help, and who may unexpectedly rise into positions of power and trust, than always to be making up to those who are already in high places, and who are full of suspicion with regard to the civilities that are paid to them. To practise the wisdom of life, without standing on the stilts of higher morality, is rather a virtue than a vice in the middle-aged. It is as old as Aesop, who bids us not to despise making up to the mice; for though you yourself may be very much a lion, the day may come when you will need the services of a mouse. We all know La Fontaine's summing-up of the old story:- 'Il faut, autant qu'on peut, obliger tout le monde. On a souvent besoin d'un plus petit que soi.'

One of the unexpected consolations to a woman who is leaving her youth behind her, is that she can take broader and more lenient views of the moral faults indulged in by her friends and acquaintances. It is a revelation that comes sooner or later to every woman how much is excused and sanctioned by society which in her youth would have seemed to her impossible. The middle-aged woman may often say to herself, half in fun, 'After all, a little remorse is better than a vast amount of regret. At any rate,'she adds, 'I will not police society. I might crush the weak, and I should do no harm to the strong.'Is it not true and even beautiful that 'tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner'? Middle-age is essentially the time of a lowered moral standard. This is the attitude of mind, let us say, between forty and fifty -a little sooner or a little later, according to the temperament. Then comes another phase, which is in no sense an hypocritical one. As the young around us grow into men and women, with the temptations and trials that life must always bring, we recall our own youth, and a feeling of responsibility, almost of awe, comes over us. Anyone who has gone through the ages would know what I mean. To forgive and excuse the mistakes and faults of life is a very different thing from helping the young out of the strait way. It has been truly said that it is all very well to sneer at commonplace morality in the abstract; but the moment it is a question of any young people who are dear to us, we cannot help desiring it for them, though we may have laughed at it for ourselves. Then the young think the old uncharitable, narrow-minded, and unkind; but they are not so. One of the saddest things in life is the isolation of the old. They can partly understand the young, but the young never can understand them, for are they not far away along a road the young have never seen ?

Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who Before us passed the door of darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the road, Which, to discover, we must travel too ?

Omar Khayyam.