September is actually the commencement of the country visiting season, the few visits that are paid in August are but a prelude to the programme that is to follow during the succeeding five months.

The visitors received in August are principally relatives. The exceptions to the August family parties are the August cricket parties in the counties where cricket is made a great feature during that month, where the cricket weeks and consequent large country-house parties are of annual recurrence, and where balls and private theatricals form part of the week's amusement. It often follows that people visit at the same houses year after year, they arrange their tour of visits with regard to those invitations which they annually receive; new acquaintances and new houses whereat to visit are added to the list from time to time and take the place of those which, as a matter of course, drop out of it. Sometimes the invitations fit into each other admirably, like the pieces of a puzzle; at others there is an awkward interval of a day, or two or three days, to be filled up between leaving one house and arriving at another. If the hostess is, in either case, a relation or an intimate friend, this difficulty is easily surmounted by staying on at one house until the day fixed for arrival at another, or vice versÂ; but if a guest is on ceremony with her hostess, or if, as is often the case, new arrivals are expected for the following week, the alternative is to spend a few days in town, as although the house where the next visit to be paid might be within twenty or thirty miles of the house the visitor is about to leave, it would be unusual to spend the interval at an hotel in the adjacent town, as to do so might reflect upon the hospitality of the hostess. On the other hand, invitations are sometimes given independently of dates, but this friendly style of invitation is not given when a large party is invited, and it is understood to mean that the hostess may be quite alone, or may have guests staying with her, as the case may be. This form of invitation is frequently given to people visiting in Scotland, on account of the great distance from town.

It is a very general custom to give shooting parties the third week in September, harvest permitting. If the harvest is late on account of unfavourable weather the shooting parties are postponed until the first week in the ensuing month. The guests, or at least the crack guns, are usually invited for partridge driving, which is what partridge shooting now actually amounts to.

There are large shooting parties and small shooting parties, shooting parties to which royalty is invited and shooting parties restricted to intimate friends or relations, but in either case the period is the same, three days' shooting.

If a party is limited to five guns, seven ladies is the average number invited, the hostess relying upon a neighbour or a neighbour's son to equalise the balance at the dinner-table. The success of house-parties mainly depends upon people knowing each other, or fraternising when they are introduced or have made each other's acquaintance. The ladies of a country-house party are expected, as a rule, to amuse themselves, more or less, during the day. After luncheon there is usually a drive to a neighbouring town, a little shopping to be done there, or a call to be paid in the neighbourhood by some of the party, notably the married ladies, the young ladies being left to their own resources.

At the close of a visit game is offered to those of the shooters to whom it is known that it will be acceptable.

The head gamekeeper is usually instructed to put up a couple of brace of pheasants and a hare. But in some houses even this custom is not followed, and the whole of the game killed, with the exception of what is required for the house, finds its way into the market, both the local market and the London market.

Shooting parties as a rule give a hostess little anxiety on the score of finding amusement for the ladies of the party, as so many aids out of doors are at her command at this season of the year. This is a great advantage, as although some few ladies possessing great strength of nerve have taken up shooting as an amusement and pastime and acquit themselves surprisingly well in this manly sport, yet ladies in general are not inclined for so dangerous a game, and even those intrepid ladies who have learnt how to use their little gun would never be permitted to make one or two of a big shooting party, even were they so inclined.

The hostess and the ladies of the party invariably join the shooters at luncheon, and some of the ladies go out with the shooters in the morning to watch their prowess in the field; but this entails a great deal of walking where partridge shooting is concerned, which is quite another thing to covert shooting in November and December.

A good hostess has great opportunities for distinguishing herself when entertaining a country-house party, from the arrival of the first motor-car to the departure of the last. Her consideration and tact are so successfully exerted that somehow her guests always find themselves doing exactly what they like best and in company with those who are most congenial to them, to say nothing of the comfort of the general domestic arrangements, which seem to have been arranged exclusively for their convenience. If they wish to drive, there is a carriage or motor-car at their disposal; if they prefer a constitutional, there is some one very agreeable desirous of walking with them. The daily papers are always to be found, the post-bag goes out at a most convenient hour by the hand of a special messenger, the dinner is of the best, and the evening is of the cheeriest. Bridge as a rule is played in most houses, and several tables are arranged in the drawing-room to accommodate the would-be players.

Occasionally, when the birds are wild and sport is slack, a sort of picnic luncheon is held in the vicinity of a keeper's lodge, under the shade of some wide-spreading trees, when the ladies join the party; but in September keen sportsmen rather despise this playing at shooting, and resent the interruption caused by the company of ladies at luncheon, and prefer to take it in the rough and smoke the while. Every day of the week is not thus given up to shooting, and there are few owners of manors who would care to provide five days' consecutive sport for their guests, and two days' hard shooting is probably followed by what is called an idle day. On these off days in September the hostess often gives a garden-party, or takes her guests to one given by a neighbour at some few miles distant; or she holds a stall at a bazaar and persuades her guests to assist her in disposing of her stock; or she induces her party to accompany her to some flower-show in which she takes a local interest; or the host and one or two of the best shots start early after breakfast to shoot with a neighbour, and the remainder of the guests drive over to a picturesque ruin, where they picnic, and return home in time for the eight-o'clock dinner. If the owner of a mansion has a coach the whole party is conveyed on it, otherwise the motor-cars are brought into requisition, while saddle horses are provided for those who care to ride. A country-house party occasionally resolves itself into two or more cliques, as far as the ladies are concerned; gentlemen, as a rule, are not much given to this sort of thing. On the first evening, as soon as the ladies have left the dining-room for the drawing-room, these little cliques are tacitly formed, and continue unbroken until the close of the visit. There are many reasons which call these cliques into existence—old intimacies revived, new acquaintanceships to be strengthened, unwelcome acquaintanceships to be avoided, and so on. These cliques are by no means agreeable to the hostess, indeed, quite the contrary—but she is powerless to prevent their being formed, and she is herself sometimes drawn into one or other of them, and sometimes altogether excluded from them. Any one who is at all conversant with country-house visiting is aware how thoroughly the influence of the clique pervades the atmosphere of the drawing-room; and yet, perhaps, at country-house parties more friendships are formed and intimacies cemented than at any other gatherings.

