Precept & Practice – APRIL 12 – Entertaining

With Aunt Ildy ‘company’ was a kind of fever.

From the baking of the cake to the getting out of the best china, it was a succession of crises…..   We stopped living beforehand, and took it up again when the company was gone.   The interval was an abnormal condition.   Here, into a beautiful established living, friends came, and that was all.   Or you dropped in, laid off your things and stayed, and everything was always ready.   So people borrowed a little freshness from each other and got really something out of each other’s sphere and story.

To one who is in the rôle of host there can be no more bitter rebuke than to have any guest or chance caller go out from the portals with the feeling that he is sorry he came – that he is depressed rather than uplifted.   For all personal association, whether permanent or transient, whether prearranged or a matter of accidental contact, should leave behind it a lingering charm, a deeper sense of the loveliness of life. 

Lilian Whiting

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From the Introduction to Precept and Practice

The kindly welcome given to my other little books, ‘Being and Doing’ and ‘Character and Conduct,’ must be my excuse for adding another collection of extracts to the number now in circulation.

The quotations are gathered from the books of many earnest thinkers, and deal with Life in all its length and breadth, with ourselves, our characters, our plain unvarnished faults and weaknesses, our often untoward circumstances, and with all that drags us down;-  with our purposes, our religion, our love and friendships, and with all that uplifts us;-  with our relation to others, our influence and responsibilities, and finally with those stages of our journey which bring us to the Road’s Last Turn and to the Silent Land.

CONSTANCE  M. WHISHAW