The evening amusements at country-house parties vary very much according to the proclivities of the hostess or those of her daughters. At some houses dancing is the order of things for a couple of hours or so after dinner, but this mode of spending the evening does not always commend itself to the gentlemen, who, after a long day's walking through wet turnips and over heavy ploughed land, or a hard day's riding over stiff fences, rather incline towards the dolce far niente of a luxurious armchair than to the pleasures of the mazy valse, and are proportionately grateful to a hostess who does not call upon them to undergo any further exercise than what they have already gone through for their own pleasure.

In most country-house parties bridge forms the chief if not the only amusement, and is played not only after dinner but in the afternoon also. Amateur theatricals and tableaux vivants, impromptu charades, thought reading, conjuring, etc., are fashionable amusements and easy of accomplishment: the first-named of these demands considerable study and plenty of time for rehearsal, therefore theatricals are generally engaged in when the party is composed of relatives rather than of acquaintances, and when the visit would be perhaps prolonged to ten days or a fortnight.

Some hostesses prefer keeping late hours to early hours, and do not retire until after twelve; this does not commend itself to the gentlemen, as they are not supposed to adjourn to the smoking-room until the ladies have left the drawing-room, and gentlemen like to spend a couple of hours in the smoking-room after dinner.

In hunting counties the breakfast is usually an early one, varying from nine o'clock to half-past nine, according to whether the ride to covert is likely to be a long or a short one; but, as a rule, the nominal breakfast hour is 9.30 o'clock. A certain amount of latitude is allowed to guests as regards coming down to breakfast; they do not assemble in the morning-room, but all make their way to the breakfast-room, and seat themselves at once at table, while many ladies breakfast in their own rooms.

In Scotland, an invitation to shoot often means a visit of three weeks. The accommodation of the shooting-box or lodge may be limited or primitive, and it is very often both of these; but it matters very little to the sportsman what sort of bed he sleeps on, or how he is made to rough it, providing the grouse are plentiful. On some of the moors there are but cottages and farmhouses for the occupation of the sportsmen, but on others the houses are excellent, and let with the moors, as many take a moor season after season and invite their friends to shoot between the 12th of August and October. The grand shooting parties that are annually given in Scotland by owners of large estates and fine shootings extends throughout the whole of the shooting season, and guests come and go without intermission; as one leaves another arrives. Certain houses or castles are much gayer than others; to some very few ladies are asked, the majority of the guests being gentlemen—probably the hostess and two ladies and eight men—in others, the numbers are more equal; in others, again, the party sometimes consists entirely of men with a host and no hostess. Ladies generally ask their most intimate friends to Scotland rather than acquaintances, as they are left to themselves the whole of the day, dinner being often postponed until nine o'clock, on account of the late return of the sportsmen.

South of the Tweed, September invitations are usually given for three or four days, from Tuesday till Saturday; married couples, young ladies, and young men, are all asked, and the ladies find amusement in lawn-tennis, or in attending or assisting at some neighbouring bazaar or fancy fair, as in this month county bazaars are very popular, and the visitors at one house lend their services in conjunction with the visitors at another, to hold stalls at a bazaar got up by a third influential lady; and thus the stalls are well stocked, and the fashionable stall-holders give an impetus to the whole affair.

Ladies see very little of the gentlemen between breakfast and dinner. The shooters start about eleven, and seldom return much before seven.

When it is dark at four, those who prefer ladies' society and tea to the smoking-room and billiards, make themselves presentable and join the ladies.

As regards the Etiquette of Visiting at Bachelors' Houses.—It is thoroughly understood that ladies should be accompanied by their husbands, and young ladies by their father and mother, or by a married couple with whom they are on terms of great intimacy, in which case the married lady acts as chaperon to the young ladies. Young ladies cannot stay at the house of a bachelor unless chaperoned by a married lady, or by a female relative of their host. A widow and her daughter could of course join a party of ladies staying at a bachelor's house, or stay on a visit to him were he alone, or entertaining bachelor friends.

When a bachelor gives a country-house party, and nominally does the honours himself, occasionally one of the married ladies of the party tacitly takes the lead.

The position of a young widower is similar to that of a bachelor as regards society. Later in life, the contrary is the case; a widower with grown-up daughters gives entertainments for them, and the eldest daughter does the honours, thus reducing the position again to that of host and hostess.